About us

We are the Smart Travel Family, currently on a work and ‘slow travel’ year in Tenerife in the Canary Islands of Spain to escape the winter cold of European mainland.

Past living and travelling experiences cover Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia (Bali), Cambodia, Australia, Poland, Lithuania. We are from Latvia, a European Union country.

What is ‘Smart Travel’?

When travelling, we follow a number of principles that characterize the ‘smart travel’ philosophy.

We are cost-conscious travellers, but it’s not spending as little as possible when travelling. When given the choice, we will always choose experiences over a fancier hotel room. At the same time, sometimes staying in a particular accommodation can be an experience in itself.

We prefer slow travel over other kinds of voyages. From our experience, it’s so much more rewarding to stay for longer in one place and truly experience what it and its people have to offer. On a number of occasions, we have taken slow travel to extremes by finding work in other countries, like now when we are in Tenerife, Canary Islands, for a year.

We like to be clever travellers and do a bit of travel hacking. Most people immediately think about credit card and airline loyalty points, but there is so much more to making your dollars or euros go further. Or – not spending any money on key expense positions at all. For example, we managed to spend 1600 euros per month in Australia by doing ‘Workaway‘ instead of at least 6000 euros if we would travel regularly.

‘Travel’ rather ‘tourism’. This is a distinction our son came up with while observing the behaviour of an organized bus-tour in Thailand and comparing it to the way our family travelled. We do not look down at ‘tourists’. Instead, we try to encourage people we cross paths with to choose self-led exploring over an organized tours and see if they like it. Choose a homestead instead of a global hotel chain to truly experience Nyepi in Thailand. Go to places recommended by locals instead of the airline journal. Be curious and don’t be afraid to stray of your itinerary. Rather than being a tourist, be a traveller and see how much more you’ll discover!

If you have a message for us, it’s best to leave a comment under a relevant article. You can, of course, also get in touch with is directly.