Hey Reader,

It's Sam and TA here. 🤗 We hope August has been treating you well so far.

If you've been around for a while, you know the drill. Grab a brew and get cosy for this month's Travel Journal. ☕️

Scrapping Our Flexible Schedule

In July our days went like this:

• Check weather and tide times.
• Sit down to work as early as possible before mid-tide.
• Head out to surf around mid-tide. 🏄
• Gym before work if the conditions weren't looking good.
• Late lunch and then back to work from afternoon until evening.
• Rinse and repeat.

Now it seemed like a great idea at the time, work-surf-work. This allowed us to surf every day, which is what you need to see great improvements in surfing. The problem? We were mentally and physically exhausted ALL THE TIME. 😴

Surfing is hard work and we weren't hopping in the water for an hour or two and then heading home. We were practising dry land pop-ups, watching YouTube videos, chatting with instructors, taking lessons, and trying to fix one thing while breaking another.

It was the usual sporting learning curve but with even more unpredictable conditions. 🌊

We got so caught up with studying, working more hours, trying to improve surfing and going to the gym 🏋️‍♀️ 3-4 times a week. It was only a matter of time before something had to give.

After a tough morning in the water and a long lunch, we realised surfing was cutting into work time and we were trying to juggle too much.

Very begrudgingly we decided on a stricter schedule with more focus on work and studying:

Monday to Friday

• Wake up to read 📚 and for morning coffee/matcha lattes at 6:30 am
• Gym 3/4 days per week at 7:30 am
• Brekkie 🍳
• Work & Study 9:30/10 am - 6/7:30 pm
• Practice surf pop-ups and stretch
• Dinner 🍜
• Meditate (essential for our busy minds)
• Climb into bed before 9 pm to read before going to sleep.

This is our planned 'ideal' schedule, but we all know ideas and reality are rarely one and the same. Especially for us, as we both struggle with sleep. An ongoing issue we're constantly trying to figure out.

Up until the past couple of weeks, we've been eating a lot of our meals at the local market, the choice of food is incredible. Thai, European, Japanese, Russian, and American to curb most cravings.

On work days, we're now trying to stick to the food on our street; this saves us time and money. While meals at the market cost around £2-£4 each, little scooter food carts cost just under £2 each.

A store just a few doors down offers an array of freshly prepared curries, meat and vegetables, alongside rice and noodles. Impressively, we can purchase four complete meals for less than £3.50!

You have to get there early, though, to get the best picks. We've realised that the best way is to grab lunch and dinner in the morning before we leave for the gym. This saves us a tonne of time later in the day and means we can take a shorter lunch break when we're in a flow with work.

We've also learnt through trial and error which ones are the most spicy. I love spicy food, but Thai spicy is a different level! Poor Sam gave me a live episode of 'The Hot Ones' this week.

Saturday

• No alarm
• Treat ourselves to a pancake stack at the bakery next door
• Head to the beach and surf as much as we have the energy for
• Hire some sun loungers for the day and eat lunch and dinner around surfing
• Watch the sunset 🌅
• Shower and watch a movie

Hopefully, with a less chaotic schedule, we'll see some improvements in our surfing, even though we're in the water less than before. At some point, we'll likely head to a surf camp to make up for lost time.

Sunday

Total day of rest. No surfing, no gym, no work, no studying, no intaking of any educational information of any kind, not even YouTube videos. 😆

This day consists of late mornings, reading, watching movies 🎬 and having massages. Thai Massages cost around £7, there are at least 10 parlours on our street.

We realised we weren't giving our bodies or minds the recovery time needed, because of this, everything was suffering.

So although we now have a strict schedule and less surfing time, it is far easier to compartmentalise, manage and make improvements everywhere.

It's weird to have traded in a flexible schedule for the Monday-to-Friday grind, but at the moment it makes sense. Sam has to communicate with his team in the UK, taking the weekend off like everybody else, means they can be 100% work-free days.

This "strict" schedule has some wiggle room, as, unfortunately, we can't predict the weather, and as those of you who work fixed hours know, there's no guarantee we'll get good weather on our days off.

So what we do at the weekends will be at the mercy of the weather gods, but if it means more massages and movie days, I guess we'll have to make up for the lack of surfing another time.

What's New On The Blog?

To shower or not to shower? That is the question. Vanlife showers are a hot topic, with easy access to showers on the road a lot of vanlifers find installing a shower in their van a waste of valuable real estate.

We had a bunch of reasons for installing a shower cubicle in our van, we explain why in our latest article. We also walk you through deciding if a shower is for you and what type would be best for your lifestyle.

Read the full article here 👇

​The Best Van Shower Options: From Washcloths to Cubicles​

So that's what's been going on with us, hit reply and let us know what's going on with you!

See you in a couple of weeks with the Travel Newsletter xoxo

Traveling Soon? Use our favourite resources to plan your next trip:

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✈️ Save a huge amount on flights with FareDrop​

❤️ Use our discounted link for the best travel insurance with HeyMondo​

🥾 Choose from tonnes of tours on Viator​

🚗 Get the best deals on car hire at Discover Cars​

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