ABOUT

My name is Mathieu (or Mat), I’m from France.

After I study in a trade school for two years I decided to visit my relatives in Australia with a working holiday visa. I ended up staying one year down there, doing small jobs in order to save money and then travel in South East Asia and India. You see, at this time in my life I didn’t really know what to do… I mean, I knew for sure I didn’t wanted a boring life, staying in an office from 9 to 5 then have only a few weeks of holidays during the year.

A year later, I came back to Australia (for one year again), then I went to New Zealand (one year), and I traveled in Asia again but this time I discovered Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan.

When I came back to France, I met a guy who told me he had a friend who was making money with a blog. When I told him about my travels, he said that I should do the same and create a travel blog.

I’m glad he really insisted because it changed my life: I started right away to look for information about how to make a website, I started to learn about HTML, then I heard about WordPress, found a web domain and created Noobvoyage.fr during the summer of 2012, a french travel blog dedicated to people who never traveled before and want to know where to go, when to go and how to make it.

So now it’s june 2017, and I’m proud to start the english version of Noobvoyage: Travelfornoobs.com !

– Some stuff about me –

  • I was born in 1983
  • I live near Paris in France
  • I’m a dad
  • I spend four years abroad with a working holiday visa: two years in Australia, one year in New Zealand and one year in Japan. I would have kept going and go to Canada but it’s really hard to obtain this visa!
  • I’m a scuba diver and I’ve been diving in Australia, Thailand, Mexico and Malaysia.
  • I’ve tried paragliding three times so far, and I think it’s one of the best thing in the world.
  • I make money from my websites (I have a dozen of websites I monetize) and I’m interested in money-independant lifestyle.
  • Finally, I’m a videogame addict: some of my favorite games of all time are Resident Evil 4, Dead Space, Yoshi’s Island (the SNES one), Skyrim, Metal Gear Peace Walker… Mostly single player games on different types of consoles but also on PC. I think it’s a perfect way to travel virtually when I’m not on the road. Right now I’m spending a lot of time on Red Dead Redemption 2.
That’s me in Tioman island, Malaysia.

By the way, my english is pretty good but you might find some grammatical mistakes here and there… please send me an email so I can correct it ! I’ll also improve my english this way !

I almost forgot… here are my top 10 places I’ve seen during my trips:

  1. Bagan, Myanmar
  2. Hampi, India
  3. Karijini National Park, Australia
  4. Lauterbrunnen Valley, Switzerland
  5. Zangjiajie, China
  6. The Yellow Mountains, China
  7. Chitwan National Park, Nepal
  8. Ajanta & Ellora caves, India
  9. Sunrise over Mount Bromo, Indonesia
  10. Uxmal, Mexico

– What travel gear do I use –

I’ve been using different camera brand during the last 10 years, and different types of camera: I started with a Nikon D40X, then a Canon EOS 550D (EOS Rebel T2i in the USA), a Panasonic Lumix G3, a Sony Nex 5N, a Sony A6000, and my latest camera is a Sony A7III but I’m thinking about switching to Fujifilm cameras.

I’m a bit of a camera and lens geek so you’ll find plenty of articles about this here.

Other things I always take during my travels are a GoPro (Even if I suck at video editing), a DJI Mavic Pro (mostly during my road trips in Europe) and my swiss army knife.

– Why I started this blog –

My goal is to get more audience compared to my travel blog in french.

Also, one my goal is to have more fun doing this blog than the one I have in France. I’ll don’t spend hours trying to optimize the SEO of the posts, or maximize the pictures sizes… I’ll just write what I want!

On this blog you’ll also find a page with reviews of some of my visit and activities around the world. They will be rank from one to five.

I need to tell you this: I’m not paid to promote activities or countries ! I’ve never done it for my french blog, and I won’t do it here!

If I want to say that the Sagrada Familia in Spain sucks, then I say it! I’ll give you my honest and totally subjective review. If you disagree, you’ll be welcome to leave a well argumented comment under the post you think is wrong.

I’ll also put more pictures of myself on this blog. I didn’t like to do it on my french blog (I’m too shy) but I’ll try to do it here.

Finally, one of my goal with this blog is to contact english-speaking travel bloggers and share information about monetization, increase audience etc… I’ll also write more articles about blogging and how to earn money with it.

– What Travelfornoobs will do for you –

My goal with this websites is to help people travel for the very first time. I’ll teach you everything from:

  • How to go abroad for the first time
  • How to take a plane
  • Where to go and when
  • How to save money

Since I’m french, I’ll highlight travel and tourism in France and give you the best tips to visit this beautiful country, as well as tips about the french culture.

I’ll also speak a lot about Europe.

Anyway, thanks for reading and don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about travelling or this blog.

MERCI ! (THANK YOU!)

Mat

PS: I don’t have a dedicated Facebook page for Travelfornoobs.com so here is my Instagram for now !