Well, it’s been a long while since my last blog! I hadn’t realized exactly how long until I logged in today and saw that my last post on here was back in June. So it’s been quite some time!
But I’m back, and ready to go, so let me start by explaining why I quit posting for a few months.
Quite honestly, I think continuous full time travel started to wear Michelle and I down a little bit. We’d been going full stop for over 3 years (with our longest stay in one place being 9 months in Manta, Ecuador). But other than that, we basically traveled to a new location about every month or two. Everything was exciting and the places we stayed at were comfortable (for the most part) and we were enjoying living in AirBnbs and enjoying the freedom that entails, such as living anywhere we wanted, for as long as we wanted. Then, starting in February this year, our travel bubble seemed to have burst (or at least began leaking extensively)! It’s probably because our monthly budget that we have for accommodations held steady, but the prices for everything everywhere began rising, and so for the price we were paying for some really nice places in the beginning, only managed to get us places that we no long really felt comfortable in.
Traveling is wonderful and we wouldn’t trade what we’ve done for the world! But what we started to experience was this…We’d look forward to a new destination with high expectations and eager anticipation, only to arrive and see the AirBnb or hotel that we were going to be staying in. One hotel in Da Nang, Vietnam reminded me of living in a half-way house. Our room smelled like cigarette smoke and we had a neighbor who loved cooking spicy Korean food early in the morning which filled our room with the aroma so strong it burned our nostrils. Another AirBnb in Chiang Mai, Thailand had no operational air conditioning during an extreme heatwave where temperatures were reaching 105°F (40.5°C). It also had the greenest, grossest pool I’ve seen! Oh, and I forgot to mention that the kitchen sink in this little “gem” was actually outside, not in the kitchen but on the balcony. I’m not kidding! To use the sink, we needed to go outside which only let more of the hot outside air in never letting the apartment get below 87.8°F (31°C) no matter how long the air conditioner ran. We left that Airbnb early and spent the next several days in a tiny hotel room where we were able to hear each and every footstep that the guests above us made on our ceiling. For some reason, Michelle and I attract the loudest and most overactive people in a 15 square mile radius every time we stay in an apartment or hotel! But at least there was air conditioning!
After that we had a nice and very much needed reprieve in Chiang Rai, Thailand in a beautiful little and very quiet house!
From there we moved on to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We’d been to Kuala Lumpur before, but the first time we were there in November 2022, we stayed in a high rise apartment building with beautiful amenities, a gorgeous pool, an awesome gym and that we paid roughly $800USD a month for rent. This time we were in for a rude awakening! That same apartment had more than doubled in price in just over a year (way out of our budget) so we needed to rent a different apartment with much less appeal, and a gym that had air conditioning but that didn’t work, a pool that only had 6 lounge chairs for about 1500 people, and a bed that was only slightly more comfortable then sleeping on a park bench. We stayed in that apartment for a few weeks but then decided to treat ourselves with a 5 day getaway to Langkawi, Malaysia. There we encountered the most wonderful bed ever! (One that we now judge all other beds by!) It was heavenly! But after 5 days, we had to return to Kuala Lumpur and our noisy, less than stellar apartment where we began counting down the days until we could leave for good.
I think it was about this time that we started to realize a trend. We found that instead of enjoying the places we were visiting, within a few days we began to count down the days until we could leave, hoping that the next place would be better. That’s when we realized that we were getting burnt out and needed to make a change. We needed to settle down for awhile somewhere, and definitely not in an AirBnb or hotel. Little did we know that our next destination was going to be the place we fell in love with!
After Kuala Lumpur, our next destination was Siem Reap, Cambodia. I’ve mentioned before that Michelle and I watch a lot of Youtube travel vloggers. One of the ones that caught our attention was about an Australian couple who moved to Siem Reap a few years ago. Many of their videos included footage of their travels around the city by scooter that showed the sights and sounds of this area. I can’t explain it, but something about the lush green vegetation and the large trees that shaded many of the streets they traveled along intrigued me. I told Michelle that there was something about Siem Reap that really made me feel like this was going to be the place for us (and I had high hopes for it). But after the last few months we had, neither of us wanted to get our hopes up too high!
