Our Bucket List for Slow Travel

We Share Our Top Destinations for Long-Term Travel

With planes grounded worldwide and borders closed, what better time to share our bucket list for our future travels? Like everyone else, we’re stuck waiting out the lockdown and dreaming of far-away days when international travel is once again a reality. While we are grateful to be safe and healthy, our hearts belong on the road, discovering the world through our nomadic, slow travel lifestyle.

With that in mind, we’ve assembled a list of all the places we would like to spend at least a month or two once the world re-opens. This isn’t just a random list of places that we’ve assembled after scouring travel blogs for ideas. In fact, we’ve already visited each of these destinations as fast travelers — vetted them, if you will — and have found them to be worthy of a much longer visit.

There are a few attributes we look for in a slow travel destination: a rich cultural experience; beautiful surroundings where we can get out in nature; and an interesting food culture.

Finally, we love getting a lot of value for our dollar. So we always appreciate low cost-of-living countries where every dollar we spend gets us that much more. We talk more about what we look at as full-time travelers in a recent video about lessons learned after six month on the road.

If you’ve been following our channel, you’ll know that we spent more than six years working at expats in Singapore before heading off for a life of full time travel. So we’ve spent a lot of time exploring Southeast Asia and that’s where we’ll kick things off.

Vietnam

Being so close to Vietnam, we’ve had the good fortune to take a number of short trips there and had a taste of some of the main tourist destinations, including Hanoi, Hoi An, Ha Long Bay, Ho Chi Min.

Beyond the beautiful countryside, interesting culture, and super low cost of living, the main reason we would want to stay for a month or more is the food. We love the variety and freshness of Vietnamese food. In fact, some of our favourite memories of our trips to Vietnam are from the food tours we took.

Thailand

The next country on our list is also well known for its delicious dishes. Thailand is a popular tourist destination for good reasons: it’s warm year round, inexpensive, and easy to get around. But for us it’s the beach life that keeps pulling us back. Having spent many long weekends there diving, rock climbing or just relaxing at the beach, we could definitely a couple months of chilling out in Thailand.

It also has great infrastructure for long term travelers. Chiang Mai in particular is a great spot for expats and digital nomads.

Moving on into the rest of Asia, our next pick is a country where we spent only a very short amount of time but we always wished we could have gotten to know better.

Taiwan

We went to Taiwan for a long weekend — it was a four hour flight from Singapore — and during that trip we barely skimmed the surface of Taipei.

What we loved about Taiwan was the mix of modern and hipster and traditional culture all thrown in together. There were fancy shopping districts here and historic temples there. And of course Taipei has a really interesting street food culture with night markets all over the city.

It also has incredible natural beauty and tons of hiking, which we didn’t get to experience on that short trip. Overall, there is definitely enough to keep us busy for a month or two

Japan

Our next pick for Asia is going to be Japan. Between it’s incredibly modern cities and its traditional culture which you can still glimpse by staying in Ryokan inns, it is a truly fascinating place to visit. Of course, the real draw for us is the great hiking on offer in Japan. We did some amazing multi-day treks through forests and mountains with Buddhist temples and shrines marking the way.

We got to end each day by getting into a traditional onsen bath and then eating an amazing omakase dinner made up of dozens of little dishes.

Of course, we haven’t forgotten that Japan is not a low cost destination by anyone’s definition. We did have some wonderful hiking trips there but they really added up. If we went back for a month of slow travel, we would need to find a wallet-friendly way to do so.

Our next pick is a low cost destination, so maybe it would help balance out a month in Japan.

Sri Lanka

We spent a couple weeks vacation there and I found that there was so much more I wanted to do. For us, Sri Lanka is all about experiencing the beautiful natural settings. We were really taken by the diversity of the landscape: beautiful beaches in the south and lush tea hills further north. We also didn’t have a chance to experience the wildlife on a safari so that would be worth going back for.

Our next pick also offers spectacular scenery but at much higher altitudes

Nepal

What I love about trekking in Nepal is that you can hike between tea houses which provide all meals and accomodations at a very reasonable cost so you don’t need to carry a lot of gear. It makes us really excited to imagine going back to do more long distance treks with our two dogs by our side.

Our next pick brings us to the other side of the world now.

Mexico

In Mexico, it’s possible to immerse yourself in local food and culture but the country also offers a really solid infrastructure for nomads and retirees who want to set up for a longer term stay.

Moving down to Central America, the place we’d most like to return to for slow travel is…

Costa Rica

From the incredible rain forests to the beach vibes on both coasts, there is tons to see and do in this beautiful country. Costa Rica also has quite good infrastructure which has made it a popular expat hangout for the past few decades. We could really go for a month or two of “pura vida” — or the simple life — on the beaches of the Caribbean coast.

Our next stop is Europe, which had many contenders for our bucket list, although we have just two spots left for this list of the top 10 worldwide.

Greece

It’s really not hard to justify a month or two in Greece…

Greek food
Mediterranean climate
Beautiful beaches
Historic sights
Low cost (compared to western Europe)

Finally, the last country on our slow travel bucket list…

Portugal

This is a country that really offers the complete package for a slow traveler. It’s got all the history and culture that you expect from a European destination but at a fraction of cost. It gets less tourist traffic versus countries like Spain and, as a result, it has a reputation of being more welcoming.

It offers delicious rustic foods made from simple ingredients which is one of our favourite ways to eat. In terms of geography, we love the mix of rugged coastline and beaches and little fishing villages to discover. Now all we have to do is wait for the world to become safe again for international travel.

Those are the top 10 on our slow travel bucket list. How does that compare to your list?

Our Bucket List for Slow Travel