The Truth About Full-Time Travel (After Three Years on the Road)

It’s hard to believe it but, as of this month, we’ve been traveling full time for three whole years. That’s a lot of time to have passed since we quit our jobs, got rid of everything we owned and just hit the road. 

It’s hard to believe it but, as of this month, we’ve been traveling full time for three whole years. That’s a lot of time to have passed since we quit our jobs, got rid of everything we owned and just hit the road. 

In that time we’ve had one unforgettable experience after another. We walked the walls of Dubrovnik; we hiked the mountains of Albania with our two little dogs; we lived like locals and drank wine with breakfast in Valencia; we even went to a Lucha Libre wrestling show in Mexico City — that last one was totally wild

More than 12 countries and 40+ Airbnbs later, you’d think we’d be total pros by now. Yet we’re still making mistake after mistake. Or, as we like to say, we’ve created many learning opportunities for ourselves. 

Our journey hasn’t all been all Instagram moments — and we say that as a warning to would-be travellers. This is not an easy lifestyle. Of course, we have all the glamour and excitement of chasing those bucket list moments but it all comes with a cost. 

Over the past three years, we’ve made mistakes — a lot of them. And even though those mistakes were really stressful at the time — we’ve had many sleepless nights — revisiting them will hopefully provide some pointers for those who want to pursue their own adventures. 

Back when we were working for a living, we knew we wanted to see the world but we also knew that it wasn’t going to be easy. We had a million questions and no clear answers. Where would we start our journey? How long were we going to travel? Was it going to be months or even years? What happens if we start traveling full time and just hate it? And the big question: Did we even have enough money to make this lifestyle feasible?

Despite all the unanswered questions, we did it.

We quit our jobs, got rid of everything we owned and that was it. We were off for a life of adventure. And we really had to make it work because there was no way we were going back to our old lives. We were completely done with our high-stress corporate lifestyles in Singapore. 

We were off to our first destination, which was Poland. The reason we chose Poland was because it was the very cheapest non-stop, one-way flight we could get from Singapore over to Europe. Already that should signal that we kept ourselves on a very tight budget during our first year of travel. 

We were worried that travel would be a lot more expensive than we anticipated. And that it certainly was. Our Airbnb budget in particular was way too lean and meant that we ended up in some very cluttered, worn out, ill-equipped apartments for our first few months. We were trying to stick with a small budget and it was just too small for the level of comfort that we ultimately wanted. We started increasing our accommodation budget every few months until it was finally at the right level.

But being too frugal didn’t just affect accommodations; it also affected entertainment as well. In the beginning of our travels, we didn’t want to spend much on entertainment because it was just so exciting walking around and taking in the sights in these new cities. And that approach was great — up to a point. Eventually we wanted to go inside some of those sights and of course, that always costs money. We found that we needed to loosen the purse strings enough so that we could fully enjoy each destination. 

Of course, it is possible to take an ultra frugal approach to travel and find it very enjoyable. But we personally found that we prefer to spend a little more to get a lot more out of each destination. We didn’t want to go to Istanbul and not go into Dolmabahce Palace or go to Florence and not go to the Uffizi Gallery.

Speaking of Florence, by the time we got there we were five months into our travels and we had started to realise that we were spending an awful lot of time just talking to each other and no one else. While we really enjoy spending time together, eventually we need to have conversations with other human beings as well. 

It dawned on us that we didn’t really know any fellow travellers.

We had no real community. We’d left our expat life behind in Singapore and, of course, we had family and friends we were in touch with back in our hometown. However, as great as it is to connect with faraway loved ones on Zoom, eventually it’s healthy to meet up with people in real life. 

We realized that full time travel can be a lonely lifestyle, even when you’re a couple. Based on our experience, we strongly recommend that you build your own community long before you pack your suitcases. We find that having a social media presence with our YouTube channel really helps. We’ve met a lot of people that way, both in person and virtually. While you certainly don’t need a YouTube channel to make new friends, even a minimal social media presence will be helpful for connecting you with like-minded people. 

Around the time that we were leaving Florence, our travels suddenly ground to a halt. Why…because of COVID, of course. Like everyone else, we spent the next many months wondering when the world would finally open up again. When it finally did, we ran into the next issue and this is one that we’ve been struggling with ever since. 

When Europe opened up, we jumped on a plane to Greece but we didn’t have any plans beyond spending a month in Athens. From the moment that we arrived in Athens, we were on the clock, trying to figure out where we would go next. Ever since then, we’ve found that travel planning has become a huge part of our lives. Instead of taking time to enjoy where we are now, we’re knee deep in Airbnb and Tripadvisor, blogs and forums, trying to figure out our next leg of travel. 

A perfect example: we just spent the last four months in Mexico and during that time I can’t even count the number of hours we spent planning the next seven months in South America. When we should have been focused on enjoying Oaxaca or Mexico City, we found ourselves working out logistics for the next set of countries. We’ve never seen this discussed on any travel blog or vlog but, seriously, the planning part of this lifestyle is a huge time suck. 

That brings us to our biggest crisis ever, which happened just last month in Mexico. To give a little context, we’ve been very cavalier about how we might handle an emergency situation in a foreign country. We’ve never taken the time to think through what happens in an emergency. If one of us gets hurt in a forgeign country, what do we do? Of course, we have global health insurance so technically we’re financially covered to handle an emergency. But we’d never actually had to deal with one until our month in Oaxaca.

Gillian’s family was visiting and on the very first day of their trip — during the very first hour of the very first day — Gillian’s mother fell and broke her wrist. All of a sudden we needed to figure out where the nearest hospital was and how to get there. Then she had to have surgery, get a metal plate, a bone graft — it turned out to be a very serious break. Of course, all of this is happening in Spanish; almost no one at the hospital spoke English. 

In the end, she was fine; the quality of care was very good. But then it came time to pay the bill. The hospital wouldn’t accept credit cards or a letter of guarantee from the insurance company; apparently this is very common in smaller hospitals in Mexico. So we had to run to ATMS all over town, using every debit card and every credit card we had to put together enough cash. And we’re talking thousands of dollars to cover a surgeon, nurses, a night in the hospital. Everything was fine in the end but it was a sobering introduction to dealing with an emergency in a foreign country.  

Despite all these ups and downs, we did it; we’ve lived in a dozen countries over the past three years.

We did it despite multiple waves of the pandemic and many months of lockdown. We know that full time travel is a workable lifestyle but we don’t know how long we can keep doing it. We’re still enjoying it now — more or less — but travel burnout does catch up with us. 

We still love exploring new places but some days we’re tired of the demands of full-time travel. We just want to go to sleep in our own bed in our own home instead of a random Airbnb. We miss having friends and family that we can see anytime we want; we miss being surrounded by a familiar environment. We’re finding that coming back to our hometown about twice a year really helps.  

And we’re actually not done with travel yet. After three years of travel, we’ve decided to dial it up a notch. We’ve got some big changes coming up with the next leg of our journey. It’s a brand new approach to travel and we’re exploring a whole new part of the world. You can find out all about it in our latest livestream Q&A.