It’s been a massive year for us – primarily because it lead us to where we are now – in Malaysia ready to start a new life. However, lots of other things happened.
Travel wise, we started the year in the Dominican Republic and have finished it here, in Kuala Lumpur. We visited the USA, Tasmania, country Victoria and spent time in our home city of Melbourne. I visited Brunei and took S along with me on a trip to Singapore.
I started and finished a career in teaching. The most stressful 4 months of my life! I became a full time blogger and entrepreneur. I welcomed a new nephew and I lost my grandfather. We decided to change our lives and take a one way ticket to Asia to try to grow our online income and become self supporting.
The kids grew another year older, turning 2 and 4. Z now participates in our travel planning, gets excited and has a fantastic vocabulary meaning he can now openly share what he is feeling about travel. It’s making it even more fun and rewarding. They are both great travellers and flew overnight to KL without a problem. I find it hard to believe I ever worried about flying long haul with them now.
My motivation when I relaunched this blog to be about family travel just over a year ago was to show how possible it is to travel with little ones and to inspire others. I love it when people comment or I receive an email from someone who tells me I have done exactly that! I achieved this goal and I look forward to continuing to do so. The continual growth of this site has been amazing and I thank you. Perhaps in the next year I will even motivate some people to do something even crazier than travelling with young kids – getting up and leaving home semi permanently.
Anyway, enough of this reflection! My top ten blog posts for 2014 according to Google Analytics were…
Contents
1. Things to do in New Orleans in a few days
This post is crazy popular with over 25,000 page views! And why not. New Orleans is an awesome city. We loved exploring it and I can not wait to go back some day. From exploring the French Quarter, Jazz at Preservation Hall to the Treme and the Children’s Museum, it was fabulous.
2. Family travel in Taiwan
All my Taiwan articles are very popular – it seems a lot of people are wondering about whether they should take their kids to Taiwan and what they could do when they get there. We loved visiting Taipei, especially eating our way around this great city. Another place we want to return.
3. Things to do in Kuala Lumpur
It is great to see this post make the list since it is where I am right now! By next week, there will be a new version of this post, even bigger and better than before and all updated. We think this is a fabulous city to visit with kids so I am happy that lots of other people are investigating doing the same.
4. Caribbean cruise: Exploring the cruise port of Nassau, Bahamas
Our Caribbean cruise was such a fabulous experience. I particularly liked our stop in Nassau – mainly because we left the kids in kids club on the ship! It was a nice break in a very pleasant city.
5. Why I hated my visit to the Egyptian Pyramids
This article continues to be popular. I think because most people want to visit the Egyptian Pyramids and because those that have generally empathise with what I had to say. I wrote this post hoping others would tell me that I was wrong – that they had fabulous experiences. Unfortunately, the vast majority of comments that i have received about this post were from people who had a similar experience to me. Such a shame.
6. 10 ways that I increased my website traffic from 0 to 12,000 in 3 months!
This post continues to interest beginner bloggers who want to know how I did the seemingly impossible – went from 0 page views to 12,000. Basically, it was a lot of hard work! It is probably time for a sequel as I am far above 12,000 page views now, although things have not really changed much since I wrote this. Work hard, be strategic and persist. I would also add that it’s important to be very sure of your sources. Researching how others succeed is very important, but many people like to present themselves as an authority when they are not. Be sure you are applying advice from people who have the success that you want, don’t just pretend they do.
7. Our experiences driving from Miami to New Orleans
Our three road trip route posts – Miami to New Orleans, New Orleans to Atlanta and Atlanta to Miami – are all popular probably because US road trips are popular. We just LOVED our US road trip and can not wait to repeat it again one day. It was a fabulous experience exploring the Deep South.
8. Road Trip USA
Our section dedicated to our Deep South road trip is also well read. This is a great place to visit if you are considering your own USA road trip whether to the Deep South or elsewhere.
9. 5 great things to do in downtown Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei
The little visited country of Brunei was on my hit list in 2014. I had a fantastic three days here meeting up with English friends. Although the capital is quite underwhelming, it is a nice place to spend a day or two and here I highlight my favourite attractions.
10. A review of the amazing Universal Studios Singapore
S and I had an absolutely fabulous day visiting the new Universal Studios in Singapore back in August. I highly recommend this if you are in Singapore.
Well that’s it! My top ten posts for 2014. I wonder what will make the list in 2015? We have some amazing destinations already booked – Bali, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand. That’s just for the first few months of 2015. Then there will be all of our adventure living in Malaysia. It’s going to be a great year!
What was your favourite travel destination in 2015?
