Thursday, 26 March 2009

On Holiday, or Travelling?

Travelling around New Zealand and Australia has definitely been an enlightening experience.  Most of my Canadian friends (including myself up until this point) hadn't done much 'travelling' in the truest sense... the ones who did do some 'travelling' usually did it as side trips from their teaching English somewhere in Asia -- I'm not sure if I can think of anyone who up and took a year off to travel around the world.

One interesting thing that I came to realize on the Whitsunday being people use the terms 'on holiday' and 'travelling' differently.  I was chatting with a British bloke named Danny when he said 'Oh, I'm not travelling, I'm just here on holiday...'.  That got me thinking -- what is the difference between being on holiday and travelling?  Aren't they the same thing?

So this got me thinking -- how does one differentiate between being 'on holiday' and 'travelling'?  And which camp would Astrid & I be considered in?  Lets look at some criteria:

Duration:

I'm going to say that a 'holiday' would max out at 4 weeks (Brits are known to take 4 weeks off concurrently and refer to it as 'annual leave')... of course no one in Canada could do this since hardly anyone gets 4 weeks (except my friends mom, who apparently gets 6 or 7 weeks holiday working for the Canada Post, but I'm sure that took a few decades to earn).  Travelling typically denotes a longer period of time.  Travelling is often for a year, but I reckon anything over 6 weeks would firmly put you in the travelling camp.

Destination:

Holidays are typically a single-destination event, whereas travelling often means seeing multiple countries... or in the case of big countries like Canada, US, or Australia, seeing many different cities in those areas.  Holidays are often a single flight out, single flight back affair, whereas travelling often involves multiple legs -- culminating with the 'Round the World' (RTW) ticket many airlines offer and the preferred choice of proper travellers on a gap year.

Laundry:

To me, being on holiday is meant to be relaxing and a bit more luxurious.  This also means a lack of chores (cooking, cleaning, and laundry).  Travellers pack light and doing laundry in hostels or campgrounds becomes pretty normal.

Financial Situation:

People on holiday plan, save, and really enjoy themselves while away -- staying in proper hotels and having some excellent meals.  People travelling, due to duration (see above) are much more financially constrained.  This means staying in Hostels instead of hotels, cooking your own meals somewhat regularly, and eating out on the cheap when not cooking.  It seems almost everyone travelling is perpetually broke (yet they still seem to fork out for cool excursions such as sky diving).  To this end, many travellers end up working as part of their tour.

Job:

Being on holiday typically means on holiday from your job.  When you are on holiday, you are still getting paid.  When you return, you go back to your job full of excitement and tell everyone about your trip and show off the photos.  Travelling on the other hand often means no job existed (just graduated) or quitting your job (see financial situation above) and having to find a new one whenever you return home.  Since there is no job waiting, this also aids in extending the duration of one's travels.

So, before analyzing any of the above, I would have said that Astrid and I were 'travelling'.  But we're definitely more 'soft core' compared to most of our fellow travellers we have met on our journey.  Analyzing the above criteria renders the following for us:

Duration -- 74 days -- travelling

Destination -- 2 countries and multiple destinations  -- travelling (scraping by)

Laundry -- yes, many times -- travelling

Financial Situation -- no, we're just 'borrowing' from our house down payment :)  -- holiday

Job -- we've got ones to go back to -- holiday

So there we have it folks... it looks like we squeak by with a narrow margin of 3-2 in favour of 'travelling'!

But it'll be good to be home nonetheless :)

Syd.

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