Our Nomination Acceptance Of The Liebster Award

It’s always a rewarding feeling to be recognized for your work by other people. It’s even more heartwarming when it’s your peers that reward you.

We feel super honored that our blog was nominated, not once, but twice for the Liebster Award. 

We’ve put a lot of work and dedication into our website in hopes to provide great content for travelers and those looking to live abroad and experience the expat lifestyle.

As we continue to work on bringing great content, we hope more and more people around the world are inspired through us to travel and try living in other parts of the world that they may not be familiar with.

The Liebster Award

So, what is the Liebster Award? To understand it, you will first have to know that it only exists on the internet and has been around since 2011.

It’s an award given out by bloggers to other bloggers.

The award is a way to get to know blogs that are new and young and for the community of bloggers to help each other grow and succeed.

It helps us spread the word about each other.

Liebster is a German word by origin meaning “beloved” or “dear.” In a way when bloggers give this award, it’s a way to say “hey, I like you!”

It gives us that warm and fuzzy feeling of being thought about and recognized. So, we got this feeling, times two!

Thanks To…

We greatly appreciate and want to thank the guys over at I Do What I Want To for nominating our blog. Sara and Nacho have been traveling for 13 years and been together this long as well.

They have lived as expats in several places around the world.

They are originally from Spain and blog about their travels in both Spanish and English. I highly recommend checking them out!

Another blog we would like to give our sincerest thanks to is These Traveling Feet. We are humbled Hanie’s nomination of our blog for the Liebster Award.

She is currently living in South Korea and originally from Malaysia. She is a lover of photography.

She has great reviews on food and hotels and an amazing Instagram account you should definitely follow!

Questions To Us

We took 11 questions from our two nominees and here are our answers for them.

1. What Does Travel Mean To You?

To put it in a nutshell, to us, travel mean experiencing the world to enrich one’s soul. The value that any type of travel brings is beyond any that can be assigned to any tangible thing.

We wouldn’t trade any of our experiences while traveling with any material item available in this world.

Travel is the ultimate source of happiness for us. It’s what motivates us to work hard and succeed so that we can experience the next place.

Travel is what makes us open our eyes every morning and be thankful for being alive and given the opportunity to make another day count.

How do we make the days count?

We strive to get to the next destination on this Earth and see the wonders of nature, feel the warmth of the people, smell the air, and taste the variety of foods offered.

So, in a way, travel is just LIFE!

2. How Would You Define A Perfect Vacation?

It always seems like there is so much to do and so little time whenever and wherever we travel.

The perfect vacation, to us, would be one where we get to do everything that we plan on doing and be able to have plenty of time to rest and relax in between.

It would be just heavenly if there was no rush and we never felt tired during a vacation. Of course, it would also include us not getting any type of sickness.

One of us always ends up getting either air, car, or seasick. And if it’s not one of those, something might upset our stomachs.

3. Which Three Countries Are You Willing To Go Next?

We have both been talking about visiting Prague for the past couple of years, so this is a country that we would really try to get to in the next year or two.

The second country that we yearn to visit, and maybe even live in for a while would be Colombia.

Being an Expat Lifestyle and Travel blog, we strive to find places to live around the world and share those experience with our viewers.

Living in Medellin or Bogota, Colombia would be on our list for sure.

4. Is There A Place You Wouldn’t Go Back? If So, Why?

We’re juts that much into big cities, so it’s no surprise that Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City are two places we would probably never go back to.

The big city hustle and bustle doesn’t have any appeal to us. In both of the cities mentioned, we have experienced locals scamming us, so that has left a “bad taste” in our mouth.

The fact that there’s so much traffic in big cities makes it harder to get to the places you want to see. It adds unnecessary stress and is such a waste of time.

We try to avoid places with these characteristics unless they offer something spectacular to see or experience.

5. What Is Your Favorite Travel Essential?

Having a nice backpack when traveling is essential to us. Our Zuca backpack goes pretty much everywhere we go.

