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One month into this wild adventure, and what a month it has been! We’re writing this sitting in a jazz bar in Chiang Mai, Thailand, soaking in all the sounds of the night. The bar is full of locals, expats, and tourists singing, dancing, and jazzing the night away. A perfect environment to reflect on the past month.

In January, we had the opportunity to explore the Philippines, Thailand, Laos, and we’re just wrapping up in Vietnam where we are rounding out our time in SE Asia. If you want to read more about our time in each of the countries we’ve visited, check out our our Where We’ve Been pages on our blog!

January really flew by, especially as we got accustomed to (frankly, we’re still getting accustomed to) full-time travel. A few reflections on what we learned this month:

✈️ Priority Pass is a MUST — For those unfamiliar, Priority Pass is a program that provides access to airport lounges around the world. Having PP has allowed us to stock up on bottled water, beer, and snacks, ultimately saving us money and giving us a comfy place to sit and eat while we wait for our flights. It comes as a complimentary perk through a handful of credit cards!

💻 Carving out time to continually plan and get work done is a challenge — We cannot be trusted to WFH (hotel). We’ve found that it’s much more productive, and enjoyable, if we seek out a fun coffee shop with a good working environment to hunker down and get things done. Saving it for the end of the day in our hotel room has proved unsuccessful at best. Surprisingly, coffee has been nearly as expensive in SE Asia as it is in the US. Guess everyone loves a good quality brew. Currently figuring out how we can ship ourselves this travel pour over.

🫱🏼‍🫲🏽 Collective decision making is hard when it’s 24/7 — We’re discussing, evaluating, compromising, and making decisions constantly, even down to what snack or drink to buy at 7-Eleven. It’s exhausting! We’re learning that sometimes handing over the reins and having a single decision maker (when the stakes are low) will help us conserve our mental and emotional stamina, enabling us to travel longer without wanting to bop each other on the head.

WHAT WE’RE LISTENING TO, WATCHING & READING

BRITT
🎙️ Ten Percent Happier - Adam Grant on Perfectionism & Procrastination
🎙️ Armchair Expert - Anna Kendrick
📺 My Unorthodox Life - Season 2 (Britt’s Rating: 6/10)
📺 Emily in Paris - Season 3 (Britt’s Rating: 6/10)

JUSTIN
📚 The Metaverse - Matthew Ball
📚 I Didn’t Do the Thing Today - Madeline Dore
📺 Kotaro Lives Alone

BOTH
📚 Us - Terrence Real
📺 Jack Ryan - Season 1

FEBRUARY GOALS

1️⃣ Strike up a meaningful conversation at least once a week with both a local and an expat, not just tourists — It’s generally easy to connect with tourists because we’re all on similar adventures, but we’re hoping to continue diving into the culture and customs of the communities we visit. We recognize it takes time to get to know a place, and we’re hoping that we can continue to get out of our comfort zones by connecting with locals and expats as we go along.

2️⃣ Be intentional about micro planning before arriving at the next place — We’ve gotten pretty good at macro planning (e.g., flights, hotels, intracountry travel) and booking things about a month out, but we want to focus on better day to day planning so that we continue to be on the same page and make the best use of our time. We’ve learned that when we don’t align on a plan for the day, we end up doing things that we think the other wants to do, which is not always the case. This results in doing things that neither of us really wanted to do in the first place, making rash decisions, and eating bad food (which is our least favorite thing!).

3️⃣ Figure out how to better utilize our website to share and connect — We’ll continue sharing our travels through Instagram, but we recognize that this medium does not always provide a good platform (see Ben’s article referenced below👇🏽) for genuinely connecting and sharing reality. We want to think about how to better engage through long-form reflections on our travels, including things we’re learning, people we’re meeting, and everything in between (like this email!).

FRIENDS DOING COOL THINGS

Ben Weiss — I (Justin) would be remiss not to acknowledge where some of the inspiration for this newsletter came from. My friend Ben took a personal sabbatical / career break to recharge in 2022 after stepping away from the company he founded. During that time, Ben wrote an article about maintaining relationships that really resonated with me because, like Ben, I also find it difficult to maintain strong connections with friends and family over social media, and I also enjoy expressing my thoughts through writing. Ben recently wrapped up his sabbatical and landed a job at BizLove, which sounds like a really cool company. Congrats, Ben! And thanks for letting me ~borrow~ some of your ideas / structure for our newsletter! 😊

Kelsey Casey — Our friend Kelsey recently started sharing her gift of incredible travel planning with the world when she became a Travel Advisor with Fora Travel. We are grateful to have traveled with Kelsey in September 2021 to Denmark and Slovenia where we got a taste of her incredible travel planning ninja skills. We’ve described Kelsey’s style as perfectly researched and organized, but not overly itinerized. She has a way of planning the perfect day… every day… without a stressfully rigid agenda or schedule. The balance between planning just enough to have an amazing trip and over planning is a very fine line, and Kelsey strikes that balance better than anyone we’ve had the opportunity to travel with. She’s the Goldilocks of travel. We try to channel our inner Kelsey when planning our adventures… and we’re definitely still figuring it out. Keep it up, Kelsey! Love seeing you pursuing your dreams.

WHERE WE’RE HEADED IN FEBRUARY 
Feel free to send any tips, recommendations, or thoughts our way!

Australia — We’ll be spending our time on the East Coast with a week in and around Melbourne, five days in Airlie Beach where we’ll see the Great Barrier Reef, and then five days in Brisbane / Gold Coast / Noosa. We’re looking for ideas for day trips around Melbourne!

New Zealand — We rented a camper van and we are going to spend three weeks driving around the country starting on the South Island in Christchurch and ending on the North Island in Auckland! We have a very loose plan on where we’ll drive and camp, but we’ll hopefully have a more structured plan in the coming weeks.

JANUARY RECAP — PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES
…but actually no trains… and add ferries.

Phoenix (PHX) ✈️ Los Angeles (LAX) ✈️ Hong Kong (HKG) ✈️ Manila (MNL) ✈️ Puerto Princess (PPS) 🚌 Sabang 🚌 El Nido (ENI) ✈️ Coron (USU) ✈️ Manila (MNL) ✈️ Bangkok (BKK) ✈️ Phuket (HKT) ⛴️ Ko Phi Phi ⛴️ Phuket (HKT) ✈️ Chiang Mai (CNX) ✈️ Luang Prabang ✈️ Hanoi (HAN)

That’s it for this month! If you made it to this point… thanks for reading! Don’t hesitate to reach out if anything we shared resonated with you, if you have tips on places we should visit, questions about what we’re up to, or if you just want to say hello. We’d love to hear from you!

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