Q&A about full-time travel

Sam.

Thanks.

We are gonna go to the pool and then to the beach. My kind of day.

Since it's really hard to make the pool and the beach interesting. After lunch, we're gonna do Q and A.

Yesterday for lunch, we bought these thingies called Samoas from this Indian guy standing by our pool. And today he's back. There are only 20 baht, which is like less than a dollar. There's Nate.

Buying the Samoas from the Samoan guy. Here he comes.

Get him $2 that we can spend today. Like a.

Mexican empanada. Empanada. It's like one of those Mexican and things, except it has potatoes and curry in the middle. Thank you.

Lunchtime.

There's our scuba instructor, Mike.

He's the best.

During our Valentine's Q and A, we got tons of questions that we didn't get a chance to answer.

So we thought we'd take today to answer some of them.

For those of you who don't know us, we thought we would start from the very beginning. So in 1989, Nate was born.

No, we're not doing that. We'll make you a timeline.

We don't usually carry paper around with us, so Nate is improvising. You're stealing a leaf for our timeline.

Around 2005. Ish. Nate and I met when I got to high school.

In 2007, Nate asked me to prom on the beach on spring break. Then we dated for six and a half years until he proposed on the same beach.

But the proposal was way better.

In 2013, as soon as Kara finished college, we got married. After getting married, we went on our honeymoon to Belize.

And this is where our travel story kind of begins. I was the one who booked our honeymoon, but I kind of messed up. I accidentally booked our flight a day too late. So we got kicked off our all inclusive island a day early and had to spend a night in this random town called Plasencia. It ended up being one of our favorite days of the entire trip, just exploring the little town. And that's when we knew we might want to travel.

In 2013, Nate discovered travel hacking.

My new hobby took us to nine different countries in our first two years of marriage.

During those first two years of traveling together, we always talked about leaving to travel full time one day, but we never seriously thought we would do it until 1/9. Beginning of 2015, we were at Dairy Queen eating blizzards, and we just decided we were gonna do it. We were gonna spend 2015 saving and planning our trip and packing up our apartment to spend 2016 traveling the world.

We decided there was no better time than now. We don't have kids. We lived in an apartment. My brother could take over my business, and Kara could sadly quit her job as a nanny.

I miss you, Leslie. Family.

And here we are on the island of Koh Tao in Thailand.

We did it.

We're doing it.

So now that you have a little background of how we got to this place point, we thought we'd jump on answering some of the questions that we didn't get to on Valentine's Day.

The first question is, when did you decide to start vlogging?

The, like, back. Back story is when we first decided we wanted to take this trip. We bought a really nice camera, One of our friends is a wedding planner, and things just fell into place. And then all of a sudden, one day, we were filming a wedding for somebody we didn't know, which was, like, this crazy, stupid idea. Thankfully, it worked out.

So that's kind of how we first got into, like, doing videos and film. And then since that one worked out, Kara got to do a few more. And so by the time we left for our trip, Kara had done, like, five or six weddings.

Yeah.

So she was pretty good with editing video, and video just kind of seemed like the best way to capture and share our trip. We didn't know that we would do daily vlogs. I actually told people not to count on it. But then we did the first one, and we got some really good feedback, and the second one and the third one, and people continue to say nice things, so it kind of felt like we couldn't stop.

I just couldn't.

And we were having fun with it, so now we're doing daily vlogs.

Next question. Have y' all gotten sick yet out of all the weird food you've consumed? I think I would have been multiple times. Unless the doctor's advice really works.

Not like sick sick.

We really haven't been sick. Thanks for asking that question. Now we're gonna be sick. But, yeah, Our doctor told us to eat a Pepto Bismol tablet within 30 minutes after eating something sketchy, and it should keep you from getting sick. The problem is we can never remember to bring it with us. So we've eaten a lot of weird foods without the Pepto, and we've been fine.

We've taken Pepto, like, twice.

Are you battling bed bugs? Thank you for that as well. No, we haven't. How in the world did you pack so light for a year of travel? It was not easy. Definitely what I stressed about the most the whole year before we left. Because I love clothes. So I'm gonna do a whole separate vlog explaining everything I brought and what I wish I still had and all of that. But just a few things. I packed everything that matches everything. Like, I can wear any of my tops with any of my bottoms. I only have three pairs of shoes. Everything is dry fit. So you just wear it like four or five times.

Or you have to wash it or.

A romper.

Yeah, just wear my romper every day.

