FIRST PERSON: Teacher turned travel consultant Emma Casburn

“My background is in languages. I studied four languages at university-French, Spanish, Portuguese and German.

As part of my degree I had to spend a compulsory year abroad as a language student. I lived in Brittany in France as an au pair for three children on an organic farm. On one occasion I remember going shopping and coming home to see chicken strung up against the wall and find drops of blood throughout the kitchen. That was our Sunday lunch ready and waiting.

I then went to Brazil for five months. We went without having our first night’s accommodation booked which when I think about it now seems ridiculous but that’s student life. We got talking to the people behind us on the plane and they said their uncle had a taxi so they called him to come and pick us up. He took us to a love motel which was one of the cheapest they could think off. The next morning we went to tourist information where they circled places to stay in a newspaper. We chose one and moved into our new apartment the next day. I look back at it now being a travel agent and think ‘what were you thinking to not book two or three nights hotel’ but that’s student life isn’t it. We were there for New Year and took part in the Carnival in Salvador. Carnivals in Brazil are amazing. We danced along the street for seven hours.

After this I spent five months in Guatemala with it’s constantly erupting volcanoes and colourful streets.

Back in the UK there was a company that visited the university to talk about teaching English in Japan. We went along and it sowed the seed. Straight after university my then boyfriend and I ended up going to Seoul in South Korea for a year and that’s when my passion for travel began.

I lived in Changchun in Northern China in my early 20s where it was minus 30 degrees. Everything was triple glazed and to get in and out of any doors they had about three sets of doors and massive sleeping bag type things to get through to keep all the cold air out. I taught at the university and everyone kept their coats on all the time. You were picked up directly outside the door of the university and taken directly to your residence.

I remember trying to get to the supermarket that was a five minute walk away but with thick ice. I slipped all over the ice trying to get there and back. I also taught in Tokyo for a semester where the commute was hellish to say the least. They have people that are employed as train pushers who push more people into the tube so that the doors will close.

Twice I lifted my feet off the ground and didn’t move. People were fainting and someone’s watch face even cracked from the pressure. I did enjoy Japan though. It’s a fascinating country.

Travel is in my blood. In Russia I lived in Samara which was a closed city until the 1990s. Stalin’s secret bunker was there during the war and was a secret place which explains why there is no tourism or statues now. It’s not a very cultural place to live. We thought we were going for four or five months but the Visa was in Russian which I couldn’t read and it actually said 90 days out of every 180 days. They wanted us to cross the border to Ukraine and wait for three months and then come back to finish our contract to which we said no.

At times it was nerve-wracking but more exciting than nervous apprehension.

My next teaching post took me to a vineyard in a tiny village near Pamplona in Northern Spain. It was a government initiative where they would send groups of school children from around Spain for a week to learn English. We would teach them partly through lessons and play. The vineyard also had lots of crops so we would teach them the words for olives, walnuts,grapes, etc. It was remote but then I come from the Monmouthshire countryside.

Most recently I taught in Guadeloupe in the Caribbean for three years which was a refreshing change from some of the colder places I have worked.

From my window I could see Dominica and could get to various islands such as Martinique, St Lucia. We sailed to Antigua which took about six hours. We spent a lot of time at the beach after the sun had gone down, having barbeques, surfing and going for a dip. It was a great life. I saw Damian Marley in concert on an island called Marie-Galante during a music festival. Growing up in Glascoed, near Usk, I used to be a scout and have always loved camping so while in the Caribbean we would go camping on the beach under the stars.

I was teaching English to individuals ranging from lawyers to bankers and nurses at their offices as well as primary school children once a week.

Teaching abroad was great because they paid for your flights and accommodation and gave you a salary.

Looking back I’ve experienced so much from the Boryeong Mud Festival in South Korea to working in the French Alps during ski season and preparing five-course dinners for up to 20 people. I was working for a small company which had six staff so we did everything from being chamber maids to driving the mini bus and ski hosting on the piste.

In Tokyo I climbed Mount Fuji, mostly in flip flops – I appear to have a knack for walking in them. I was very unprepared and without any hiking gear. We sheltered for a few hours in massive bunk-bedded rooms and then woke up at about 4am to carry on to the summit. The Japanese had ski poles and lycra but we just put as many layers on as we could.

I’ve hitch-hiked in sub-zero temperatures in Zhangjiajie National Park in China, before Avatar made it famous on the tourist trail. Not speaking Chinese we would mimic the sound of a train for the train station. I also had a translator gadget with voice because I couldn’t read the characters and put it to the person’s ear and the voice would say ‘train station’ which seemed to work.

Having travelled so far it’s quite surreal to come back and live so close to where I went to school in Caerleon. I have a good amount of travelling under my belt and luckily as part of the job I still get to travel.

I returned to Wales in 2013 and it was then that I decided to work for myself. My parents were always self-employed and brought me up to eventually be self-employed. Originally I was looking to carry on teaching but as everyone speaks English here it’s much harder! I was looking for a business that I would enjoy doing. My passion for travelling led me to launch my travel company and become a personal travel consultant in 2014.

I called it Infinite Travel because I believe travel should be infinite-whether it’s to West Wales or trekking in Peru. We shouldn’t stop travelling no matter what age. Some people say they don’t want to take their children when they are young but I first went abroad when I was ten months-old. We always took beach holidays until I was a teenager and then we got into sailing holidays in Greece and the Caribbean.

That’s when it veered away from a typical beach holiday for me. It would be hard for me to go back to a ‘fly and flop’ holiday, as we call it in the industry, which is what most people want. I don’t know how long I could flop for as I like to see the culture, meet the people and to really experience the country when I’m away. Having lived in other countries I always desire to meet people and to learn about the country rather than just be in it because it’s hot. But I understand why people go away and need to rejuvenate and stock up on vitamin D.

When I am not away I enjoy organising other people’s trips and being part of their holiday experience. I’ve organised anything from a 73-night bespoke itinerary a one-night UK break. Some people come to me with a post-it note saying can you match this price for an exact holiday they’ve researched, others just want to go somewhere hot for a week on a certain date. I don’t charge a fee for my service - my money comes from the hotel not the customer.

I love researching and learning about places and finding the perfect solution for them. That’s how I try and differentiate myself from the High Street agent.

People say I’m so lucky having travelled so much but I wouldn’t say its luck it’s studying, learning languages and having the guts to go to a different continent and dive into life there and experience it. There are still places I’d love to visit including Australasia and the rest of South America. I still have places to tick off my list.”

Visit www.infinitetravel.co.uk