Our Travel Scratch Map! 8 Years On The Road | How Many Countries Have We Been To?

hello and welcome to travel beans i'm alex and this is emma we are a couple who have been traveling for eight years and it is now our full-time job and in that eight years we have not once decided to sit and count the number of countries that we've been to together so that's what we're going to do today scratching off this map as we go and telling a few stories having just returned back to the uk to a national covid lockdown we thought there would be no better time to stop and look back over the past eight years of travel and finally use our scratch map be sure to subscribe to be notified of our upcoming series where we will be delving deeper into the full story i haven't really been into counting the countries i've been to since i was quite young when you're backpacking it's kind of a dick measuring contest between who can establish themselves in the hierarchy who's the best like in the hostel hi how are you what's your name how many countries have you been to also once you get to like i don't know like 20 countries plus you start to just sound like a bit of a dick like you're trying to show off with how many countries you've been to so we don't really do it so often anymore but in turn we have no idea how many countries we've been to when people say to me how many countries they've been to i kind of automatically roll my eyes at them that okay cool cool story bro so that's exactly what we're doing today as a british couple you might think that the uk would be the first place that we met actually in thailand we did so first scratching okay so satisfying so we met in a place in thailand called pai which is right in the north a few hours north of the city of chiang mai we were both backpacking on our own solo backpack adventures i think we didn't really have many or any intention for at least long-term romantic partners but here we are eight years on we have a video on the channel about how we met which goes into more detail but i wasn't supposed to be in pi and i had a crazy story where i should have been going to a place called nangkai to teach football and on the day that i was supposed to leave i had a very uneasy feeling that i can't explain to this day and i decided when i got onto the bus that was about to take me there that i had the idea to flip a coin to see heads or tails if i should stay and the coin told me to stay so i got off that bus and i then found out the next day that a bus went off a cliff like actually went off a cliff so you really wouldn't have been in pie if you've got on that bus yeah so um i within that week i went to pi and i met emma and my life changed dramatically in our upcoming series where we are going to be going through the entire story of our journey to full-time travel we will be going into far more detail but quick overview is after you met in thailand we then travel together through lao cambodia and back to thailand again it's time for me to get scratching lao is a fantastic country that i definitely would recommend to a lot of people it's extremely untouched compared to thailand and the same goes for cambodia it has a very depressing history but extremely interesting and you're going to find things like beaches that you just won't believe yeah but actually cambodia is where i saw bioluminescent plankton for the first time the ones that like glow when you go in the water at night amazing and completely mind-blowing i'm not very good at staying inside the lines so it's gonna have to be a little bit messy but there we go we've got lao cambodia and thailand after this emma and me went separate ways emma flew to australia for a pre-booked one-year working holiday experience there yeah i was super excited i started out i flew to darwin and it was about a week until we spoke to each other and you decided to come and join me so that was the next place we went and spent a whole year in australia together and we did the classic things of like road trips and day trips and just exploring everything that australia has to offer it is an awesome country it's massive like so absolutely massive yeah and like when you do road trips around australia nothing can prepare you for the size of it it's amazing so when we were reunited up in cairns in the top right here we then saved up we were working in a casino so all kinds of crazy hours of the night and day so that we could buy a 4x4 which we then took down the east coast of australia that trip was epic we then got to sydney and had some of the best jobs of our life to this day emma worked giving tours in an aquarium and i worked as an activities coordinator in an international school which basically meant that i had to just be like the master of fun and make sure that the students want to stay in the school so i got to go and play volleyball on the beach take them surfing on weekends um have fun games go to the pub it was a job after a year in australia we then flew to malaysia for another backpacking adventure the highlight for us definitely had to be borneo although it was amazing unbelievable we've got to see orangutans the hibiscus monkeys just so much wildlife there but that's somewhere i would highly recommend for diving snorkeling and just safariing in general after malaysia we completed our backpacker circle of this area here and we went to vietnam for the first time and that was incredible we spent a month going from ho chi minh in the south all the way up to hanoi this is when we flew to the uk we hadn't been in our home countries together we had been traveling around for 18 months to about two years at this point we both got corporate jobs within a week of getting home so we ended up actually doing a long distance relationship for our entire time back in the uk weird way round to do it because when we first met and we're backpacking it was obviously cheaper to share accommodation so we basically live together straight away and then moved away away into long distance very strange during that time we went to a few places so firstly we went to ireland yeah and emma actually surprised me because we were doing a long-distance relationship with a series of clues that eventually led me to ireland and it's funny because it was actually quicker for us to fly to ireland than to drive to each other's place later on in our travels that story went on to become viral and it led to emma being the lad of lad bible and making it into publications like daily mail very weird during that time we also did a couple of sort of weekend away trips so we also visited spain and italy we have been to many of these countries on here a number of times we're not gonna mention it each time we've been there but for example spain and italy