Pinky and I have been talking a lot lately, and we have decided to move to Vietnam! We have decided that we are both in a place where we can afford to do this without too many responsibilities and commitments tying us to Bangkok right now. We have a dream of being semi-nomadic in the future, with our travel blog and my online English tutoring school. We have no debt, and we are both working online. We quit our full-time jobs and decided that it's now or never. We are going to have an adventure! (And Vietnam is cheaper than Thailand.)
Maybe we won't be successful. Maybe we will have to return to Bangkok and get our old jobs back. And that's ok. We both had jobs that we really loved, Pinky as a vet and me as an English teacher, and both of our bosses have offered to take us back at any time. Maybe this will turn out to be a dumb, silly idea. But maybe not. Either way, we are going to start off in Vietnam for three months and see how things go.
To all of you who have been following my blog for almost 500 posts now (wow!) thank you so much for all the support. I hope you will follow Pinky and me as we start our new lives in Hanoi, the capital of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam!
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We've been working hard the past few weeks to get ready for the big move, while finishing up our jobs in Bangkok. Yesterday was my final day of work, and I'll take one week of "vacation" (i.e. moving out of my apartment) before getting back to work with my online teaching.
The Vietnamese Embassy
Even though Pinky doesn't need a visa for up to 15 days in Vietnam, we both applied for three-month visas so that we can stay longer. This reminds me of the excitement that I felt when I first moved to Bangkok, five years ago now! For Pinky, this is a new experience. For the first time, we will both be expats and strangers in a new country. We want to really embrace this adventure! We want it to feel like we are really living abroad, and not just traveling. And you can bet I'll be working on a new book about the experience of moving to the Vietnamese capital!
The process took only a few days, and soon we had our visas in hand! Now there is a new online visa program, so the previously crowded Vietnamese embassy in Bangkok (the easiest place to get a quick visa) was nearly empty. This made the process so much easier!
STA Travel
Next up, I visited my travel agent, Khun Chanthana, at STA Travel. She always helped me buy the airline tickets home for all the new teachers every year, and always helped me get my Japanese RailPasses and flights when I needed them. She even remembers me every year!
STA offers student, teacher, and youth (under 30) discount cards. It was only 400 baht ($12), so I think it'll pay for itself over the next year.
We also got a good travel insurance plan.
Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute
After that, we visited the Red Cross Travel Clinic.This royal clinic is based at the same campus as the Snake Farm!
All we had to do was tell the doctors where we would be going, and they gave us a course of vaccinations based on our destination. Super convenient and affordable.
Now, we are finishing up everything that has to be done before a big move. It's exciting, but there is so much to do! Thanks again for supporting me, and I hope you'll keep following our adventures as we head off to Vietnam for at least three months. After that, who knows what we'll be doing, but for now, we are off on an adventure.
After all, fortune favors the bold! It's now or never, so we decided to fully embrace this opportunity as it came up. Here we go!
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