hi guys i'm Lee, I'm from canada and I'm Max and I'm from Australia
hello everyone happy Saturday we're doing a bonus video because the one and
only Lee from Max and Lee and Occy is here... she lives in a self converted Sprinter van as
well with her partner and their dog and we actually met up in Mexico while we
were there we did a van tour with them and we thought this was a really good
time now that we're all back hanging in Toronto to reshare or finally share that
footage with you guys so Max & Lee when we met that Mexico
we're kind of like yeah we're going to start a van tour we film one it was
super awkward yeah we're like guys like no worries we'll film event or for you
were so relieved we're like you all fail on the tour and edit it and put it
online I mean now they're finally on YouTube and they are killing it! If it wasn't for you and Minimal Millennials, Christian and
Aubrey I think if we never met them and we kick their butt and now they're
crushing it so if you guys don't know them go over to their channel they'll be
linked below check them out they're amazing my toes were having fun just
chit-chatting at the camera we do want to show you her whole family unit and
her home so we're gonna cut to the footage of their van tour and now filmed
in Mexico filmed in Mexico see you there you
we chose the taller van because we're both pretty big humans I'm six foot one
Lee's 510 we wanted to be able to stand up fully because of that we didn't
really insulate the floor very much we kept it pretty minimal there because my
head touches at the top as it is but I can stand up straight with that so nice
and tight there we decided to do it this way because we wanted to look cater for
Aki as well because he's one of the van members and we wanted him to be able to
be up front so he spends most of his time where he is on the 6-inch memory
foam riding in comfort while we're on the less than most comfortable front
seats we've got our fridge actually under the couch here Aki if you've been
so kind you can move food so under here we've got our fridge it's a 12 volt
Dometic it's been awesome it's run six months without really turning off talked
to 72 beer cans a big sale point for us when we bought it
now I kow a couch during the day and then it slides out to a bed at night it
just slides these ones out and yeah it becomes a double bed we put these these
through down this one jumps into the front seat and yeah it's really easy
takes us about a minute to set up the bed so the reason we chose to not have a
fixed bed or one of the reasons we chose is because we wanted to have kind of
like a free open space when we were in it day to day and it really feels like
it opens a van up this way shaking out the sheets every day is crucial like we
get so much sand in the bed we spend 99% of our time over the last six months at
the beach and if we didn't do that we'd have dog hair sand everywhere so we
shake it out every day and keeps us a little bit cleaner
most of our storage is under here and we've got way too much stuff at the
moment it's a bit of a mess camping gear with a snorkel gear we've got our
electrical under there as well and some spare fresh water in case we
part of building your own van is learning as you go and we accidentally
made our seats a little bit too high we plan for them to be 55 centimeters that
one's supposed to be the top and that ended up being the base so we built this
handy little box so we actually really love now it's our step stool so that
when you're sitting on the couch you're perfectly comfortable as if you were
sitting at a lower couch and we call it off you seat because it fits some of off
these points some sun blocks and tape a whole lot of odds so we added a shelf up
here as well this is actually where we store all of our bedding we have both
pillows do baishi extra blanket it fits our surfboard it's really awesome
because it's an extra layer of insulation up here and mainly it holds
our curtains which we close at night and it makes it completely blackout
you can't tell her in here if we have all the lights on one of our favorite
parts of the decor in the van it's our Polaroid wall we take photos with
everybody who we've met along the way and spend time with and at the end of
our journey we'll be able to take all these snapshots and it'll play out the
story of our travels we met when I was working holiday visa in Australia and we
both fell in love with fan life our second date max took me down the great
ocean road and we went in his little blue Volkswagen van at the time with
just a bed in the back and we were comfortable we cooked we pictured oh my
god we can do this for a long time and then yeah we moved to Canada bought a
Sprinter van started building it and now we've been on the road for over six
months we spent three months going through counter in the US we've been in
Mexico for over three months and we're on the way to Panama and we're
absolutely loving it I think he's like half the reason people
love our band like it's half their finger bein as cool and the rest think
that Oggy is amazing which he is he's a total babe and a great travel companion
we decided to put the light switch here so it's perfect because when we walk in
we can turn it on it's four LEDs on dimmers and then we also chose it there
because when we slide the bed out it's right next to my hand so I can turn them
off but no I yes for the electrical we did 200 watts
of solar we have it hooked up to two six volt batteries that are hooked in series
400 watt inverter that runs a little blender charges all our appliances and
from the electrical we run our fridge all the time the fan and the lights a
few months into our trip we actually decided to change up our table situation
the one we had was awesome beautiful hundred year old barn wood but we just
made it too big from the space and it was really hard to get around any men we
just didn't use it very often so we've decided to lash out and buy one of these
Luger and table legs they're actually designed for boats we hope we keep the
tabletop just stored next to my surfboard to you but the way they go on
takes like 10 seconds to set up just jumps on this one and this just tightens
up and then the great thing about this is you straighten up have two of us
sitting here or you can rotate it around it spins 360 so perfectly getting out of
