Disclaimer

I don’t want to write this for every article, so I’ll just write it once here:

All articles published here are our personal views, opinions, and individual experiences. They are not objective facts, but subjective perspectives of individuals.

What we don’t seek and what we do seek

Accommodation

We are not traditional tourists. We don’t look for hotel accommodations. They wouldn’t be able to fit all six of us in one room anyway.

We’re not rich either. But what we’re looking for is essentially luxury. An apartment for 6 people, two to three bedrooms, kitchen, living room, Wi-Fi, air conditioning. Our ideal budget is around 50 euros per night (for the whole family, of course). We don’t always succeed.

Dining

We don’t go to restaurants. We don’t want to eat pizza, hamburgers, fries, and other European food. Although we make an exception once in a while.

We look for local food, ideally street food or warungs. But also local markets. Not those for tourists, where they sell jewelry, handbags, perfumes, and hot dogs with lattes. We look for markets where tourists don’t even go and where we buy eggs, meat, fruit, vegetables, and especially coconuts at prices that locals pay.

We also have a maximum limit of 50 euros per day for food (for the whole family). And we don’t always succeed here either.

Shopping

We don’t go to shopping centers or expensive stores. We don’t like areas designated only for tourists. They look almost the same everywhere in the world.

We travel minimally, we’re always packed two people to one suitcase, so we don’t buy any additional trinkets.

But we enjoy walking through local stores where locals shop, seeing what’s offered, in what environment, at what prices.

Transportation

Here it would be completely appropriate to write “we don’t ride taxis”, but that’s not the case. With the exception of the UAE, where we did ride taxis anyway, in Asia it pays to ride taxis. Taxi cars or motorcycles. Getting on a motorcycle with a driver into that crazy traffic and becoming for a moment part of that organized chaos, a drop in the river, that’s an experience. But when possible, we prefer to ride local public transport, and even better if we can walk - that’s when we discover and experience the most.

Tourism

We avoid typical tourist spots. We’re not interested in standing in lines for an Instagram photo at a waterfall, or a swing, or an ideal cliff with a sunset.

And fortunately (for me) none of us enjoys visiting monuments and historical sites and buildings. I’ve found that old or new architecture doesn’t appeal to me that much. It’s enough for me to read about it, watch a documentary, look at a few good photos. Like the Colosseum, for example. It always fascinated me, but when I saw it in person, and experienced that tourist madness and hours-long lines, for me - it wasn’t worth it.

What we’re looking for is mainly “people”. And something unconventional and new. Something we won’t see at home. Local people at markets, in the city, on the bus, on the metro, when they sing outside, when they pray, when they argue, even when they fight, when they celebrate, when they try to deceive or rob us, when they’re interested in us, when they want to help us. This is what I enjoy the most. Interactions with people, with another culture, with another language, with another way of life. This is how we get to know people. We get to know ourselves.

This is not a vacation

This journey of ours is not a vacation. It’s a change of residence. Yes, it’s also a bit of a change in lifestyle. It’s also a change in thinking. But…

I work normally, as if I were working at home. Fortunately, the nature of my work allows me to do it from anywhere. That’s a big advantage of IT combined with being an entrepreneur. And on this journey, I’ll also try to develop a business related to economic diplomacy, which we’ve been doing for some time now. So for me, it’s not a vacation. Just increased expenses and extra organizational agenda.

The children study normally as they would at home. Matyas and Arthur were already homeschooled before (hats off to Simonka for taking that on) and Leo is temporarily (in the second semester) attending an American school remotely.

Plus we have this new environment and in our free time and on weekends we can explore new places and people.

And mainly, it’s warm here 😉. We escaped the winter in Slovakia (the first time in my life I went to warmth in winter).

How I write…

Johnny

I write mainly for friends and family as motivation for them to also dare to try something like this. That’s why I describe problems with accommodation, travel, dining, tourism, and the like. I also mention prices and costs, risks, and subjective evaluations. And I like to mention what I learned, what I realized, and what it gave me.

I always write down the amounts I paid and how much things cost 💸. It’s not that I want to brag or show how foolish I am for paying such prices. I want to show reality, our reality, so that others can get a better picture, or perhaps learn from our mistakes.

Simonka

I write the articles in the form of a diary, describing our journey chronologically with as much detail as possible so that the reader can easily imagine it. At the same time, this will serve us as a way to remember everything we’ve experienced together over time.

Leo

I describe my experiences mainly for my friends and family back home in Slovakia. I would really like to experience this with my crew, so I hope I’ll also motivate them so we can try something like this together later.

Matyas

I don’t want to write these articles. I’m only writing this because I am forced to.

Arthur

I’m just writing down here what I liked and what I didn’t like.