Hiya,

We're getting closer to meeting up in Bilbao, and it has us reflecting on how we got here.

A couple of years ago, this summer wouldn't have been possible.

Now, Julia's spending the summer volunteering in Italy and Sweden, and every train ticket, flight and hostel has been paid for by the blog we started as a side project.

It's still a little surreal.

Looking back, there were a few moments that changed everything.

🇱🇦 February 2024 – Laos

We were traveling through northern Laos and kept running into the same problem:

There was hardly any information online about how to get between places.

We'd spend hours searching Reddit and piecing together bits of information from different blogs.

We remember saying, "Someone should put all this in one place."

Turns out... that someone became us.

👉 How to Travel Around Laos​

🇹🇭 March 2024 – Koh Tao

A month later, we were sitting on the balcony of our hotel in Koh Tao brainstorming what a travel website could look like.

Neither of us knew how to build one.

We just knew we wanted to make travel easier for other people.

👉 The Ultimate 3-Week Thailand Itinerary​

🇦🇺 March 2025 – Melbourne

After a year of teaching ourselves WordPress, SEO, affiliate marketing and writing blog post after blog post from our 3-month Southeast Asia trip…

...we earned our first affiliate commission.

It wasn't life changing money (like $25 USD lol).

But it was proof that someone had trusted one of our recommendations enough to book through our website.

🇮🇹🇸🇪 Summer 2026

Fast forward to today.

Julia's spending the summer volunteering in Italy and Sweden before we meet up in Spain, and every penny she's spent getting around Europe has come from the blog's income over the past year.

We hoped but never really expected a travel blog to help fund more travel.

But here we are.

And every person who reads our guides, clicks a link, or opens one of these emails has played a tiny part in making that happen.

So... THANK YOU.

💜

Jess & Julia