About Finding Alexx
Kia ora, I’m Alexx! I’m a solo traveller, photographer and full-time travel blogger from Aotearoa New Zealand. I created Finding Alexx to help people like you travel smarter, by showing you how to get the absolute best value out of your time and money, without missing out on the good stuff.
I’ve worked in travel for more than a decade, starting with six years in marketing for a global travel agency and the past seven years living out of a suitcase calling this corner of the internet my job. The dream!
I’ve explored 62 countries (50 of them solo) and tested every travel style out there, from budget backpacking to boutique escapes, solo adventures to group tours, short and sweet city breaks to multi-month cross-continent adventures and year-long round the world trips.
What you’ll find on Finding Alexx
I write for travellers who want meaningful, authentic and epic experiences, while making the most of their hard-earned travel budget and time off work. If that’s you, here’s what to expect from Finding Alexx:
Why trust me?
Because I’ve been there, done that, got the postcard! I spend 8-10 months of the year on the road, and the other 2-4 months parked up somewhere chained to a desk writing about everything I just experienced.
My travel background spans both sides of the industry. Six years working in head office for a global travel agency means I know how travel businesses actually work, from airlines to hotels to tourism boards.
Seven years (and counting) of being a full-time travel blogger means I know exactly what works for real travellers with real budgets and real time constraints. I don’t want to brag but I am a *literal professional* at cutting through marketing fluff to find genuine value.
I’ve experienced every travel style imaginable. I’ve taken planes, trains, automobiles, river barges, sleeper buses and rickshaws. I’ve stayed in $5 hostel dorms, luxe 5* resorts, treehouses, cave rooms, capsule hotels, even a 100-year-old rotating observatory dome. My itineraries and travel guides will help you plan the perfect trip no matter your budget or comfort level.
Most importantly, I want to show you how to experience the best of every destination, but I’m not going to sell you a fantasy. I’m a firm believer that sugar-coated travel content leads to unrealistic expectations, contributes to overtourism and ultimately lets everyone down.
Here at Finding Alexx you’ll get accurate information from my on-the-ground experience, cultural context that actually helps you understand a destination, and honest warnings about potential challenges so you can prepare in advance. These are the things that separate a decent trip from an absolutely epic one.
I want Finding Alexx to be…
My story
2012: California, here we come!
Confession: I kind of owe my entire career to The OC.
In my third year of university studying marketing and psychology I had the opportunity to study abroad, and one option was San Diego State University in Southern California. My teenage obsession with Ryan Atwood and Marissa Cooper from seven years prior made it the obvious choice.
I had never been to the USA, had never travelled alone, had only travelled further than a four hour flight from home once in my 20 years, so it was a jump into the deep end for sure.
It didn’t start well, I was detained in USA immigration at LAX for two hours because the embassy sent me back a photocopied form of my student visa approval instead of the original, which made me miss my connecting flight, then the airline lost my luggage, so I had to buy clothes for my first day of school from a 24 hour Walmart at 2am 🫠
BUT it got better! Six months living abroad in a student dorm, meeting people from all over the world who I still keep in touch with. I went to the best Coachella line up ever (I will die on this hill), did six hours of tequila shots in Tijuana before crossing the border back home at 4am, developed an unhealthy addiction to the Cheesecake Factory, picnicked in Central Park NYC, partied with Far East Movement in Vegas, and truly, madly, deeply fell in love with travel.
2013-2017: Intro to the travel industry
After getting home from San Diego I was desperate to continue living this life of adventure, but I had another year of my double degree left.
The last semester was a six month internship, and I managed to hit the absolute jackpot with a marketing internship at STA Travel. STA Travel was a global youth travel agency globally HQ’d in London, but their small NZ head office was where I spent four years learning everything to know about airlines, tour operators and tourism boards, as well as honing my skills in social media, digital content creation, writing, tourism marketing strategy and so much more. I adored this job so much, my colleagues were legends, I wouldn’t be where I am now without having them as role models and mentors.