It only took about a week after we arrived that we knew this place was for us! I think neither of us wanted to come out and say it first because it just felt too good to be true. I don’t remember which of us was the first to say it, but we were both having the same thoughts. We were falling in love with this place! Instead of our normal routine of counting down the days until we could leave, we found that as each day went by, we were starting to feel a little more sad that we were going to have to leave at all. We both felt that this was the place that we’d been looking for all along! It offers everything we were hoping for, and more! The people here are so nice. They are always smiling and friendly. It’s very safe here as well. The restaurants here are amazing, offering every type of food at very reasonable prices. I even found my favorite coffee from back in the USA at the supermarket here! When I lived in the U.S., my favorite coffee was “Cafe Bustelo”. I haven’t seen that brand of coffee since I left America. But it’s here! And when I found it, I know we were home!!
We stayed for 6 weeks and only left because we’d already booked a non-refundable place in Hua Hin, Thailand. But while we were here, we decided to go ahead and look for a home to rent. Our criteria was simple. It needed to allow dogs, have a pool, and cost less than our monthly rental budget. We contacted a a real estate office here in Siem Reap called IPS Cambodia and the very next day our real estate person showed us some available houses to rent that met our criteria. The very first one we came to was the one we fell in love with.
The house had everything we were looking for and more! It came complete with furniture, cookware, dishes, silverware, cups, glasses, microwave, rice cooker, panini maker, and kitchen utensils. Really the only thing we needed to bring in order to move in were our suitcases! We met the landlord, signed the lease, put down our deposit and then moved to Thailand for a month. The landlord was nice enough to hold our house for us until we got back, so while we were at our airbnb (also a house with private pool), we were counting down the days until we could come back to Cambodia and move in to our new house!
We moved in on October 7th and the first few weeks have been really busy. We needed to get our Visas coordinated and I got my Cambodian Driver’s License so that I can legally drive a car and motorcycle. We also opened up a bank account here and in later blogs, I’ll write about our experiences and the steps that were quite easy to acquire everything we needed.
We’re loving having our own place, knowing that we don’t need to pack up our stuff in a month and move again. We both feel like this house is a blessing from God. It’s a new house, with new appliances and everything works great. It’s set up perfectly for a couple or small family and to be honest, we really couldn’t be any more happy and thankful! Even our landlords (a Danish Husband and his Cambodian wife) have been so nice to us and helpful. We have a pool man and a gardener who come 2 times a week to take care of that stuff for us and that’s included in our monthly rent. (which came under the original budget we were aiming for!).
One of the best parts about this house is that I finally have an office in which to write my blogs! As I mentioned at the top of this one, I’ve gotten a little behind on those for a few reasons. I think the main reason, if I’m honest, was that I was getting “traveler’s fatigue”, and had lost a little of my enthusiasm about what we were doing. Don’t get me wrong. Traveling is great! I would totally do everything we did again without any regret. And the places we’ve visited have been amazing. It really wasn’t so much about the countries we were in that gave us fatigue. It was our accommodations. We were also missing not having a dog! Our intentions were always to find a place again where we could have one. We just didn’t know where that might be.
Well, now we know! It’s Siem Reap, Cambodia!
In the next year, we won’t be doing nearly as much traveling aside from one 2 month visit to Vietnam. I still have lots to write about, I intend to talk about things such as:
- Overseas Driving
- Cambodian Visa Process
- Daily life in Cambodia
- Updates to my Thailand and Malaysia pages
- and more!
I also intend to write at least one blog per week. I hope people still find this interesting. If there is anything you’d like to know, please feel free to contact me and let me know.
God bless you everyone, and safe travels!
Thanks for catching us up Randy. I’ve been very curious about how you are finding SE Asia. I look forward to reading more about the joys and trials of the places you’ve been. Please include a lot of photos! Send greetings to Michelle!
Thanks Kelly! We have really fallen in love with SE Asia. I feel like it’s where we were meant to be! Thank you for reading my blogs. I will include lots of photos, and Michelle sends her greetings to you! We hope you are doing well!