It fits everything you would need on a weekend getaway and is designed to fit perfectly in an overhead compartment of a plane.

Furthermore, we love how comfortable it is to put on our back. It makes carrying a lot of things really easy and painless.

It even helps us stay organized with the different compartments and pockets that it has!

6. What Is The Best Accommodation You’ve Ever Stayed In? And The Worst?

I’ll start with the worst. Our AirBnB accommodations for the first month in Bali were not so great. The studio itself was spacious and had a full kitchen so that was nice.

What made it absolutely terrible was the location. It is located in one of the nicest areas of Bali, Seminyak. However, the actual place where the apartment was made it awful to stay there.

You had to walk down a dirt alley that was VERY dark at night. With tons of stray dogs everywhere, it was scary walking home after a day out.

On top of that there was a stench of burnt onions every night from the back of the place.

There were cockroaches to deal with and we also had shoes stolen from the front porch. Not good.

Having said that, our favorite accommodations, so far, has to be the Panviman Resort in Chiang Mai.

We absolutely LOVED the gorgeous views from all around the property.

We had a private pool villa which was huge and gave us our very own pool with views of the surrounding, lush hillside. Need I say more?

7. What Is Your Least Favorite Thing About Traveling?

Leaving. It’s kind of a necessary thing when you love traveling. You need to leave one destination to get to the next.

You always want to go, but it’s hard to leave. It may sound contradictory, but it’s the truth for us.

Could it ever be possible to not have to experience the feeling of having to say goodbye to a place? Probably not. So, that’s why sometimes we just stay put.

We try to find an excuse so that we can stay as long as possible and really be able to take it all in.

It’s hard to truly experience everything a place has to offer in just a week or two, so, if at all possible, we try to make our stay months or years.

8. What Amazing Food Or Dish Have You Encountered In Your Travels?

I know that in one of the previous questions I mentioned that we would probably never go back to Ho Chi Minh City, but this was the place we taste the best Pho that we’ve ever had.

Furthermore, the Vietnamese iced coffee here was absolutely divine.

It’s too bad we didn’t enjoy the city much, but the memories of these two things we consumed will be with us forever.

9. What Was The Best Experience You’ve Had And Where Was It?

Walking the glass pathways of Tianmen Mountain in China has go to be the best experience of our travels so far.

It wasn’t just the “death defying” factor of looking down thousands of feet through the walkway beneath you, but the sheer amazement that a place this magnificent exists in our world.

It’s a truly humbling feeling experiencing this amazing nature.

Tianmen Mountain has been made super accessible for humans to experience, considering how high and torturous it actually is in reality.

Being able to look at the mountain and “climb” it from the comfortable seat of the longest cable car ride in the world is nothing to snicker at.

Once up there, there are paves sidewalks and pathways that make it easy to trek. You just have to get to this little town of Zhangjiajieh in China!

10. What Or Who Inspires You To Travel The World?

The Adrenalin and rush that we get when we start talking about visiting a place is the current inspiration for our travels. You might say that we are addicted at this point!

In my younger days, though, my inspiration came from watching music videos that were shot on locations around the world along with reading National Geographic magazine.

Nowadays, inspiration also come from other big bloggers that we follow like The Planet D and Nomadasaurus who continue to always amaze us with their adventures.

I should add that our parents showed as how wonderful and exciting travel can be at a very young age and this was probably key in planting the seed in us.

11. Did Blogging Change Your Way Of Traveling? If So, How?

I would be lying if I told you that blogging hasn’t changed how we travel. I think it mostly has made us a bit more aware.

What I mean is that by having to stop and take multiple photos, or read information on a place, or even go back and try to remember how something made us feel and think at the time we were experiencing it, all contribute to a deeper connection and understand or our travels.

This is in contrast to visiting on vacation and then going back to the day-to-day “reality” and barely thinking about your experience.