In this job I didn’t get to travel as much as you might think, I had a couple of work trips in my time there and had access to industry rates, but the travel industry is notoriously low-paying so I could barely save enough to even afford heavily discounted flights and tours.
I started Finding Alexx in 2016 as a passion project to share photos and stories from the trips I managed to afford, but it was pretty much neglected for the first couple of years.
After four years working my way up in my team there was an opportunity to transfer to the global head office in London, conveniently timed with me going through a break up, and I jumped at the chance to live somewhere with easier access to cheaper travel.
2017-2019: London calling!
As a Kiwi I was eligible for a working holiday visa to live and work in the UK for two years (this visa is now three years).
I was extremely lucky to be able to move abroad so smoothly, I acknowledge that this is a major privilege and I don’t take that for granted.
London truly has my heart, my two years there gave me so many of my favourite moments and funny memories. It’s genuinely hard for me to write about because I miss it so much haha but let’s just say if I could relive those years again I would do it in a heartbeat.
After-work picnics drinking canned cocktails outside Kensington Palace until 10pm in summer, events on every night of the week for even the most niche interests, £10 return flights to cities I’d never heard of.
Unfortunately work turned out to be a bit of a dud after how much I loved my NZ job, the company was in the early stages of falling apart and my boss was literally beyond useless, our team often had no work to do at all because she wasn’t bringing in clients and she was basically holding my career hostage by holding me back from any progression or upskilling opportunities.
2019: When one door closes, another one opens
As my job got worse, I started using my lunch break to dissociate from reality and dream about travel. I discovered a super cool search tool called the Everywhere search on Skyscanner, which lets you put in your origin, select your travel date and then choose “Everywhere” as your destination, giving you a list of destinations ordered by the cheapest flight.
I started noting down where the cheapest flight would take me if I left London the day my work visa expired. And then I noted down where the cheapest flight the following week would take me. And so on, and so forth. After a few weeks of this I had multiple spreadsheets with 52 week-long itineraries I could follow to make my way around the world travelling on the cheapest flight every Tuesday.
My visa was expiring in June 2019, I actually had the opportunity to try and get sponsored by my company, but I could barely deal with another day working in that team let alone three years.
I made the hardest decision of my life to leave a city I loved so much, but it was time to swap financial stability and my shitty boss for the total freedom of solo travel… and the non-stop grind of working for yourself 🫠
And then it was time for the start of my full-time travel life.
2019-2020: 52 countries in 52 weeks
After London I had a one week holiday island hopping in Croatia before getting stuck into what I called my 52 in 52 project: 52 countries in 52 weeks, planning my route entirely based on Skyscanner’s cheapest flight every Tuesday. Yes, it was as wild as it sounds.
I need to share some context about this first:
1) This trip was entirely for content purposes, I would never encourage anyone to travel at that pace or in this way. I needed to find something to help me stand out from the growing number of travel creators, and my idea was to show people how to plan the perfect one week itinerary in 52 different destinations around the world.
2) I didn’t fly every week, I used the cheapest flight to determine my next stop, but I took trains or buses to get from A to B if timing allowed (mostly in Europe and Southeast Asia).
3) I tracked my carbon emissions and offset them through Co2nsensus, emissions from the first six months were on par with a return flight from London to Auckland which I did every year while living abroad. The total emissions from my entire planned 52 in 52 trip were less than my annual emissions from both of the years I lived in London.
The trip started with a £26 flight from Dubrovnik to Paris, then £18 to Zaragoza, and so on, and over the next nine months I visited 39 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australasia, with the base price of my flights/trains/buses to get between countries coming to only £2024. CRAZY!
I’m not one for regrets (as my Dad says, “the only thing you get from looking back is a sore neck”) and that trip taught me sooo much, but if I knew then what I know now, I certainly would have done it differently. These days I only fly if it’s absolutely necessary, I’ll always look for overland (or sea) options and I plan itineraries based on transport links, like my three months in Europe itinerary with no flights at all.
