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TRAVEL MATE SUCCESS
I went from being gutted that I’d been let down by a mate to meeting someone to travel with and booking a flight!
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Careergap travel companions Name: Chris Akines Age: 25 Occupation: Mechanical Engineer Why did you decide to look for a travel mate on gapyear.com? Initially I came to gapyear.com looking for inspiration. At this point I just had a vague idea that I wanted to travel. I read through the posts on the messageboards and was surprised to see how many people were having similar ideas. I was willing to travel alone, but seeing the number of people searching for travel buddies changed my mind. Do you think it’s particularly difficult for older gappers to find people to travel with? Not at all. There are plenty of people wanting to do careergaps. In fact the sheer number of careergappers surprised me. Click here >> for more about careergaps What criteria were you looking for in a travel mate? Mainly destination: I really wanted to go to Australia, though I was fairly easy-going about what we’d do when we got there. Click here >> for Australia info So how did you and your new travel mate find each other? I browsed through the messageboards and replied to a message from someone looking for a travel mate. That got the ball rolling. We started sending private messages to each other and hey presto, a plan started to emerge. It was a rough plan that needed smoothing but it was a start. What was it about the other person that made you think you’d get on well together? Well, we could both talk for hours about absolutely nothing! Fresh ears, if you know what I mean! And we share the same sense of humour. Have you met in person yet? If so, how did it go? Were you nervous? What did you do together? We thought it would be best to meet in a public place first, so we arranged to hook up in KFC (you gotta eat, right?). I wasn’t nervous because we had already spoken on the phone, so I knew what to expect. Do you have any worries about travelling together? No worries mate! We’ve agreed that we’ll go in separate directions if we find we want to do different things... or if we start to get on each other’s nerves! Consider the worst-case scenario for a moment...what trait would most annoy you in a travel mate? (for example snoring, whining, making schedules, not making schedules...!) It would be that they didn’t do any planning and left it all down to me. Snoring won’t be a problem, I’m using earplugs! Not compromising can be a pain too. What are your travel plans? We land in Sydney so we are there for a short spell. Then we go on to Canberra, Melbourne and Ayres Rock. Brisbane and Newcastle are also on our itinerary. After that, who knows? My travel buddy is actually only going for three months of my year-long trip. What are you most looking forward to? Everything! In particular, seeing the Great Barrier Reef and Ayres Rock. Would you recommend others use the gapyear.com ‘find a travel mate’ service? Definitely! It worked for me... Thanks Chris, enjoy your travels!  Click here >> for gapyear.com advice on finding a travel mate Click here >> to search for travel mates now Click here >> for around the world travel info |
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