This Is My Story
Hi, my name is Aniek. I am a 23-year-old Dutchie! I graduated high school in July 2019 and 4 weeks later I left for a year-long world trip! By myself at the age of 18! I would do a year of traveling before starting university back at home. I had absolutely no plan, the only thing I had was a one-way ticket to Thailand. And that’s where it started, I caught the travel bug. I traveled around Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand. I had never felt this happy and free in my life before! Meeting new friends, exploring new cultures and countries and seeing the most beautiful places this planet has to offer!
As you can expect, or not, I decided I didn’t want to settle down for university and I decided to stay. At this moment I was in New Zealand. As we all know, Covid happened, and I decided to stay, again. I bought a van and traveled all around the country! Possibly my favourite country! 2 years and 9 months later, I finally decided to leave my second home and continue traveling. Southeast Asia again, Hong Kong and Dubai, and then home was calling. I spend almost 6 months at home and then realised this is not the place for me right now, so I decided to leave for the Dutch Caribbean and South America. And that brings us here, 4.5 years after first leaving The Netherlands! And now I have started my own company, YouNiek Travels, to help you have amazing travel experiences like this as well!
Some of the things I love most while traveling are: exploring local markets, trying new crazy-looking foods, riding scooters, finding hidden gems, sipping fresh coconuts on the beach, learning words in a foreign language and telling them to every local super proudly, setting up my tripod and running for a good photo, wandering every corner of a new place, meeting new best friends every couple days, and learning to be my own best friend and biggest supporter!
My goals with YouNiek Travels
My goal with YouNiek Travels is to help you start traveling!
Over the last years I realised how much traveling brings you, and I sincerely wish for everyone to be able to travel at least once in their life. Traveling teaches you so much, not only about the places you visit, but also about cultures in general, and most importantly it teaches you so much about yourself! And these are values you will not learn in your hometown or in school.
And I want to be able to make travel advice affordable for everyone. I don’t want travel advice to cut so much into your budget that you need to totally alter your plans or shorten your trip. This does not seem reasonable to me. And that’s why YouNiek Travels offers affordable services!
I am hoping to reach mostly young adults that have 'just' finished school and want to travel before starting their career or any further education. Traveling, seeing different cultures and meeting people from all over the world, give you such different insights, in the world, in yourself and in what you want in life, and therefore I think it is worth so much for young adults to start traveling before settling down and starting their ‘serious life’.
Do you just want to travel for a little while? Possibly just as a holiday from work? Of course this is great too! Talking about traveling is my favourite hobby, so feel free to reach out anytime!