The trip was due to finish in July 2020, but then a little something threw it into disarray…
2020: Quarantine island
I was flying from Australia to start the Asia portion of my trip at the end of January 2020 when the whispers of Covid started, but there were no travel alerts in place yet so I just stocked up on masks and hand sanitiser and landed in Laos before continuing to Cambodia and Vietnam.
My next stops were meant to be Macau, Taiwan and Hong Kong but all those flights were cancelled so I stayed in Vietnam for three weeks, then landed in the Philippines early March for a 10 day tour with One Life Adventures.
Long story short, on day three one of our tour-mates had a temperature and got taken to hospital to await proper testing, we were deemed as high risk so the town we were meant to stay in wouldn’t let us in (understandable, they have to protect their community) and we had to catch a boat at midnight out to a private island with tents on the beach and no cellphone reception, and quarantine there until our friend returned a negative result, which would likely take at least a few days. Hahahahahelp.
In the meantime, the entire global situation escalated dramatically, unbeknownst to us on our off-grid island, and we only found out the Philippines was going to close the borders because our guide took us on a snorkelling trip out to an area with reception.
Chaos ensued. Back to our quarantine island to pack up, waiting at the mainland for a doctor check before we could continue to the main city, trying to book flights to Manila and having them get cancelled over and over again. In this process it became clear that my trip was over, my tour guide was about to lose his job, and that we were literally fighting for a spot on a plane against thousands of other people also desperate to get home.
In the end I booked five flights from Puerto Princesa to Manila and four of them were cancelled, we were incredibly lucky that the 5th flight went ahead. We spent a night in Manila drowning our sorrows in cheap rooftop cocktails before I said goodbye to people I had only known for a week however who I had just gone through the most stressful travel experience of my life with, and I jumped on an extremely expensive one way flight back to New Zealand.
2020-2022: Back to the homeland
I landed back in New Zealand on 16 March and moved back in with my parents in my hometown, where I hadn’t lived since leaving for university ten years earlier. I was extremely fortunate to have somewhere to return to, many full-time travellers don’t have that luxury.
New Zealand’s COVID handling was very different from the rest of the world, I certainly don’t agree with all of it (I had so many friends living overseas who had to deal with the horrendously cruel MIQ lottery and the tourism industry was basically thrown to the wolves), but overall I’m incredibly grateful to have been here in 2020. We minimised the spread, protected vulnerable people, and managed to live without almost any restrictions for the better part of a year.
The financial hit for me was major though. Every single collaboration and freelance gig I had was cancelled, travel blog traffic was decimated, even though we had mostly free movement in New Zealand the tourism operators had no budget to work with creators. I took on contracts in other industries just to cover my basic living costs and spent every spare moment working on my blog and content strategy to prepare for when travel started back up.
Once it became clear that this would be many months away rather than weeks, I started planning a mega Aotearoa New Zealand campervan road trip to make the most of the lack of tourists, and it was actual magic. You can see my North Island itinerary and South Island itinerary here for our full route.
Our borders stayed closed until March 2022, I waited until April to head off (I wanted to make sure it stuck!) for so began Living out of a Suitcase: The Sequel 🌎
2022-2023: Round the world: Take two!
My 2022-2023 round the world trip started with a couple of months road tripping Australia solo, from Melbourne to Adelaide along Great Ocean Road, then flying to Sydney to drive up to Byron Bay, then a Brisbane to Cairns roadie to finish up.
Next was a reunion with friends in Bali, a month in Canada, my return to San Diego where I’d studied a decade earlier, and a quick NYC city break the week where the USD was the strongest it had been since 2009 🫠 ouch.
From there I flew to Europe with four days in Iceland, then a few weeks in Northern Italy & Switzerland before experiencing Europe’s Christmas markets travelling only by train, using a Eurail Pass for the first time. I had actual Christmas in London, skied in Switzerland for New Years. At a travel conference in London I won return flights to Abu Dhabi, and I managed to sneakily use them to get from the UK to Sri Lanka with an Abu Dhabi stopover!