our best memories have come at a later date uh for me the highlight of spain was seeing liverpool in the champions league in madrid and we slept in a car a tiny little like compact car for five nights on the drive to get there it was an adventure in itself it's well worth going back and watching that also italy we did a series recently and those are definitely the highlights of my time in italy it was incredible making pizzas in a pizza oven was just at the beaches the beaches look like something from the maldives they are so pristine so blue and clear oh my days and finally filling up emma's jugs was one of the best things filling up wine and prosecco on tap was from a petrol pump [Laughter] this was the end of our corporate years after about a year and a half to two years saving up to go away again and to start our youtube channel so travel beans was now officially about to be born i know so our first ever videos was on this next trip so we basically did a trip all around europe with a group of friends in a couple of camper vans this trip was especially weird for us because the whole reason we were able to do this trip is because we were going as models our friend that we'd met on a previous trip had asked us if we would be willing as he was a photographer to be models around europe but bearing in mind were much thinner and younger and more attractive back then it's not like us now being asked that question so it wasn't as crazy but yeah i mean it was in exchange for doing a trip around europe with friends for a month it sounded epic so we did that when we left the uk we went through belgium germany czech republic slovakia hungary croatia slovenia italy austria through france and then back to the uk again this trip was an absolute blast and i think i i have to say that the highlight was getting engaged in czech republic me saying that i would marry you after all yeah but we're now five or six years old from then and let's start being married we always think that we would rather spend the money on more travel than put onto a wedding it's a it's a constant battle of family and and friends saying when's it gonna happen when's it gonna happen and we just spend all the money on travel sorry guys now the time i'm most excited for actually on this whole thing is because we did the trans siberian which means we get to scratch off of russia i wonder i'm excited because it is satisfying to do but it takes ages we have to keep pausing the camera also it's funny because we did russia mongolia and china so we're going to get to scratch all this off but it does feel a bit weird because like for example in china on this trip was just beijing so we're going to scratch up all of china because we just went to beijing it feels like cheating a little bit russia was incredible we did the trans-hobby owner cross which took i think it was six days in total from moscow to beijing including three days straight on one train that's from moscow to lake baikal which was a huge highlight for us wasn't it like by cow so basically you get the train from moscow to a place called irkutsk from here you can go to lake baikal but if you are in the area that is well worth going to see it is it's beautiful um my only regret is not staying there longer to be honest because there's so much to do and see there they have bears and things as well which we didn't get to see which would have been awesome also mongolia is well worth well worth going it's in my top three countries that i've ever been to yeah you arrive into a lampeter the the main city and you might not think much of it but as soon as you leave that city my friends you will be blown away by the scenery out of this world [Music] we should have never gone to russia russia i have lost all enthusiasm for this video now i really don't want to do this anymore we haven't even started on the us in canada yet after our epic trip around russia mongolia and china we've then flew to a place that dreams are made of so we went to the maldives and we went for a whole month and you should definitely check out our series coming soon that will explain this in more detail but basically lied our way to free food accommodation trips for a whole month on an island in the maldives yeah it was lush to say the least that's one of those places that on paper it sounds good and in reality it really was that good we weren't even staying in a fancy resort or anything we're staying on a local island there and it was perfection and even better look it's done so easy so after that we then flew to sri lanka which is another place where we ended up using the experience that we got in the maldives to get a load of work and we've got fully booked for the whole month that we're in sri lanka we actually got pretty burnt out and didn't go and see all the stuff that we wanted to see because we were so busy working so after that we kind of scaled it back on the working front i.e by doing none from there we went to thailand again and the next new country was to myanmar so myanmar had kind of recently opened to the public it had been closed for a very long time and oh it was amazing it's so untouched so beautiful we did a three day 60 kilometers trek through the wildlife and nature of myanmar and it was one of the best hiking experiences we've ever had i mean there were blisters there were leeches there was torrential rain there was everything that you could have imagined but it was also so beautiful and well worth going from here we then made our way to south korea which was again surprisingly a blast and it's where we tried hitchhiking for the first time yeah well actually we tried a couple of things we did couch surfing and we did hitchhiking incidentally one led to the other we actually met with a few different people from couchsurfing and one of them managed to persuade us to do hitchhiking for the first time in korea if you are nervous about something like this like couchsurfing or hitchhiking i'd really recommend doing it in a place like a very safe country like south korea like we didn't really get too far out of our comfort zone by doing these things so you get to have those really authentic local experiences but with a very low risk of danger and then from south korea we then flew to japan which is where we wanted to go and see the snow monkeys so this was a bucket list thing for al and i to go and do we had seen these snow monkeys on a david attenborough documentary and there are these cute little macaques that would bathe in the hot springs in the mountains of japan and we said if we go to japan we will 100 have to go there and we did we have now been to japan since then at least i think four more times it's such a great country and the only way i can describe it is when you