the way small space and same with getting other way of our fridge when I
designed the van I already had these two surfboards here and so I essentially
built that space around it this second ball was slightly too tall so I had to
notch out the top there for it to fit in but it's like it's been an ideal spot
for him because they take up a minimal amount of space as possible one of the
main reasons we wanted the surfboards in so I was because we essentially wanted
the van from the outside could look like an old electricians van which it is so
we want it to be super self welcome to our kitchen area it was really important
for max and I to have a lot of space while we're cooking and cleaning and
doing everything you need to do to live in a van our favorite parts honestly are
probably our cabinetry doors here they give us a ton of space space is limited
when you live in 60 square feet and we were both worried about not having
enough so we started by building overhead covers over here fit all of our
clothes and way more than we even and here is our pantry the Smith extra
water most importantly Max's latte equipment which he can make you a mean
latte at any point extra food other storage which brings over to this side
of your kitchen we do have dimmer lights underneath which are helpful at night
they can really brighten up the area our overhead cover it's that all of our life
necessities - fresh spices like daily fruits and vegetables something that I
haven't say vaquita van life is baby wipes we made sure that we sunk our
overhead cupboards in so that when we were leaning over the kitchen we had
comfortably a lot of space as for cooking we use a portable propane cooker
we have a hole here that brings the gas through so we can cook outside or inside
and we mainly cook outside it gets really hot down here in Mexico and it's
nice to have the doors open all the time these doors as well just hold all of our
pots and pans dog food which brings us over to one of my favorite features of
our van is our sink the galvanized tub is huge it's very practical faucet as
well is really key because you can move around and you can wash anything you
need in here we've often thought we'd wash our clothes in here too if we
needed to but we haven't needed to do that yet we've used chalk board paint
which is quite easy it's actually just applied background we consider doing
tile but we just weren't sure with all the bumps because we were planning a
drive all the way down to Panama we spent a lot of time on the details that
you know it took us you know five months while both working full-time to do this
because we wanted we enjoy doing the details obviously at some points like I
really couldn't wait just to get in the van
but now that we're living in here it's so homey we absolutely love that extra
at a time we took to make it like this is our first home together so it meant
more to us than just a home on wheels temporarily like it was our first place
together so we love like cooking outside especially with the heat and so we made
this little table for being how to put our propane out and what I did was I put
a propane hose that slots out from this one so it can just go into the propane
they're super easy to cook we often set up another table we've got behind this
is well to put all our cooking stuff on coffee stuff most importantly this one
here is actually where we fill up our water for our water tank for the dishes
goes in there we've got a forty liter tank behind it and you just hook up a
normal garden hose tap to that one we also have a twenty five liter freshwater
tank on the other side and that's what we use is our drinking water and then we
have another five five gallon I've got okay underneath the bed when you're in
the Baja or anywhere in Mexico like you drink way more water it's super hot and
it's always nice to have extra water if we don't need it we have friends that
run out of water and we've learned now that like the little extras can help
other people just as much as they can help you and it's always nice to be the
friend that actually can help out and give stuff rather than always taking
things we've had a little bit of extra space here between our cabinetry and the
van door we just got this little hanging rack from Ikea and it's proving really
handy mainly for drying clothes hanging extra shirts and anything you need it's
just nice to have some hanging space in the van because we don't have swivel
seats we figured we may as well use it for some storage but we were also once
again considering Aki he likes to ride up front too and it's good to have all
three of us across so I made this little seat that fits inside the gap here when
we made it to the same height but another key I wanted from this seat was
better cupholders anyone that has like a know six or before sprinter the couple
knows the cupholders are really far away it's really awkward to grab when you're
driving so I put in these two extra cupholders in the seat and they're so
good I've got the bigger ones for the bigger bottles
we use them all the time seed itself opens up Aki mostly science it's back
Larry is here on the 6-inch memory foam but when he does want to come up oh come
here he likes to sit up here and he this is
his uh this is his other spot sometimes if we're on a very safe road Lee and him
might switch it up so he can stick his head out the window and get a bit of
breeze a big question people have like do we have a washing do we get a shower
we do have a solar shower outside that you works perfectly well we have a
pop-up a shower tent if you want privacy but this little guy is our poop shovel
if you need to go outside and there's no drop toilet it's like the best thing you
can do for the environment is to dig a deep hole preferably into the tide line
or somewhere where no one's gonna be going but it's proven to come in handy
and we've actually lent it out a few times if you also get stuck in the sand
it helps dig you out too so everything in the band is multifunctional
hope you enjoyed the video we're back in Toronto you already know that we have a
lot of fun meeting max and Lee as you can tell their vans amazing they're
amazing I hope you enjoyed the vid stir if you
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because we learned everything I think we could talk forever so I'm gonna sign it
off here peace out peace