I cut my toothbrush in half so there's less. Less plastic to take up room in my bag.

He didn't do that.

Heard about people doing that. Next question. In what ways so far does this style of travel feel different than a regular vacation?

It's totally different. When you go on a vacation, it's like you're taking a break from life. You want to just do everything, like eat everything. And it's just this big fun week where you just fit as much fun as possible well.

And you spend all of your money.

Exactly. Because it's your one week of vacation. You go all out. Well, our life is like vacation. And so we can't live like that every single day or we would have no money and we would be super fat and super tired. Like, we have to remember to take breaks and rest and go to the grocery store and not just go out to eat every single meal. Even though we're really bad.

And you can't just pay for everything. You have to pick and choose. Everybody made a big deal about me not letting Kara ride the Ferris wheel.

There's just other things we'd rather spend money on sometimes.

Like food mostly. Basically we just travel slower and spend less money. What things do you miss most from home?

Oh, I have one.

Me too.

Clean bathrooms that have toilet paper.

Mexican food.

Yes.

I need bottomless chips and salsa so bad it doesn't exist anywhere else.

And friends and family. Not in that order.

And my doggie, Winnie.

Toilet paper, Mexican food. Friends and family winning in this order.

Maybe Mexican food and toilet paper should be switched.

I'll take Mexican over toilet paper. What direction does the water spin in the toilets in each country? I have no idea. A lot of our toilets are holes in the ground. You don't flush them.

And the ones here, it like shoots out of the front. And you're not supposed to put toilet paper in the.

Yeah. If you could go back and have a do over of one experience from your journey so far, what would it be and how would you do it differently I have one.

Go for it.

So we talked about this in our vlog, the Angkor Wat sunrise. You can watch it here.

We heard that you can go watch the sunrise in Angkor Wat. Like, that is a thing to do. So one morning we go. It was super early. There were a jillion people. It was not this calm, peaceful, beautiful experience like we thought it was going to be. And it just kind of took away from it so much. So I would. If I could do it again, I would get up that early to see the sunrise, but instead of going to Angkor Wat, I would go to another temple and be the only ones there for hours. Probably because Angkor Wat is always gonna be crowded. You can always go back to it later in the afternoon.

Good advice.

Thanks.

I don't know.

I've enjoyed our trip. I don't have any big regrets.

Aww.

Yeah. At least not that I can think of.

Do you miss your wardrobe, or is it easy having all your clothes basically picked out for you? I do miss my wardrobe. There are lots of things that I wish I had, but it is kind of nice, just like knowing that this is what I have. You have to wear it. It saves me a lot of time.

I literally packed two pairs of khaki shorts and two pairs of khaki pants, and all of my shirts go with all my pants. So easy. Love it. I'm just gonna hang those up in my closet whenever we come back and just wear the same thing. I will say it's easier to do that when you're traveling because you're not seeing the same people every day. So those people don't know that all you wear is khaki.

And that is so true. That helps.

Seriously? That's what it says. In your travels so far, do you find yourself feeling more grateful for your home country?

You say you sick?

I would say definitely. There's a ton that we take for granted that you don't really realize until you see the rest of the world. But right now, we're enjoying experiencing other cultures and. And living elsewhere. But we look forward to going home one day. Last question. Does going to dinner still feel like a day, or does it simply feel routine?

Let me show you kind of what dinner looks like.

Did you see that she had her baby. When do we go to Chiang Mai again? How long are we gonna be in New Zealand?

Look at this post on Instagram.

Did I tell you what my mom texted me yesterday?

Ooh, this person posted a picture of Morocco. We should go there.

Okay.

They posted another picture of their dog.

Look, Theresa and Kyle are pregnant.

So we usually use dinner to catch up on what's going on on our phones. There's just usually WI fi at restaurants.

It's just opposite of how it was at home. At home, we were apart all day long. So at night at dinner, our phones were in another room. We talked to each other. We caught up on our day, and that was our quality time. But all day long. All day long, it's quality time. Don't act like you don't love it. We are constantly doing things together, and so it really is important, I think, to have some time where you're just kind of.

And we know people are probably looking at us like we're super antisocial, but.

I think it's a good system for now. Yeah. Love you. Love you.

We hope you enjoy this Q and A.

If you have any more questions, leave them in the comments below and we'll do another one of these one day.

Are you as hungry as I am?

Yes.

Let's go get dinner.

Hey. You cannot come in here.

What?

Quit.

Quit.

Cat person. They're not gonna like that.