The Year the Trip Went Overseas

Graeme Lund · 5 July 2026

Eleven blokes, one annual week away, and the year we stopped booking motel rooms.

The Old Arrangement

For years the annual trip meant a set of motel rooms somewhere within towing distance, which worked in the sense that everyone had a bed and failed in every other sense.

Nobody could cook, nowhere held all of us at once, and the entire week's socialising happened standing in a car park because that was the only space big enough.

What Changed

The year we took one house instead of eleven rooms, it stopped being a logistics exercise. One kitchen, one long table, one place to sit at midnight and argue about the day.

It changed the overseas version too. When the trip finally went north for a week we did not look at hotels at all and put the lot of us in a nine-bedroom villa in Bali, which cost less per head than the motel used to and was better in every way that mattered.

What It Takes

One person has to own the booking and the shopping list, and that person needs to be chosen rather than volunteered by silence. Rotate it annually.

It only works above a certain number. For four blokes it is not worth the admin. For eleven it is the difference between a week away and a week together, which are not the same thing.