I was in Sri Lanka for my 31st birthday, my first ever solo birthday, watching wild elephants roam the beach in front of the cocktail bar at the glamping lodge I was staying at. Paradise.
The Maldives was next, first visiting local islands as a solo traveller and then I met my parents and brother at a lush resort to celebrate my mum’s 60th. Our first family holiday since I was 19!
Finally I had a few days in Singapore with the fam, which was extended another few days due to a cyclone causing havoc in the middle of the flight path, and returned home after an insane 10 months away just in time for my goddaughter’s 1st birthday.
2023: PIVOT!
My first year back on the road post-lockdowns was a learning curve to say the least.
The travel industry was still reeling from border closures and the entire travel content space was in flux while brands and creators alike tried to find our ‘new normal’.
Inflation had hit globally, and famously ‘cheap’ destinations like Portugal, Croatia and Bali were no longer affordable bases for full-time travellers. Revenge travel was in full swing but the tourism industry couldn’t keep up, businesses had closed, staff had been laid off and there was limited funding for recovery.
Meanwhile, remote work had made being a ‘travel influencer’ even more appealing to newcomers. Brands were being inundated by hundreds of messages each week with offers from budding creators to work for free, making it nearly impossible for established creators to even make it past the spam folder, let alone secure fair payment.
My business was making money again but significantly higher travel costs (due to both economic inflation and the inflation of my own travel standards 🙃) meant the maths wasn’t adding up. Something had to change.
I spent three months at home really focusing on my business plan, invested in a few courses (hit and miss, as always) and then set off again to test whether this could still work as a sustainable career.
2023-2024: Here we go again
My next big trip started with a hectic zigzag of flights to fit around conferences and partnership opportunities. The last time I’ll let that happen!
I made my annual trip to the South Island, spent a few days solo on the Gold Coast, then headed to the Maldives for their tourism board conference before travelling to LA and Anaheim with fellow creator Dana from Wandering Donut.
I kicked off my European leg with a Greece sailing trip as well as some lesser known Greek islands like Alonissos and Skopelos (highly recommend!), jumped continents to tour Morocco with G Adventures before some solo time in Marrakech, and celebrated my friend’s 30th at a Bordeaux villa before heading to London for a house-sit to avoid peak summer prices.
My priority for the rest of this trip was ‘regional dispersal’, which is the boring industry term for travelling beyond the typical gateway destinations like Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, etc. I reckon I did pretty well!
I visited Romania’s Transylvanian region, explored throughout the Balkans, had a recovery week in Sofia (so underrated), spent two weeks in Poland and then started my second Eurail Pass adventure.
My two month pass took me through Finland and Scandinavia, to Italy via Germany, all over Switzerland and then from London to Edinburgh on the iconic Caledonian Sleeper. By the end of this trip, I was well and truly hooked on the ease, flexibility and comfort train travel.
This financial year I matched my previous salary from my desk job, woohoo! It was a slow burn (not helped by a global pandemic) but this was one of the proudest moments of my life.
2024: The last big trip?
After another couple of months parked up at home smashing out editing, writing and scheduling content, it was time to pack my suitcase (that I hadn’t even unpacked 🙃) and head off again.
The goodbyes get harder as you get older, especially if you have aging grandparents or new babies in your family/social circle. I won’t lie, this one reeeeally sucked.
Australia was first with five days on the Gold Coast to visit friends, then Melbourne to see my brother, my first trip to Japan for the launch of the LUMIX S9 camera (perfect for travel creators), then the Maldives to use a prize I’d won at the conference the year before.
Next was Sri Lanka (on the award-winning One Life Adventures tour), six incredible weeks in Malaysia including Malaysian Borneo for a wildlife tour and scuba diving, three weeks in Vietnam showing my parents my favourite spots, my annual London visit.
From there I took on the challenge of spending a whole three months in Europe without flying!
