Living The Dream: Travel & Relationship Insight's
Jon and Kach
Josh met Jon and Kach recently in Istanbul. They admit they aren’t Living The Dream, but they are on their way, at least they hope. First step marriage in December 2016.
What was the first country you visited? Who with and why did you choose it?
We both lived abroad before we met, but I'll start with the first
country we travelled to together - India. After meeting in Laos and
living together in Vietnam for 9 months, we both decided that we wanted
to take our yoga practice more seriously, so India seemed the best place
to do that!
When did you start a travel lifestyle? What inspired that change?
We both decided to start a travel lifestyle before we had even met
each other, both for very similar reasons. Regular job changing and
bouncing from one goal to another, with no real outcomes or satisfaction
made us reconsider what we really wanted. Apparently neither one of us
could figure that out, so we decided to quit, sell, and start
travelling, in the hope the the answer to the meaning of life would jump
out and slap us in the face. It didn't and it still hasn't, but piece
by piece we're discovering what we want and how to get it!
Do you have a base you travel from? Or is it continuous travel? And why do you choose that style?
We have had several temporary bases since we started travelling -
Hanoi, Peru, Costa Rica, Bogota - but we're now back on the road again
and will be the next year pretty much non-stop until we get married in
December 2016. I have always needed to slow down and put down shallow
roots here and there to get the most out of travel, which probably comes
from having been an expat kid, but now our business - Two Monkeys
Travel Group - needs it as much as we do. It's simply not possible to do
everything and travel constantly too.
How do you fund your travel lifestyle? Is it something you do when travelling or are you a saver?
We started out with savings from our old jobs when we first set off,
but with only around $5000 USD each, this vanished pretty fast. We then
saved about $10,000 USD between us, in about 6 months of teaching
English in Vietnam, most of which we spent throughout India and getting
qualified in Yoga and Ayurveda Massage. These skills became our income
when we arrived flat broke in Peru, where I found an old massage table
and pushed it around hotels in a rusty old wheelbarrow. We quickly grew
this into a massage business, converting our spare bedroom into a
treatment room in Arequipa, Peru! Since then, we started our website,
which has become a community travel blog and is now our full time
business and only source of income.
If you could tell yourself one tip before you started your travel lifestyle, what would it be?
In hindsight, it would have been a hell of a lot easier to just know
what we wanted and how to get it from the start, but it was never going
to happen like that. Everything that has happened is the result of a
process we went through, with a lot of trial and error, and if we had
had firm plans and ideas then we probably would be where we are right
now.
What does "Living The Dream" mean to you?
In my mind, we're still not quite 'living the travel dream' yet, but
we're getting there. Truly living the travel dream will be when we have
our cake and eat it too, choosing what to do and when, without doing
anything which I still consider to be any kind of work. So not asking
much then! Right now though, we have a pretty good compromise, for the
most part able to work when and where we want to and earning a decent
living out of it at the same time.
You can find Jon Howe here -
Working towards a dream life of travel and complete freedom!
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