Who are World Travel Family?

World Travel Family is the name of a website or blog belonging to the Long family, that’s us. I’m Alyson Long, mum, wife, author, scientist, farmer, and blogger. The whole family has been involved in website creation from time to time. World Travel Family is a name picked for SEO reasons, we don’t call ourselves that in real life. We are just a normal family, like yours, the only thing different about us is our passion for travel and education and our tendency to share destinations and travel experiences on our websites and social media channels. We do that for a lot of reasons, in large part to share how “Living Differently” is possible.

We hope, and have always hoped, that our experiences will inspire and help fellow travelers and educators, everywhere in the world. We receive dozens of emails every month from families planning a travel adventure. We love to help those people!

World Travel Family travel blog has been running since we decided to sell everything and start travelling as a family, that was 2012.  We started this site, our biggest, for fun, World Travel Family was my first website and blogging was just a hobby.

As the blogs grew and I learnt more about the industry, they started to make money to help fund our travels. A little money at first, slowly slowly.

Today, over 12 years later, these small boys are taller than their mum and this website, and others, are our family business. It all worked out way better than we even dared to dream.

So this is us, the 4 people behind the blog, in particular, the World Travel Family website.

The Long family, 4 people who have been travelling together and working as a team to get us to some of the most incredible destinations on Earth.

World Travel Family is:

Alyson Long

Alyson Long was born almost 60 years ago in Wales UK.

I am the main voice of World Travel Family, I set up the website for fun, teaching myself as I went and still 90 % of the technical stuff, the writing, photography, SEO, page speed optimisation, and social media, are my responsibility. 

My husband, Chef, and both kids have helped or do help with the websites. Not so much today (2024) as they’re all involved with part-time jobs outside the home. Plus we have a farm to run!

The boys are learning the ropes and finding their feet as content creators, SEO ninjas and web designers. I’m forever learning to do it better.

I was responsible for the boys’ education as a home educating mum. It was a big deal and a task that I thought long and hard about before I accepted it.

That task was labour-intensive, and ultimately expensive. It was hard sometimes, but in hindsight, I wouldn’t change that choice for the world.

I grew up in Wales before heading to Birmingham University to study Biological Sciences. After graduating I worked for 20 years in hospital pathology, almost completed my Masters in Cellular Pathology rising to the dizzying heights of Chief Biomedical Scientist in London, before quitting to be a full-time mum in 2006.

Being a stay at home mum has been a dream come true. No regrets! I’m still at home now the kids are grown. Not having to go to a place of work frees you up to follow your interests.

When Boo was a baby and D was 3 or 4, we emigrated to Australia to make our financial life easier. I experimented with face painting and being an Airbnb landlady before setting up the blogs (there are currently 8) and realising that blogging would maybe, one day, give us an income. I needed an income source to fit with my family.

I try to stay fit and active. I’m a runner, a cyclist and a hiker. We’ve taken on three long treks (incuding Everest Base Camp) and multiple others, all over the world. In my almost 60th year I’m training for my first marathon. Training has been hampered by clumsiness (probable ADHD). I tend to walk into furniture and walls. A broken toe sets me back about a month, but I keep on trying!

I still enjoy scuba diving and snorkelling and our home base on The Great Barrier Reef makes that possible without travel.

My interests include health, more natural than scientific, psychology, spirituality and ancient history. Of course I love travel and learning about places and culture.

I love living in London and my favourite countries to visit are India, Thailand, Vietnam or Nepal. Today I’m in love with our farm. We have been living in Australia between travels since lockdown stopped us travelling.

I tried to be vegan for a while but these days we grow and raise most of our own food on our farm in Queensland. (See our farm here). We bought the farm, 5 acres, during the lockdown years, it seemed like a good idea as we were unable to travel. We’re all about organic, regenerative land management techniques and today we look after almost 100 animals. All of our animals are well-loved.

As I child I wanted to be a zoo keeper and/or a farmer’s wife and bake bread. I got there eventually!

The most important thing in my pack is my laptop. Without that, I couldn’t work.

Chef

Chef, James Long, was born 40+ years ago in Sydney Australia.

Chef moved around a lot as a child, he lived in Sydney, Adelaide and Canberra, along with stints near London.

He was a Boy Scout to the age of 18, receiving his Queen’s Scout Award.

He trained to be a chef in Sydney and packed his bags for the career advancements and experience that top London hotels offer at the age of 21.

Within a year of arriving, he’d met me, in Egypt, we found a rented house together in Kilburn London and were plotting our first 12-month RTW.

