100 days in Southeast Asia | Part 1 | How we decided...

The initial plan was to quit our jobs in April 2017, move to Canberra in May 2017 to house sit for his mom while she was in Europe for the summer escaping Australian winter haha.. and then go travelling around Europe in a camper-van from September 2017 once she was back from her travels. We could not go before August anyway as I was had to apply for my citizenship before leaving the country.

Everything started when in April 2017 when we quit our jobs yaayy happy days!
This was at the start of April, just before my birthday and also just before our Random Trip to Qingdao, in China. 

And 2 weeks after we quit (we were in China during the announcement), the Australian government proposed changing the bloody requirements to apply for citizenship. 
Basically, the current requirement was to be for at least 4 years in Australia and 1 year as a Permanent Resident, then you could apply. And they wanted to change it to 4 years in Australia plus 4 years as a Permanent Resident! 8 years before applying!? WTF!?… Ok, I would agree with 1 more year as a PR, but 3 more!? 



Anyway, since then it was a basically a joke with thousands of people’s lives, including ours haha.
Well then, in August I applied for the citizenship anyway, since I was eligible under the old requirements, and the bill was still being looked at and waiting for approval. 
However, all application were frozen since the announcement in April and didn’t know when they were going to decide whether they were going to accept or not the new law. 

So, we had a few options in September, since it is quite expensive to live in Australia if you are unemployed:

  • Get his mom’s motorhome and travel around Australia the cheapest way possible and free camping (A bit expensive still considering fuel and food)
  • Go to Europe and come back if the Bill doesn’t get approved. (Very expensive and far since we would have to get a return flight etc)
  • Go to the Philippines for 1 month and go from there depending if they had made up their minds or not yet. (Cheap flight + budget trip + cheap to live compared to Aus)

It took us a week to decide it. We got so so close of getting a ticket to Athens Greece and start our Europe Trip mid September. Because we found an awesome deal and we literally got to the end of it where you input the credit card details and finalize hahaha… 
But just seconds before I clicked, Viv said ‘Stop! Maybe we shouldn’t…’

Oh gosh, okayyy, what now? Why not etc etc… 
He thought it would be too crazy to do it like this knowing we could cost us a lot since it was more likely that the law wasn’t going to change. Plus Europe was starting to get cooler... Fair enough.

Then we went with the last option, the Philippines since it was warm, cheap, nice and a new place for both of us as well, which made it even more exciting!
It was typhoon season tho haha, and I was a bit apprehensive actually... But whatever, we bought our one way tix with carry on only and see you later!

Until then we had no idea what was waiting for us and that 30 days would become 105 days instead! This is what happens when you have no plans and are no attachments to anything and anywhere. Oh well, except the citizenship stuff haha but it was frozen anyways.

And here we go! Off to our first destination :)
Ah! Did I mention that we had a 3 days stop in Singapore to visit a friend of mine?? Yasssss, we did! ❤

See next post

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