Okay so you saw the title of the video, "Are we done traveling?"
and let me just start by saying that the answer is no, we are not done traveling.
But we are completely changing the way in which we travel in the future.
In this video I'm going to tell you why we're changing our travel style
and explain the new method of traveling that we'll be doing in the future.
Let's get started.
First to fully understand this I need to back up and tell you a little bit about our story.
Even before we met each other and got married my wife and I always loved traveling.
I've been to a total of 70 countries now and Emily and I always said that once we
reached retirement age we would travel the world.
But then in 2016 I had a bit of a health scare.
I had a knee injury that resulted in a serious blood clot, was in the hospital,
I had to relearn how to walk and it was kind of a wake-up call that life is short.
On top of this Emily had a very stressful job.
She was working 13 hour shifts or longer.
She was working weekends so we didn't really see each other much
and she was just ready for a change.
So at this point in our lives we said why are we going to wait
until we're old and retired to start traveling, let's see the world now.
So about four years ago we quit our jobs, sold everything we owned,
bought a one-way ticket to Lima Peru and set out on our world travel adventure.
But we knew we really had to be careful with our budget and this
is how we came up with the idea of slow travel.
We knew that Airbnb sometimes gives a big discount when booking a stay for 28 days or longer,
so we decided that we would spend about a month in each place we would go.
It would save us money on housing, it would give us more downtime for our hobbies.
Emily enjoys cross-stitching and I make these YouTube videos for my hobby.
So yeah we started with one month in Lima, then we did a month in Cusco, then a month in Arequipa,
crossed the border into Chile and spent a month in Valparaiso, then Santiago,
into Argentina where we spent a month each in five different cities there,
and I think you get the picture here we're slow travelers,
traveling at a snail's pace, spending about a month in each place.
But right from the beginning in Lima we quickly
realized that we had some flaws in our travel plan.
First it became apparent that this style of travel
was going to have some moments where we would feel quite isolated and alone.
The language barrier made it difficult to meet people,
and Facebook groups for travelers and expats weren't as big back then as they are now,
and we were caught off guard by this because we are both introverts and
didn't really even consider the need for socialization.
But we did meet some nice people along the way, don't get me wrong,
but it's so hard when you meet people you connect with
and then all of a sudden you have to say goodbye
once it's time to move on to the next destination.
Another flaw in our travel plan was that we had no real strategy
for how our life as full-time travelers would come to an end.
We just assumed that we would keep going until either we ran out of money or got tired of it,
but we also knew we didn't want to go back to our former lives in America either.
Some other issues that came up were arriving at an Airbnb apartment that
wasn't accurately portrayed in the listing,
or the stress of dealing with disruptions to our travel plans
and having to come up with an alternative at the last minute.
So yeah there were some tough moments but we weren't ready to quit yet,
because even though there were some hard times,
the good times and the amazing adventures far outweighed the difficulties.
Some of those adventures include Machu Picchu, absolutely spectacular.
We went to Patagonia which has some of the world's most amazing scenery.
We visited Iguazu Falls probably the most dramatic waterfalls on the planet.
And of course Rio which was probably the most vibrant city that we visited.
When our time in South America ended we didn't want to give up and decided to keep going,
and we decided to start the next segment of our world travel journey in Asia.
But we had a little bit of a different focus when we went to Asia.
In addition to some sightseeing each time we went somewhere,
we wanted to keep in the back of our mind the idea of living in the places we were visiting,
and we kind of made a list of things that were important to
us about a city if we were going to live there.
The most important thing is the cost of living, we have to be able to afford everyday life.
Safety is also at the top of the list.
As we get older we know the importance of having access to good healthcare.
We prefer somewhere with pleasant weather,
we like the idea of living somewhere with an expat community
but also don't want somewhere that's overrun by the expats,
I don't want to drive a car so we need good public transportation,
we like to walk so want somewhere with parks or outdoor spaces.
We like to contribute to the community and want to have volunteer opportunities.
