thewills'wanderings

I guess this is the question we have been asked the most often. People that don’t know us, like the random strangers we’ve got talking to at the beach, or the travel agent or bank teller to name a few seem to assume at first  that we must have HUGE amounts of money and that we are cruising the world staying at resorts where the girls will be in kid’s clubs and we’ll be lying beside a pool. Once we get talking a bit more they soon realise that this isn’t the case. They then seem completely fascinated and I’ve been amazed at how radical they think this idea is!

Those who know us well, though don’t seem quite as surprised that we’re doing it, they just wonder HOW?

To answer that, all I can say is that we’ve decided that it’s something we really want to do, so we are sacrificing, no investing a considerable sum of money to do it without being completely reckless and blowing all of our house money. Because we have done a bit of buying and selling property and we sold a year ago at the top of the market it is the perfect time for us to do it, and we wouldn’t have been able to do it if we hadn’t sold.

We have also been committed to the hassle and inconvenience of moving into a rental, that was the cheapest with best location we could find, living in it for a year and now packing up everything we own and storing it in a container while we’re away. While there is no doubt that it is stressful and quite a major thing to do, for us it is SO worth it if it means we can do this wild and crazy adventure.

It’s been really interesting seeing peoples reaction to our plans. There are some that think we are plain nuts and couldn’t think of anything worse. Exact quote,”You’ll come back divorced, you’re crazy”. There are others that say,”You’re so lucky, I’d love to do that”. My response to this is that while we are in a priveleged position to be able to do it, it has been a choice that we’ve made happen and most people we know would be able to do the same if they were prepared to be creative and put up with lots of hassle!On the whole though almost everyone is genuinely interested and supportive of what we’re doing and hopefully will read this blog and check out our stories and photos!

We’re also aiming to stick to a seriously tight budget, which means spending longer in South East Asia where it’s cheaper and staying in  guesthouses, backpackers as much as possible. We’ve been very fortunate to have the A-family from church go before us with their 8 children and have given us fantastic advice and recommendations for places to stay and how many children we can squeeze into rooms for a few hundred baht! If they can do this with 8, it will be a breeze with 4!

The financial planning side of the trip is by far the biggest worry we have and with the fluctuations in exchange rates and other unknowns sometimes I feel a rather large wave of panic come over me. BUT it soon passes when I start planning and trust that all will be well, even if we come home after 6 months or stay longer in Asia and work, it will all be an adventure and we’ll just go with the flow. Fortunately, we’ve managed to get good priced tickets that don’t have too ridiculously high penalty fees for date changes, so we’ll go with the flow.

The practical details are all starting to fall into place now and we really are getting excited.Thanks to Donald and Cathy for taking Fizz the cat for the year, the Long family for adopting Flopsy, Hairy McClary and Fanta and for Habitat for Humanity for letting us park our container in their yard.

We now just have to get the rest of our travel vaccinations, sort out all our paperwork, do Christmas shopping, pack for camping in January and pack our backpacks for the whole year which will be interesting! Poor Tim is going to have a challenge on his hands with 5 females trying to limit our gear. Every year when we pack the car to go camping he does the same old grumble about how I bring too many clothes and he has to do his car packing magic to get it all in. I guess the fact that we all have to be able carry our own pack and with only one big pull -along suitcase between us, that should sort us all out!