Can you imagine that in a few short weeks you’ll be jetting off on a journey to nine countries and more than 15 cities over the course of 67 days?? And not just you and your significant other…but with two young children in tow? Well I can, as my family and I will embark on our craziest travel adventure so far. What was originally intended to be a slow, relaxing trip to see friends and family now has us averaging under 5 days per stop, without even including travel time. Kelly and I, normally very confident, are uncertain if we will survive this trip with our sanity intact and our businesses still functioning.
So why are we doing this?? It can be boiled down to three main reasons:
- visiting family and friends
- developing our business ties and opportunities in Asia and
- scouting for a future relocation destination.
Yes, we do plan to relocate to Asia in a few years. We are targeting summer of 2022 but could easily end up moving sooner than that. The move would just be temporary, likely 2-4 years, but I imagine that the homebase we choose would continue to serve us for the rest of our lives. The five cities under primary consideration are five of the cities we will be spending time in, so we expect this trip to help clarify things.
What are we thinking?? Aren’t we concerned?? Of course we are! Traveling with young kids is a hassle. They slow us down, they don’t always cooperate, they require packing and carrying TONS of stuff. And sometimes they don’t like to sit still in a metal tube for many hours in a row (adults aren’t very good at that either). But to be honest we aren’t too worried about that aspect. Our toddler is a veteran. In less than 3.5 years he has flown 38 times and been to eight other countries. Even the baby is pretty experienced, having flown nine times and traveled to three countries in just his first year. It won’t be a picnic (actually what’s up with that phrase cause picnics aren’t that easy to plan or execute) but we have done this enough to know we can get through it.
What’s more of a concern is not having daycare to watch the kids so that we can get all our work done and even recharge a little bit. Instead, we will be with the boys nearly 24/7 and the uncertainty of our workload makes juggling everything a bit of a concern. I am expecting to put in about 12 hours a week minimum on the real estate business and this website. If I can get any more time then I’ll take it, but 12 is probably the bare minimum required. I haven’t spoken to Kelly, but I imagine she is in a similar position. It will be a struggle but if she’s willing to scale her business up slowly then she could wait until we return to the states to intensify her schedule. In any case, finding a way to work while watching the kids and traveling from city to city is our primary concern and hopefully we will make it work.
If you are interested, please follow along on our journey!! I’ll update regularly…assuming I can find the time 😉
