Feb 2012

In this month's Talking Travel series we chat to Matt Watson of the adventurous Watson5. Over 86 days, 4100km, 8 towns, 15 "homes", and 500L of bottled water, Matt toured Turkey's ruins (and ice cream parlours) with his wife and young children - aged 5, 3, and 18 months! The family's blog of the three month journey continues to attract visitors interested in their balance of cultural travel and child-friendly holiday.

The Watson family waiting for a dolmus in Cesme

Tell us about your trip and what led to the decision to take your family to Turkey.

The opportunity to travel occurred after I sold my business. My wife and I decided it would be great to make the most of the time off work and take the kids away to show them what a wonderful and diverse world we live in. The destination we picked was Turkey as it had everything we were looking for: magnificent landscape, incredible history, and a culture which is very family orientated and child friendly.

Initially some friends doubted that the trip was a good idea. Looking back, is there anything you would change? What do you think your family gained from the experience?

We had a mixed response from family and friends when we told them of our plans, it was either one of great excitement or utter horror - no in-between.
The trip was quite well planned 'though we didn't book anything outside of the first few weeks. We wanted freedom to travel about without having a fixed itinerary and this worked well. There's not much I would change, some things got the better of us but that's life when you're travelling whether you have kids or not. I wouldn't take a car seat for Bella if we did it again, as it proved cumbersome to carry around along with luggage and 3 children.
As far as what the kids got from the trip, they amazed me with their resilience to long haul flights and lengthy bus trips. The opportunity to try new foods, culture, religion, and language they all adapted to and accepted. Their interest in the mosques and ruins surprised me. A year later they still count to 10 in Turkish, recreate cave houses of Urgup at home playing, talk often about camel rides, hot air ballooning, scorpions, and the friends they made.

Making new friends in Istanbul

You left well prepared yet travelled lightly - what are your tips for travelling with kids?

My tip for travelling with small children is "keep it simple". We had to mix sightseeing and day trips with down time. At their age they can't go on day after day so with being away for 3 months we spent longer periods in towns taking our time. We also made things fun. Visits to mosques and ruins were balanced out with ice creams in the parks or a swim in a pool. Where possible we stuck to their usual routines in terms of the times we ate and bedtime. As long as kids feel safe and loved they will be fine.

The kids enjoy a Roman bath in Selcuk

You documented the whole trip with a popular and entertaining blog. What advice do you have for other travel bloggers wanting to share their experiences?

The blog through Travellerspoint was fantastic. We were able to connect with all our family and friends at once. It was great for posting our photos and sharing our stories with everyone back home. We ended up having over 12,000 views so we had a few others checking out our trip also.

Where's next for the Watson five?

As for what's next, I recently published my book on our trip. It's called "Hot Sun and Scorpions" and is available on Amazon Kindle or through [self-publishing company] The Copy Press. It's a humorous take on what life is like on the road with a 5, 3 and 18 month old!
As for the next trip, well that's booked. We head off on the 7th May for Vietnam and Cambodia. This time for 2 months. I'm really looking forward to taking the family away again, especially with the kids being a bit older - Holly is 7, Toby 5, and Bella 3. It will be a bit easier not having to worry about nappies, baby formula, and finding cots for Bella.
We will be using Travellerspoint to start another blog to document our travels again - so stay tuned!

***

Check out these recent interviews in the Talking Travel series:

• Talking Travel with Glynn Hammond (nzhamsta)
• Talking Travel with Rebecca Barnshaw (bex76)
• Talking Travel with Mike Riley (vegasmike6)
• Talking Travel with Margaret Metcalfe (margaretm)
• Talking Travel with Tammi Jonas (tammois)

In this month's Industry Interview we chat to Mark Hodson, co-founder of 101 Holidays. A travel writer by profession, Mark spent 12 years working as a full-time freelance travel journalist at The Sunday Times in London before launching the popular travel experiences site. He co-founded the successful sister site 101 Honeymoons a year later. Mark also shares his travel recommendations on Google+.

Mark in Chile's Atacama Desert

You worked in journalism straight out of university; how did you break in to travel writing?

I’d like to say it was all part of a well thought-out masterplan but like most things in life it just happened. I had a well-paid job as a sub-editor on a national newspaper at 23 and - faced with the bleak prospect of a long career in an office gazing at a flickering screen - I quit to go travelling. I managed to spend three consecutive winters in Asia and Latin America, returning to my former employers in the summers to top up my bank balance.

It was a great life but not one that appealed to me long term. I wanted to return to London but realised I no longer had a taste for office life. So I started writing articles about some of the places I’d visited and posted them to various travel editors (this was in the early 90s, before email).

Even though I was a trained journalist and a decent writer, I got nowhere. A particularly unpleasant editor at the Mail asked me in for a chat, pulled out the article I’d sent her and (metaphorically) tore it to pieces. It wasn’t meant to be helpful, just bullying.

Then one editor at the Financial Times published a few of my pieces which gave me a cuttings file. I could then send articles to editors with these photocopies attached and suddenly I was taken seriously. Shortly afterwards, I landed a regular gig at The Sunday Times, doing two shifts a week on the desk and filing freelance articles.

Ramen Bar, Tokyo

What was the hardest lesson you had to learn as a travel writer?

The hardest was that editors don’t give a monkeys about you. If they need you, they will be nice. If they don’t, you’re out. It’s not personal, it’s just the way it works.

However, the most useful lesson I learned was that the reader doesn’t care either. Unless you are Bill Bryson or Paul Theroux, nobody wants to know about what you did on your holiday. The skill with travel writing is to know when to put yourself in the story and when to gently step aside to let the real action unfold.

What's your most memorable travel story?

After the Asian tsunami in 2004, I persuaded my editor to let me travel to the Maldives, then to Sri Lanka and Thailand to write about the devastation caused to the local tourism industry in each country, and how travellers could best help the people affected by booking holidays (which many people regarded at the time as being in poor taste).

It meant that The Sunday Times was able to lead the way in helping to rebuild confidence in tourism to those destinations worst affected by the tsunami and - I like to think - helped a few local people to rebuild their lives.

Local children, Maldives

Where's your most recommended destination?

I think if you want to experience the world, rather than skim the surface as a casual observer, you can’t beat India. It’s the most astonishing, fascinating, colourful, complex and emotional country. I also have a very soft spot for Burma.

How would you like travel writing to develop in the future?

Travel writing and travel journalism are going through difficult times. There is a surfeit of supply and a steady fall in quality, even in the so-called serious publications. I would like to see travel bloggers spend less time Tweeting each other and selling links, and more time trying to create high-quality writing. The best way to do that is often to step outside the cultural bubble created by permanent connectedness and spend time alone in a truly foreign place.

What are your top three travel tips?

Go slowly. Put down the camera and talk to people. Try to leave your ego at home.

***

Check out our other posts in the Industry Interview series:

• Industry Interview with Alexis Grant of The Traveling Writer
• Industry Interview with Colin Wright of Exile Lifestyle
• Industry Interview with Stuart McDonald of Travelfish
• Industry Interview with Steph of Twenty-Something Travel
• Industry Interview with Igor Bratnikov from GreenXC