11 Random Facts About Us

1. Rob loves to play golf and has gotten a “hole in one” before.
2. Taiss lived in Paraguay for two months as a teenager on a volunteer program.
3. We are both the eldest children in our families.
4. Rob used to hate cats but has grown to love Milton who traveled to Thailand with us.
5. Taiss was born in Iran and Rob in Canada.
6. Rob and Taiss are both studying to learn the Thai language.
7. Rob is left-handed and very proud of it.
8. Rob went on a 56-day European backpacking trip with his roommate from College.
9. We both have a huge thing for onions and garlic.
10. Taiss has skydived before.
11. Our favorite food is Mexican.

Our Favorite Blogs For The Liebster Award Nomination

1. Robyn Around the World “Starting March 19th, 2015 I will fly to Southeast Asia to begin my adventure and will be working my way west. I plan to document every bit of the trip along the way. I will be traveling to different countries staying 1-3 months in each one, learning all about the country, local culture, and meeting the locals and other travelers.”…
2. Rooting Robert “I have left my community in Germany to explore the world outside of my pinkish one, but crazy people never seem to leave me, they just keep turning up. Lucky me! My intentional plan was to travel through Southeast-Asia, spending just one month in Thailand, but after just one week of exploring the beauty and diarrhea of Thailand, I got stuck in Chiang Rai where I am now working with an NGO called OCN Thailand to improve child right and health development in Northern Thailand up to this day.”…
3. Fair Dinkum Traveller “Your Aussie-Asian Adventure”
4. Rambling Wayfarer “I’m Nirakar — A teacher, writer, photographer, and traveller who’s goal is Inspiring people to step outside their norm and experience this wonderful world we all call home. Want to know more? Check it out!”
5. Miles and Views “I’m Kurt, a freelance photographer and video producer from Belgium. I bought my first camera in 2008 and became a full-time photographer in 2012 shooting mainly fashion, interior and corporate jobs. Some people around me already knew about my travel plans in advance, but now I’d like to tell everyone and start this new life project!”…
6. Life Explorateurs “We make interactive vlogs about our hectic lives as creative nomads, seeking the unexpected and the awesome. Our videos are filled with extra features : 360° videos, interactive maps, sounds, etc. ; so you can investigate and go deeper and deeper in the most amazing landmarks on the planet…”
7. Rucksack Ramblings “We’re Mariana and Liam and we travel off the beaten path as cheaply as we can. Wanna join?”
8. Thrifty Family Travels “I know how to find great deals and make sure you get value for money when you travel. Now travelling with a small child I have learned tricks on travelling with kids and how to be even more thrifty!”…

Our Questions For The Above Nominees

1. What is the most extreme thing you have ever done?
2. What is one place you always recommend to others to visit?
3. What’s your favorite mode of transportation when travelling?
4. If you could go back to when you first started out and give yourself one tip about traveling, what would it be?
5. What is the first place on your “bucket list” now and why do you want to go there?
6. Have you ever been scammed when traveling? If not, how do you avoid it?
7. What/who inspired you to travel?
8. Do you prefer beaches or mountains? Big cities or countryside?
9. What is your favorite travel essential?
10. What is your travel style?
11. What activity do you try to do when you travel?

Rules For The Liebster Award

If you have been nominated for The Liebster Award AND YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT, write a blog post about the Liebster award in which you:

• Thank the person who nominated you, and post a link to their blog on your blog.
• Try to include a little promotion for the person who nominated you. They will thank you for it and those who you nominate will also help you out as well.
• Display the award on your blog — by including it in your post and/or displaying it using a “widget” or a “gadget”. (Note that the best way to do this is to save the image to your own computer and then upload it to your blog post.)
• Answer the 11 questions assigned by the blogger who nominated you.
• Provide 11 random facts about yourself.
• Nominate 5 – 11 blogs that you feel deserve the award, who have a less than 200 followers. (Note that you can always ask the blog owner this since not all blogs display a widget that lets the readers know this information!)
• List these rules in your post (You can copy and paste from here.)
• Once you have written and published it, you then have to: Inform the people/blogs that you nominated that they have been nominated for the Liebster award and provide a link for them to your post.