We want stable electricity without frequent power outages, good internet speeds,
a country with easy immigration policies,
low air pollution, no natural disasters, no bugs or insects,
and it must have at least one good sushi restaurant.
Okay I know this is getting ridiculous, there is nowhere that has everything we want.
And I was being silly about the sushi, I don't even like sushi.
But yeah, we get it, there is not one single place on this planet that is going to be perfect.
So like I said as we traveled through Asia we really wanted to focus on
evaluating the livability of each place we were visiting.
In October of 2019 we started our time in Asia in Myanmar,
and we knew right away that we would never live here because it's very undeveloped.
But it was a great place to visit, one of the best in the world,
with its absolutely fascinating ancient temples and culture.
Then we hit Chiang Mai, Thailand and this checked
off a lot of those things on the list that we were looking for,
and to this day I think we could be happy living in Chiang Mai,
but we had just started our time in Asia and wanted to keep looking,
maybe we would find somewhere better.
So then we went to Laos, again an absolutely stunning country for visiting
but not developed enough for us for a living.
Then on to Bangkok, a great city but a little high on the cost of living.
Then to Siem Reap, Cambodia,
and the thing we loved about Siem Reap were the volunteering opportunities.
And the Angkor Wat temples there were absolutely brilliant, a must see in Southeast Asia.
But again we wanted to keep looking so we were planning to go to Vietnam next.
However this is when the covid pandemic was starting to spread around the world,
and we thought it might be wise to head to a country that was a little more developed.
So we changed our plans at the last minute and headed to Malaysia.
Just three days after we arrived the country went into lockdown.
But things eventually reopened,
we fell in love with the country, and we thought this is the place!
It had just about everything we wanted.
So we began the application process to receive
a visa that would allow us to stay in Malaysia for 10 years.
We were working with an immigration agent, gathered all of the paperwork,
we were waiting for just one more document to complete the process,
and then BANG, all new applications for this type of visa were suspended.
The program has since restarted but with
new financial requirements that are impossible for us to meet.
We looked into some ways to make it work such as
applying for the visa through the Malaysian state of Sarawak,
but in our age category the financial requirements are still quite high.
We really hope sometime in the future these requirements to
get this visa from Malaysia become less strict.
But we knew we needed to continue our search.
We spent six months in Mexico,
and Mexico has a lot of great things about it but a few negatives as well.
You can watch the video you see in the link there to learn more.
The bottom line is we still wanted to keep exploring to find that special place.
And that brings us to our next destination: Turkey.
Neither myself nor my wife have been to Turkey before,
but after doing some research we know it's definitely a country that
is going to check off many of those boxes.
Although it's become an expensive country for Turkish people
it remains affordable for us as foreigners.
It's a very developed country, it rates high for safety and healthcare,
and I don't know it just seems like Turkey has a lot going for it.
And we like its location because it's kind of right in the middle of the map,
surrounded by places we want to visit in the rest of the world.
We could say "Hey let's go back to Malaysia for a few months"
and then we could come back to our home base in Turkey for a while.
And then say let's go see the animals in Africa and then come back.
Let's go to Europe, let's go visit our family.
We think this would be less exhausting than going to a new place
every month on a never-ending cycle.
So we plan to spend several months exploring Turkey
to determine whether or not Turkey is a place that we think could sort of be our future headquarters.
And we want you to come along with us.
We plan to make a series of videos about our goal
of determining whether or not Turkey is the right place for us.
We have several cities in Turkey picked out but would love to hear your suggestions
down in the comments on places to visit too.
We probably can't get to all of them.
Also be sure to subscribe to our channel so that you can
be notified when we release a video about our search throughout Turkey.
And although we will continue traveling extensively and exploring new places,
we are also excited about the possibility of establishing ourselves somewhere
so that we can have a break from traveling when needed.
Somewhere that's familiar, somewhere we can have lasting friendships.
So there you have it, we'll see if this could become our new home base.
We hope that you will enjoy the videos that we put out and hope that you will join us on our journey.
Thanks for traveling with us!