Setting the pace of your vacation

Ten years ago, while visiting China, I met a young couple from Eastern Europe. As traveller's often do, we started talking about the different places we visited in this fascinating country.

After five long weeks in China, I could count the number of destinations I visited with two hands. I was left absolutely speechless, not to mention a bit envious, by the endless list of destinations they visited. They practically criss-crossed the whole of China. From Urumqi in the North-West to Shanghai in the East coast, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Sichuan, Guilin, Macau.... you name it, they were there.

After I recovered from their account, I asked them how long have they been travelling in China. I estimated that they would need at the very least a year to cover this little pond called China. You can understand then how amazed I was when they told me that they have only been travelling for six weeks.

My first reaction after they told me the duration of their trip was that this was a joke, and not a very good one, if I might add. But then they started explaining how they managed to do it.

• As a rule, they only travelled by night. This allowed them to visit during the daytime, and use the night to jump to their next destination.
• During the last six weeks, they stayed in a hotel only one night. The rest of their nights were spent in buses, trains and planes. They even showed me their collection of travel tickets they had.

You don't have to be a mathematician to figure out that if they only stayed in a hotel for a single night over a period of six weeks, then except for one place, they didn't spend more than a single day in any one of their destinations. This must have been some place!

The only explanations I could think of their trip were:

1. They were running away from someone
   
2. They were trying to set some kind of new world record
   
3. I was dreaming
   

Otherwise I had no explanation why people would spend six weeks torturing themselves in this manner. I LOVE travelling, but I would personally prefer reading a guidebook on China, upon this experience. I would also probably learn much more about China in this way.

So why am I telling you all this? I am not so sure, but probably to say that this is not the way I would travel . If there is something I have learned from my travels, especially in the Far East, is that you should adjust your pace to the place you are going. From my own experience in the Far East, there is no need to run around. Just sit down and the world will start evolving around you, whether you want it or not.

Of course it is very easy to take things calmly when you have all the time in the world. Years ago, as a bachelor, I used to travel for several months at a time to a different corner of the world. If I found myself at a charming location, I just stayed there for as long as I wished. Today I am married and have a beautiful baby boy, and I don't have that luxury anymore. Our trips are much shorter and must be suitable for little children. We try to keep a relatively slow pace and enjoy our vacations, even if this means that we will be unable to see everything we had planned to.