Looking at our future travel plans

We love to travel and immerse ourselves in local cultures. Due to the global pandemic, we stayed mostly local for a few years. In 2024, we have been very fortunate to visit Denmark and Iceland, spending over seven weeks in these wonderful countries. 

I travel a fair bit for work too. Thanks to my work travel, I visited Hong Kong, Taipei, Shenzhen, San Jose, San Diego, Minneapolis, New York, Atlanta, Paris, Valence, Macon, Malmo, and Lund so far in 2024 and have managed to tour around some of these cities during my “off” times. 

Needless to say, I spent a lot of time on airplanes. Unfortunately, that also means a lot of CO2 was produced. Being environmentally conscious, ideally, Mrs. T and I would like to limit overseas travel and spend more time exploring closer to home and limit our carbon footprints. 

With that in mind, here are some potential travel plans for 2025.

Camping locally 

As a family, we enjoy camping and being in the great outdoors. Being carbon footprint conscious, camping is a great way to travel and explore locally. 

Over the years we have camped at various provincial and national parks – Alice Lake, Golden Ears, Silver Lake, Sasquatch Park, Banff, Jesper, and Gold Stream. Each park is unique and offers different things to do and explore. 

It’d be neat to check out Chilliwack Lake and Cultus Lake nearby. It would also be neat to do some backcountry camping in Garibaldi, Cathedral Park, Strathcona, or Juan de Fuca now both kids are older and can carry a decent amount of gear on their backs.

The only problem with camping locally is booking sites on BC Parks. Campsites at popular parks get booked up very quickly so we’d have to plan and book ahead. 

Kelowna, Kamloops, or Manning Park. 

We love skiing. In the last few years, we were able to take advantage of the “kids ski for free” Epic SchoolKids program for Whistler Blackcomb. The program provides five days of free skiing at Whistler Blackcomb for kids enrolled in kindergarten through Grade 5. Mrs. T and I would get the five day passes so we could all ski together. 

While not paying for lift passes for the kids is great, we needed to stay in Whistler overnight (to avoid doing day trips and driving back and forth) which could cost more than $500 a night. So the total cost would quickly add up.

This winter season, Kid 1.0 no longer qualifies for the Epic SchoolKids program. Given the overall cost, it probably doesn’t make sense to get three five day passes.

Although we can ski at Grouse, Cypress, and Seymour, the snow conditions are hit-and-miss depending on the year. Therefore, Mrs. T and I have been talking about going to Big White (Kelowna) or Sun Peaks (Kamloops) for a week and enjoying the champagne powder snow in the BC interior. 

Instead of driving all the way to either Kelowna or Kamloops in the winter, another option is to go skiing in Manning Park. Since there aren’t many overnight options at Manning Park, it would require a bit more planning and booking ahead.

Calgary

We visited Calgary last May. Originally we were visiting family friends who moved from our area to Calgary (their kids went to school with our kids so they are good friends). Due to last minute changes, the said family friends weren’t in town when we visited so we ended up touring around Calgary and had a great time. 

It’d be nice to visit these family friends in Calgary and have the kids spend some time together. If we do go to Calgary, we’d need to decide whether we drive or fly. Driving would take longer but be cheaper overall while flying would be more time efficient but cost a bit more. 

If we do drive to Calgary and back, it might be neat to stop by Banff and spend some time in the Kananaskis area. 

Taiwan

The last time we visited Taiwan as a family was in January 2019. Back then the kids were two and five years old. So when we ask them about Taiwan now, not surprisingly, they have very few memories of the trip, especially Baby T2.0 (ironically most of the stuff they remembered involved food). 

Being from Taiwan originally, I think it’s important that both kids know more about the country and have some personal connections with it. It’d be great to visit Taiwan more regularly but with no immediate family there, visiting Taiwan is a bit more difficult logistically compared to Denmark (i.e. we can stay with in-laws in Denmark).

We originally planned to go to Taiwan at the end of 2024 but changed that plan. A nephew of mine is getting married next year so we changed our travel plan so we can attend the wedding and tour around the country then. 

At the time of writing, we have already booked our airfare and hotels for a three-week visit to Taiwan. We will be doing more trip planning over the next few months.

Kauai

Back in 2018, we spent 12 days in Maui. We spent more than half of that trip just sitting at the pool or on the beach relaxing. It was one of the best vacations we have had as a family. Best of all, thanks to travel hacking, the cost of the trip was relatively low. 

Mrs. T and I have been talking about going to Kauai for the last few years but have yet to book the trip. Like Maui, we plan to save the cost of the trip by travel hacking. At this point, we probably will rely mostly on Marriot Bonvoy points for accommodation and maybe WestJet points for airfare.

If we do go to Kauai, it’d probably be for about 10 days or so, enough time to relax and chill. Since we don’t know too much about this green luscious island, more research would be needed if we were to go to Kauai. 

Dear readers, do you have any travel plans for 2025?