After that first sabbatical Chef and I returned to London and hard graft. We bought, renovated and sold 2 properties while working full-time jobs.

During the same period, the children were born. D was born, at home, the same day our first kitchen was installed. Boo was born in the same flat in Twickenham, two home births with Chef playing second midwife.

Chef led us to Australia in 2007 where he became executive chef at a 5 star resort in Port Douglas. He prefers Thai food, usually.

Chef enjoys running and triathlon events and has competed in full IronMan distance events, marathons and ultra-marathons all over the world. We travelled with his triathlon bike for several years. Yes, it was difficult.

He REALLY wanted to buy the house in Romania. He loves a renovation project. But it fell through. We ended up buying a project homestead in Australia instead. Things worked out for the best!

James loves living in London, Vietnam, Romania, or on the farm and his favourite country to visit is Nepal.

The most important thing in his pack was his Swiss Army Knife. As a Boy Scout he loves his tools. Lately he is our drone pilot and Go Pro engineer as well as being the family’s IT support guy.

You can see some of the tech we carry in our Travel Essentials post. Chef writes most of our tech-related posts.

Today Chef is working multiple part time jobs. He helps tourists find Nemo on the Great Barrier Reef and is doing some stints in local kitchens. Usually because their chef pulled a sickie!

D

D was born in 2000 and something in London UK.

D was a home birth and an extremely vocal and lively baby. He moved to Australia when he was 3 years old but he identifies as mostly Welsh, thanks to his family connections. At 4 he was required (we thought) to start school in Australia. By 7 it was clear that school was doing him no favours so we registered as homeschoolers for the first time.

D loved reading as a child and stated that life without books would be a “living hell”. Most of his reading was on a Kindle, that was the most convenient way for us to supply him with never-ending books on the road.

The Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and Eragon series were his favourites early on. The links will take you to Amazon to shop D’s reads!

He’s been a gamer for as long as he’s had the means to be one and was, and is, one of the best kids in the world. He constantly makes me smile, still. We’re thick as thieves.

He has always had a particular interest in ancient history and mythology, he took us to Greece for his 12th birthday and Egypt for his 13th. You can read what the kids learned in Egypt here, it was one of their first writing efforts.

He got an “A” in history iGCSE and started taking history A level. Unfortunately (for Mum) he decided that A levels weren’t for him. He has had part-time jobs since he was 16 and is now my business partner and a great help on the farm.

D is a certified scuba diver with a deep interest in marine conservation. He’s spent a lot of weeks picking up and logging trash on beaches with Tangaroa Blue.

The elder Long child is outstandingly confident, eloquent and talkative, he makes friends easily and is still a ball of energy. I call him “Wordy Mc Wordsmith.”

D loves living in London, Vietnam, or Romania and his favourite country to visit as a child was the USA mostly for the junk food and huge portions.

He still lives at home and enjoys some aspects of farm life. He doesn’t love chickens!

The most important thing in his pack was his Kindle (buy one online via this link). Today he travels with his beloved Steam Deck. He loves Nepalese food for bottomless dal baht.

Boo

Boo was born in 2000 and something in London. The second home birth for family Long.

My younger child is the exact opposite of his older brother. He was a quiet and peaceful, an easy child. That was a relief!

Boo never went to school and had no desire whatsoever to go.

He’s more reserved than his brother and loves his curly hair, cats, eating, cooking, and gaming. He’s a fantastic cook and loves to make cakes and anything involving carbs.

His constant travel companions were his bears and a stuffed kitten named Sheila. All cats are his friends. He seems to have a natural ability with numbers, his maths came naturally to him.

Boo is our huge Doctor Who fan, we always had at least 2 Sonic screwdrivers in our backpacks. His preference to travel with as much stuff as possible means we’re rarely able to travel carry on only.

Boo loved living in Romania and his favourite country to visit is England or Vietnam.

He loves crispy banh xeo pancakes and most Vietnamese food, but maybe not as much as cake.

The most important thing in his pack was his bear.

The two boys are very different, both my favourites, both the best kids ever.

Today Boo is helping on the farm and with the websites and working part-time. I see a career in food ahead of him.

Thanks!

Thanks for following our journey, our online audience is a great source of support and we’re grateful to have you all along for the ride.  I must admit, I find being called World Travel Family a bit embarrassing, it’s the name of the website, not us. We’re not one and the same thing and our private lives do remain fairly private. We blog about travel mostly, don’t confuse that with the entirety of our lives. If you have any questions at all, always just drop them in the comments, I’m happy to help. Maybe you’d like our post on the realities of being a nomadic family?

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