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Meg and Tom of Food, Fun, Travel met while working on a cruise ship after graduating from university. After Tom moved to Australia to be with Meg and the two tried the traditional 9 to 5 career path, they both decided it wasn’t for them and that they wanted to travel full time and support themselves with an online travel business. Taking off for Asia with savings to carry them through for eighteen months and after the early success of an ebook, Meg and Tom poured themselves into building and evolving their travel blog, shifting its initial focus as a budget travel blog to a travel food blog as they both realized it was something they were passionate about. They are currently launching their new podcast “The Dish,” where they hope to challenge and surprise their listeners pre-existing food conceptions by integrating some interesting food history and stories behind some worldwide favourite dishes and ingredients. Their first episode covers the history of tacos, and you can catch it here!

On this episode of the podcast we talk to Meg and Tom about their days working on a cruise ship and transitioning over to the decision to travel full time and start a travel blog. We discuss some of the steps they took to start building their business, how they found their niche with food blogging and maintain quality, what they did to bring income in to their business, and some of their tips and lessons learned looking back. They also give us recommendations for some of their favourite travel destinations and weirdest things they’ve eaten. We had a great conversation with them on such a wide variety of topics, this is definitely an episode you don’t want to miss!

Enjoy!

What we talk about in this episode:

• How Meg and Tom caught the travel bug, starting with family vacations and taking trips after graduating from university
• Tom’s memory of learning to ski in Italy at the age of 3, in a town where the mayor was also the ski instructor
• How they met while working on a Princess Cruise as an entertainment coordinator and musician, and how they each got started working on cruises
• The pros and cons of working on cruise ship, with the plus side being that you’re able to travel and have accommodation and food paid for, with the downside being that you’re limited to living on a ship for a while, and that your coworkers know all your business!
• How having quick stops in places while working on the cruise served as a taste test to help them choose places they wanted to go back to
• How they feel about how working on a cruise ship affected the way they generally treat relationships with people
• Their move to Australia after deciding to stop working on cruises and moving in together
• Realizing that they didn’t like the 9 to 5 lifestyle after trying to follow traditional career paths, and deciding to take the money they had initially saved up for a mortgage and put it towards a long-term trip and starting their business
• The reaction of their family and friends thinking that traveling would be something Meg and Tom would just get out of their system, then come back to Australia and settle down, but how they have now come to terms with the fact they might not move back after five years on the road
• How social media has helped them to keep in close contact with family and friends so they don’t feel the distance as much since they’ve decided to travel on a more permanent basis
• How in certain bigger countries (like Canada and Australia), even living in a different city or province from family members can mean you see them as rarely as you would living a nomadic lifestyle
• The steps Meg and Tom took to build their blog, including reading online material on how to run a blog
• Their recommendation to check out Songkran in Thailand
• Their experience traveling through Myanmar during their water festival Thingyan, realizing how inaccurate and out of date the Lonely Planet information was at the time, and their early success publishing a Myanmar travel ebook
• How travel planning is transitioning to online from books as it’s easier to keep the material current, and their experience with some of the Lonely Planet recommended places getting lazy after receiving the seal of approval
• The benefits of using a tool that allows ratings and reviews, so you can get the most current information before making a decision to go/eat there
• When Tom and Meg decided they wanted to extend their trip past temporary travel and make their blog and lifestyle a full-time thing
• How one of the side goals of their first trip was to find potential places they may want to settle down in long term, and some current contenders like Georgia, Romania, Portugal and Merida!
• Realizing that they could extend their long-term trip and turn their lifestyle into a full time career based on the success of their ebook, and some of the measures they went to in order to grow their business and stay on the road full time
• How they were forced to buckle down and put most of their energy towards making the business work as they started to run low on money, compared to their more easygoing attitude towards building the business towards the start of their trip when they were living off savings (but now they work fewer hours as well!)
• Some of the passive income tools they’ve used that allows them to work fewer hours now, like affiliate marketing and sponsored content
• Some of the other channels they explored to bring in income to their business, like freelance virtual assistant and travel writing work
• Some of the new ideas they are playing with to grow their business like creating audio tours for destinations they’ve been to
• How they brought food as a focus to their travel blogging, including how they evolved from an original focus on budget traveling to settling on a topic they were really passionate about
• Their opinions on what it takes to be a good food blogger, including making sure photo quality is a priority and going the extra mile to find the best local eats
• The importance of slow travel to really allowing them to do their research well and be selective about the places they say are the best spots
• Some of their rules they use to avoid getting sick from food, like eating where the locals eat, using hand sanitizer, and avoiding salads
• Some of the stranger things they’ve eaten, like eating a pig’s uterus taco in Merida, deep fried tarantula in Cambodia, and sex organ soup in Hong Kong
• The idea, format and future plans behind Meg and Tom’s new podcast “The Dish,” the challenge of trying to describe a visual thing like food over an auditory medium, and that leading them to incorporate an element of the stories behind the food they discuss to the episodes for depth
• How they hope to challenge some of their listeners’ existing ideas about food and food history on the podcast by revealing some interesting food origins and how certain ingredients have reached places they are traditionally associated with!

This episode of The World Wanderers is sponsored by AutoSlash. AutoSlash is the #1 site for getting a great deal on a car rental. They figure out the best coupons and discount codes to get you the lowest rate possible, and then track prices on your rental right until the day you pick up the car. If they find a lower rate, they email you so you can lock in the savings. It’s like price protection on your rental. They can even track the price of rentals made on other websites. AutoSlash has saved customers millions of dollars on car rentals. It’s completely free – give it a try on your next booking!

You can also check out our new travel community on Facebook where you can ask questions, get travel recommendations, and find community members in your area!

If you would like to support the continued growth of the show and receive cool kickbacks like postcards from around the world and one on one calls with Ryan and Amanda, head on over to Patreon. Thank you so much for your continued support!

Music Credits:

www.bensound.com

You can connect with Meg and Tom of Food, Fun, Travel on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter!