- We moved to Mexico about three years ago,
and there were plenty of things
we knew we were going to miss
like for example, friends and family.
- But these are the things that we never expected to miss.
The first thing I now miss are baths.
Growing up, I had a bathtub
in every single place that I've ever lived,
and just about every house or apartment
that I ever went into had a bathtub.
So it was one thing I didn't anticipate,
wouldn't be so common in Mexico, but it's totally not.
In the three years we've been living in this country,
across many, many different States
and dozens upon dozens of cities,
we've run across maybe two or three bath tubs total,
and that's when we are seeking them out
because I really enjoy taking baths with Epsom salts
but in Mexico, they're just not common at all.
- Another thing I really miss living in Mexico
is consistent water pressure.
Maybe we would have better luck if we had a permanent home
and could work on it ourselves,
but jumping from Airbnb to Airbnb
we have had a consistent lack of water pressure
throughout Mexico and when we go back to the US
and have a nice shower, just reminds me like,
"Oh, I missed this."
- And just to give you a little bit of insight
as to why this might be, granted I am no plumbing expert,
so I don't know exactly how this works everywhere,
but the way I understand it is in the US
you're getting your water from like a main city supply
and so you can kind of manipulate
the amount of water that's coming through the pipes
for your showers,
which is why you can get more water pressure.
Whereas in Mexico, they often have these
very, very big containers that are like on top of the roof.
So the water pressure that you're getting is just gravity
Just gravity that's dropping that water from the container
to the piping and for your shower.
So it's never going to be all that much
unless there's some type of pump system
that's pushing it through,
which in our experience is pretty rare.
By the way, if you're new here, my name is Maddie.
This is Jordan.
Together, we are Tangerine Travels.
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The next thing I really missed
since moving to Mexico is bath mats.
- You and your baths.
- But it doesn't have to do with baths,
it's obviously because there aren't that many baths.
I know this is something you could very easily go out
and buy at a store in Mexico.
I'm not saying they don't exist,
but for the vast majority of rentals that we are staying in,
there's no type of fabric piece there,
that's meant to absorb the water
when you're getting out of the shower,
and it's a big deal
because I've almost killed myself numerous times
by stepping out and it's wet all over the floor,
and then you just go flying.
So it's just one of those little random things
but I do miss those.
- Like that Cucaracha time.
- Oh yes.
Like the Cucaracha time in Guadalajara,
where I fled the bath,
I fled the shower and oh my gosh
I just went flying in the air,
thudded to the ground.
I had scrapes and bruises all over me.
- I'm surprised you didn't break a bone.
- Honestly I'm surprised I didn't get a concussion
and die or something.
Like it was really bad.
- Something else I didn't expect to miss
when moving to Mexico are vacuums.
Seriously, nobody has a vacuum
and I hate cleaning.
I'm the last person who wants to clean,
but when I do, I want a vacuum
and they just don't really exist here.
- Yeah, with this one,
again it's not something you can go buy,
but for us, we're traveling from rental to rental.
It doesn't make sense to travel with a vacuum everywhere
or buy one at every new place that we go to,
but yeah, I too really love vacuums for cleaning
and it makes it so much easier getting pet hair
and everything, but you just don't really find them.
So, so, so uncommon in Mexico.
The lack of vacuums that could potentially be
because of another thing that I really missed in Mexico
which is carpet.
I just grew up having carpet.
I like it because I do a lot of stretching.
I liked doing yoga
and like watching movies on the floor and stuff.
I'm not very comfortable on tile
but you rarely find carpet in Mexico.
It's very, most often tiled.
Sometimes people have rugs
but maybe that's also why vacuums aren't very common
because vacuums are typically used to clean up carpet.
You can't really sweep a carpet.
- And I miss carpet because I love the feeling
of soft carpet underneath my bare feet.
It feels amazing.
One thing I really miss living in Mexico
is comfortable furniture
and specifically a comfortable couch.
When I went to purchase my last couch,
I seriously sat on like 150 of them
until I found the perfect one.
- [Maddie] And it was perfect.
That's probably my favorite couch ever,
is the one you bought for our condo.
- [Jordan] I know, we can both relax on it
and Laska could be relaxing on it with us
and it was so soft. It was one of those things you sit on
and never want to get up from. - [Maddie] So true.
- [Jordan] Never found anything like that in Mexico.
- Yeah, while we've been traveling a lot
of the times it's makeshift furniture.
So like people will make it out of pallets or something
and then put cushions on top.
Or sometimes even like a individual mattress is the couch.
So you don't have anything comfortable to lean back up into.
Or sometimes it's just like chairs
in the living room and there's no couch at all.
- And a lot of times there is a couch,
however, it's just not that comfy.
- Or it only fits comfortably like one person,
not both of us.
Not both of us and Laska.
So I know this is like first world problems,
but I do miss nice couches.
The next thing I really missed
is having a washer in the home.
I used to do my laundry,
used to wash it and hang it to dry,
and I never considered that a luxury.
In fact, I would have said
that taking your laundry somewhere
for somebody else to wash it, dry it and fold it.
That was the luxury,
and that's what we do here in Mexico.
- And I actually really like having that
full service laundry be relatively affordable,
but we've had a handful of instances
that make you like really not want to bring your clothes
to live launderers anymore.
- Yeah, so I mean the obvious is
sometimes clothes get misplaced or stolen.
This has happened to me before.
Okay, misplaced or stolen.
I mean, because it's like
you want to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe it got mixed into somebody else's
but when half my underwear go missing,
that doesn't seem like an accident.
Or like another time I got all of my undies back,
and they were tied into a knot, like a tight knot too.
So they were all stretched out and weird.
Like, why are they handling my underwear so much?
Then recently we took our clothes and they came back
and every single piece of clothes was labeled Maddie.
- [Jordan] With a marker.
- [Maddie] In permanent marker, even Jordan's.
Now, all your boxers, your shirts, your shorts, everything,
everything is labeled Maddie.
So, I mean, it's one of those things that is not a huge deal
but it's kind of like WTF.
I would've liked, if you told me you were going to
mark up all my crap before you did it, you know?
So yeah, ultimately I do miss having a washer at home
so that I can do my own laundry.
- One thing we don't have to miss
when living in Mexico is our favorite shows.
With a VPN, it allows us to locate ourselves
in another country.
So if we want to watch a show
that's only available in the US,
whether that's on Amazon prime,
on Netflix, on Hulu, something like that.
We change our location with the VPN to the United States
and then access that website, which gives us access
to our favorite shows or the US library of Netflix.
If you would like to check out our favorite VPN,
you can head over to TangerineVPN.com.
That's our affiliate link
and it will take you right there.
They're running a promo right now
where you get 83% off plus three extra months free.
It's a great product and we highly recommend it.
It's TangerineVPN.com.
Something else I didn't expect to miss living in Mexico
is being able to pay with a card anywhere I go.
In the US everywhere accepts a card.
and if they don't, if they're one of the
rare, rare places that doesn't,
they have a giant billboard at the cash register,
and it's like,
"Well, cash only no cards accepted."
Something like that,
but it's nice to have that convenience
of being able to pay with a card
and not have to have cash on you all the time.
- Sometimes it's kind of just a pain in the butt
to have to ask,
"Can I pay with card here"
And even restaurants where we've been to before
that say that you can pay with a card,
sometimes we'll go back
thinking that we don't need to have cash.
and all of a sudden it's cash only that day.
So I also miss that convenience of just not even
having to think about it, but handing a credit card
any type of credit card too,
and not just Visa or MasterCard,
wherever we want to shop.
- And paying with a card everywhere
makes accounting way easier.
Our accountants hate us
because of all the cash transactions
and then also travel credit cards give you so many rewards
but you don't get those rewards if you don't use the card.
So that's something else that kind of sucks about it too.
- So of course, there's a whole long list of products
that we now miss in Mexico
that we can't find here.
Like Jordan's mentioned before, he really loves licorice
and can't find the good stuff here.
Another one that we thought of recently was Q-tips
that aren't made of plastic,
and I know that's like the seemingly
the most insignificant thing,
but they're all made with plastic on the middle,
which is too bendy and they're just total bullshit.
They don't work as well as the ones with paper.
The paper on the middle.
A while back, we got what basically
was one of those big lifetime supply boxes
and used it all up
and then went to go look for them recently,
and it's like ugh.
And on this one, you might be thinking,
"Okay, so you can't find your favorite
Q-tips in a grocery store.
Well, why don't you just buy them online?"
And it's not to say
that you can't buy things online in Mexico.
There is Amazon Mexico, there's MercadoLibre,
but compared to how easy it was for us in the US
to get like Amazon prime two day shipping,
overnight shipping and like free shipping on everything,
it's so easy to order things online.
Here in Mexico, that's something we miss.
It's a lot more clunky
and you can't always find the things
you're looking for online,
at least not easily.
- And a lot of those things are available online.
Like Q-tips, yeah you can order those
but something you might pay $4 for in the US,
might run you 12 or 15 dollars.
- So it's just not worth it.
Another thing we've come to really miss
while traveling around Mexico
is the availability of information online.
I remember in the US, anything that you ever needed
you could find the business's website,
their social media hours,
and all of this information was up to date.
whereas here in Mexico, that's often not the case.
Sometimes you're lucky if a business
that you're looking up has a Facebook,
and you're lucky if that Facebook
has up-to-date information.
If you're looking up a restaurant,
it's pretty common that the hours
aren't going to be correct,
especially now that we're in COVID times.
I mean, forget it,
but that's definitely kind of a informational luxury
that I do miss.
- Something else I miss about living in Mexico,
is peace and quiet.
There are so many noises across Mexico,
and sometimes I just want some calm, some tranquility
away from all the noises.
(upbeat music)
- We've talked about this before,
the chorus, the symphony of sounds in Mexico,
if you ever visited here or lived here,
you know that that's true.
We've even heard though that the opposite
is a culture shock sort of for people
coming from Mexico to the US,
that it's so quiet that they can't even sleep.
That they kind of feel weirded out
because there's no noise by comparison.
- Something I really miss when living in Mexico
is a consistently comfy bed.
A lot of the places we're staying in,
I'd rather sleep on this tree than in that bed,
and one time we ended up sleeping on the floor
because the bed was just that uncomfortable
- Sleeping on the floor
when we had previously found a scorpion on that floor,
but that was still a better option
than sleeping on what was essentially
like iron springs with a blanket over top of it.
- Now this isn't a say that
nice bedding and nice mattresses don't exist in Mexico,
but us when we're generally hopping from Airbnb to Airbnb,
these are things that most Airbnb hosts skimp on.
They don't spend much money on their
mattresses and bedding and whatnot,
and just makes for not the best stay.
- Even if we're staying at a place long term,
like one to two years,
are we going to go out and buy a new mattress for the place?
Absolutely not.
So this is definitely something we miss.
Another thing I miss is a well-stocked kitchen.
When we're going from rental to rental,
they generally have the absolute basics
and a lot of times, if it's like
the pots and pans and stuff,
they're scratched to hell,
the mugs are cracked,
like it's not the greatest stuff.
Obviously, if we had a long-term place
we would buy our own nice appliances,
and nice like cutlery sets and everything
but that is definitely something I miss
because I used to cook a lot,
and when we're in our basic Airbnb
there's not all the things that there for us to do that.
- Yeah and for example,
like when was the last time you saw a waffle maker?
- Yeah, never.
I don't think Mexicans make waffles.
- Something we didn't expect to miss
when moving to Mexico
was being able to speak our native tongue.
I would not go back on learning Spanish,
learning another language has been really fulfilling
for the both of us.
- So true.
- However, sometimes you just want to speak in English.
- I really took for granted how easy it is to make friends
with people in English.
- When you both speak the same language.
- When you compare that to
trying to make friends with someone
when you don't really speak each other's language,
it's a night and day comparison.
- Yeah and also, I mean,
I'm so thankful for the Mexican people
and how patient and loving and kind
and welcoming they are of us.
Even when we're butchering the language sometimes,
and people will totally be friends with us,
even when both of us aren't really like fully communicating
which I think is super awesome,
but yes, I definitely miss the ease of speaking English,
my native tongue.
I miss it sometimes.
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