get there it just has this feeling something that i really love about japan is how they've held on to their culture at least through the aesthetics of the country as you're walking around the buildings the shops all those kind of things just scream japan and it's such a safe yet different culture to experience after this was taiwan and we're going to count that i'm sure there's some people that will maybe argue it's part of china we're counting as a country we've also been to hong kong we're going to count that as a country as well the biggest highlight that i had in taiwan was this weird pork bun thing food it was amazing the i don't have so many memories of our time there apart from that and we went to the toilet restaurant oh yeah the toilet restaurant i was sick for the majority time i was there i had the flu so i was just in bed but the last couple days i managed to get out and al took me to the most romantic place you could possibly imagine and we ate food out of toilet bowls from here we then made our way to the philippines for the first time uh the first time we went to the philippines we hated it we were there for a couple of weeks and we did all the wrong things and it was just a very unenjoyable experience i say hated it like there were definitely moments that we've really enjoyed we did canyoning or canyoneering for the first time and that was an absolute blast but then we also did stuff like swimming with the whale sharks which was not so fun since then we have gone back to the philippines a number of times we love it it's one of our favorite countries to explore if you're in the region of southeast asia we highly recommend it especially if you want to really get to know local people because they have amazing english there you actually get to really connect with the people there and everyone is so so friendly and welcoming next we went to bali for the first time it feels kind of wrong to scratch off the whole of indonesia because i know there's so much more to see there than just bali but if russia gets to get scratched off in china sorry indonesia our time in bali was relatively uneventful and things started to get weird from after this point pretty weird so we flew from there to india india was an interesting time for us um i guess it's kind of split into two parts part one is like normal trip to india your family came out to visit us and we actually had like a family holiday for two weeks after that we went up to the himalayas that's when things got really strange we ended up working for a quad biking company in the himalayas it was incredible yeah at the same time there was a hollywood movie being shot on that location and this will all be explained in a future series coming up so make sure you subscribe for that but just a long story short we end up becoming friends with the crew um ended up then filming our own tv show and cancelling all our plans we were supposed to be going to nepal next but instead we end up flying to hollywood and to new york to start editing and pitching our show so this was our first time in the us now i actually grew up in the us i was there until i was 12 years old and had a full-on american accent and everything um which we will be going into more details in our big series um but as you can see with the russia situation the big countries take a while so i think i'm going to do the state by state so when we first flew there we went to california outside of the tv show stuff that was happening we got to go and see our friend that we did the trip in europe with and he took us on a big road trip of california and it the national parks out there are just mindless courageous so good americans like to be proud and they should be proud for this there's other things they shouldn't be so proud about but try and tell them that it's such a wind-up oh yeah and so when we did our road trip with our friend micah he woke us up one day and he was like hey guys do you want some tacos for lunch and we're like short tacos sound great where should we go and he was like mexico so we got to drive down well just down this peninsula here to mexico but i think all mexico has to go i also do just want to mention that we did stay in mexico so this is why it's getting counted if we just went for lunch and then drove back to california and didn't stay over it wouldn't count but because we stayed there a couple of nights it counts so after this we flew over to new york and this is such a quick overview of all the events that happened but we went to new york um we continued to edit a tv show pitch it did some fun things like i went to go and see a friend of ours and we got to spend 4th of july on staten island and it was very that was amazing very american and our friend was a firefighter so we got to go to the firehouse and i got to go down the pole this is amazing then from here we then did a trip in an rv around a number of different states going up to chicago once we left the us of this we then headed to canada yeah and again i would love to scratch all this off because it would visually look great but it's just too much it's going to take too long and it gives us an opportunity to focus on some of these other places in the future we didn't actually do that much in canada to be honest this was kind of like the peak of emma's depression yeah we'd already booked our flights home so we were really just waiting to go at this point other than toronto we did actually get outside of the city and visit a friend who lives on one of the lakes and we also went to niagara falls so that was a nice bucket list thing to check off too after this we returned home and this is where we kind of worked on ourselves mentally yeah some counselling and we got ourselves into a better place and then some exciting times was the digital nomad years the digital nomad years this is the the start of i guess our journey to where we are now and probably one of the more exciting points in our travels because it made our travel sustainable so we only had 500 pounds at the time of leaving england and we kind of got sick of people saying they were so jealous of us of traveling all the time we're so lucky and we thought we did a lot of sacrifices to be able to do that so we decided with 500 pounds we're gonna leave and prove that like it's possible yeah money is just an excuse in a lot of cases exactly so we left and we went to thailand and for this year where we went and lived in thailand we went to a lot of places that we'd already been to in the past so japan malaysia philippines again it's kind of like a little asian base that we had to to go off and explore more of those countries in full but the first one that we went to that we hadn't been to before was singapore yeah that's tiny