I started with a week of island hopping in Greece’s Saronics, a few weeks in Albania (a mixed bag for me!), transit stops in Montenegro and Croatia, a ferry to Bari to explore Puglia without a rental car (doable but requires patience), a gourmet river barge cruise in Burgundy’s wine country, the Dolomites for a mountain resort getaway, and magical Venice in the shoulder season.
The journey continued with some scenic train rides through Switzerland and Austria, the coolest night train in Europe for solo travellers from Vienna to Hamburg and onwards to Copenhagen, then finally finishing up in Norway, where I jumped on one of the most eco-friendly cruise ships in the world (genuinely, not green-washing) to experience the iconic Norwegian Coastal Route.
91 days travelling across 14 countries using trains, buses and boats, not bad!
The final stop was an extended London stint for some much needed downtime with friends before a long trip home on my birthday, where I spotted the Northern Lights while flying over Greenland. Best present ever 💚
After 2024: A reality check
But 2024 was also a reality check on multiple fronts.
I was diagnosed with ADHD which was hugely validating, but it introduced a whole new travel challenge of managing highly-controlled medication on extended trips across multiple countries with different (and often very strict) regulations. It’s been a humbling reminder of how much privilege is involved in travel, and we often don’t even see it until it’s taken away.
I hit my (lofty!) income goal for the year but at the same time my need for travel comforts pushed my travel costs wayyy up. My dorm days are over, RIP my bank account.
In the whole year I spent 67 nights at ‘home’, and the other 298 nights were split between 124 different beds. By the end I was absolutely exhausted. “Work smarter, not harder” had never been so relevant to me.
The tricky thing is that I know I need to slow down, but it’s not as simple as just deciding to travel less. I don’t actually have a ‘home’ to live in long-term, I don’t own or rent a property, I just stay with family when I’m back in NZ which works for a few months but isn’t a permanent solution. I can’t afford a house here, and even if I could NZ is too remote for the kind of work I do. Taking long-haul flights 10+ times a year doesn’t align with my values or my health needs.
Australia is a slightly better option with better travel connections, but buying a house is still a huge challenge and renting somewhere would mean paying for an apartment or room that I might only use for half the year.
Digital nomad visas aren’t that easy for self-employed people either, many of them require employment contracts with companies outside of that country and a minimum stable salary.
I’m still figuring out what sustainable travel actually looks like for me in the long run, it’s a very complex puzzle with no clear solution. This certainly isn’t a complaint, I’ve chosen this life/career path and I adore 95% of what comes with it, but I just wanted to share my current reality.
2025 and beyond: Japan, campervan roadie, Europe, then what?
And that brings me to now! I’m writing this in mid-2025 and it feels like the year is flying by.
As soon as I got back to my desk in late February it was time to get stuck into editing, writing and sharing all my 2024 adventures. In two months I published 14 blogs with a total of 107,000 words 🤓
The only thing locked in for this year was a month in Japan. I’d committed to a reunion tour with my friends from my Sri Lanka trip last year, and I wanted to spend some time in Japan solo on either side. Unfortunately Japan is one of the countries with very strict laws around ADHD medication and I was limited to only 30 days’ supply, which meant I couldn’t take enough to cover onwards travel afterwards. I decided to do something I hadn’t done since 2019: a single country trip.
Honestly, I haaaaate single country trips. I try to make the most of my time, money and carbon emissions by visiting multiple countries close by, that’s why I’ve been doing extended round the world trips every year, but there was just no way around this.
For the second half of 2025 I’ve got a South Island campervan road trip all of August, then a few more weeks at my desk before I pack up for another extended adventure to Australia, Jordan, Greece, Türkiye, Italy and who knows where else.
I’ll spend the usual three months in Europe with my fourth Eurail Pass which will take me through to Christmas, then I have this India and Nepal tour locked in for February 2026, so I’m tossing up whether to come home in between (better for my bank account, my health and my business) orrrr to find somewhere to go to along the way (better for my carbon footprint and my camera roll). I’m open to suggestions for places that aren’t too hot or too cold in January 🙃