easy to scratch off that was it for all the new places so we went flew back to europe and we went to germany and the next new place was to poland we loved poland poland was incredible i didn't expect to like it as much as i did the food was great the people were friendly and the nature was outrageously good and we went in winter time as well so there was snow and we got to do some hiking in the snow which was really nice because it was coming into the christmas season it got us feeling festive we went to one of our favorite christmas markets in poland as well that was beautiful it is definitely one of the most underrated places i've ever been to and you shouldn't miss it if you are in the area after this we then did a trip with eric and allison from the endless adventure where we went to austria and slovenia before going back to the uk this was such a big moment for us because we went back to the uk but this time we chose to go back all the other times was because we run out of money or depression or both this time was our choice we wanted to be there and i think that was a very big personal growth step for us we did our uk series then and we got to appreciate our own country and i think it is important to explore your own country and the more you travel you should be able to the things that you love from travel you should have to see in your own country so i think it's a good thing it's a good exercise for appreciation after six months back in the uk we then went to our next new country which blew my mind how much i loved this place i cannot wait to go back again and that is turkey the food is just out of this world way better than i could ever imagined the turkish breakfasts oh my goodness huge and delicious it's like having tapas for breakfast it's incredible you get all these little dishes just spread out all over the table and it's just it's an event in itself also istanbul is my favorite city i have ever been in the whole world it is the best i love it so much and then saying that as well another thing that i loved was the turkish bath oh you got the turkish bath experience where i got rubbed over by a beautiful turkish man fantastic so when we left turkey we actually got an overnight train to bulgaria another new country for us and we did some hiking in the bulgarian mountains and it was so beautiful and it felt so untouched and it was really quiet there was no one else there it was beautiful and then after that we went across to macedonia we didn't get long in macedonia we ended up flying last minute to china we then came home again and we went to do another series in the us which this time we went around from the southwest and the deserts this was top notch bloody loved it yeah this was the best time that we had in the us because the first time there was always that kind of depression cloud over the whole experience but this time was amazing we did campervan road trips which is our favorite way to travel all around california new mexico and arizona and nevada oh and nevada yeah we then came back from here we're in the uk and we'd arranged to do a big trip around europe we had started it and we were just in scotland yeah at the time as our first time we went to scotland yeah oh you had that amazing curry in glasgow do you remember and once we were here that's when the coronavirus started to hit we had to cancel everything and go home to the lockdown after the lockdown we managed to get out and escape for a few months yeah and we went and did another trip around europe and we got one more country that we hadn't been to before and that was luxembourg [Music] that's super quick tiny country we camp found around belgium luxembourg and germany before going to czech republic and revisiting the place that we got engaged we then went home and then did another trip at this time driving our fiat 500 all the way down to the south of italy and then back into another lockdown in the uk which is where we are right now well i mean i guess if we'd have scratched off the whole of the us and canada it would look far more impressive but i'm pretty pleased with this so obviously it looks like we've definitely done a lot of asia we have we've done asia justice yeah quite clearly the missing gaps for us are africa south america yeah so i have been to brazil for example a few places in the north and the south of africa the same with emma she's been to plenty of other countries that we're not putting on this map right now the travel beans map yeah so we have a lot of work to do we do i know it's kind of you you feel like you've been to so many places and then you do this and you're like oh i barely scratched the surface so nice i'm actually really impressed by you thank you wow i'm disappointed it makes me want to go to some new countries like we need to get out of our comfort zone again because we haven't been to many new places in the last few years no and i always have the best experience when we're really out of our comfort zone like going to russia on that big trip when we first started the channel was so exciting because it was something completely new and completely different so leave in the comments when was the last time you got out of your comfort zone and went somewhere completely new or completely different that you didn't expect also although i said at the start about counting countries i love it again now leave in the comments how many countries have you been to do you keep count of how many countries you go to and what countries are on your list to go to once all this virus stuff is done with make sure you subscribe for our new series coming soon i think you're gonna love it it shows how we went from zeros to heroes to zeros to whatever we are now in that series we'll be going into so much more depth than we did today with all of our stories of places that we've been to and things that we've done um as well as touching a lot on mental health that series will be coming soon it is a monster edit and is taking a while to get through but as soon as it's ready it will be on the internet probably in a week or two i guess um if you like the video give us a big fat like and thank you so much for watching we'll see you next time and peace out

Channel: Travel Beans

Views: 24,319

Rating: 4.9673915 out of 5

Keywords: travel bean, travel, youtube, youtube Travel Beans, scratch map, scratch map travel edition, travel scratch map, travel stories, travel video, travel couple, our travel scratch map, gap year ideas, gap year, travel advice, backpacking, budget travel, world map, my travel scratch map, scratch off world map, scratch map review, gift idea travel, scratch off map

Id: b6HAp1CTXpw

Length: 27min 24sec (1644 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 14 2020