You’ve Been Waiting for This… Something Big Is Happening 🏡

We are finally going to build a house. Well, one, but technically... The plan is three houses. We have, in the last couple of months... Let's go back a little bit. Almost two years ago, we purchased a piece of land here in Koh Samui because it is our favourite place on earth. And notice Thai, he's able to buy land in Thailand and we've been saving money ever since. So a lot of you have been asking us, what are we doing with our land? When are we building? And we couldn't really answer before because honestly, we were just trying to save money to build this house. And also, we needed time to find the right builder. Building a house in Thailand is not that simple. You need to know a lot of people to make sure that you minimize the mistakes as much as possible. And we finally found a builder that we are happy with and we can trust. So it's time. And also the money as well is a good time to start it. But we have changed our plans from building our dream home to actually building three rental villas. Even though one of them, we're still going to try to live here in Samui when we're here, but mostly rent it out because I feel like we're still young. We enjoy YouTube. We don't really need a forever home at this time. So we thought we might as well put that money into an investment. Something that can bring us money in the future. This can be our retirement plan. It could be because if we rent three houses out in the future, that's a pretty solid income for a month living in Thailand, even in Koh Samui for us. Or even we can go cheaper and live somewhere else. It's kind of a retirement plan, but we're excited about it. But we don't have the money to build all three at once. So we're going to start the first one, which is probably going to be where we're going to spend most of the time in. Maybe half a year at a time. And then rent it out the other half. We'll see. We don't have a solid plan yet. We don't have a solid plan. I mean, if someone wants to rent it at a good price for a year, it's like, okay, I'm going to be it now. But for the time being, it's like, yeah, I think we want to rent it out. But also use the first house as a learning for us to figure out what is good, what is bad, what can be improved before we actually build the second and the third house together. Hopefully within the next three years, we could have all three built. All three built. Yeah. Fingers crossed. We're actually meeting the builder right after this. Honestly, it's been a lot. Even just thinking about what kind of home we want, where things should be, how to even decide on the feel, the color, everything in a house. I've been saying to note, it's a marriage test for us. We've been together. This is, what, 17 years now? 16, 17 years, yeah. This is another big test for us because how can you compromise on things when you have different styles? Even though we share a lot of common interests. So it's easy, that part. But there are also a few things that we disagree. And we have been a few minor fights along the way. Specifically, we were in HomePro last week and we had a big fight in front of the water boilers. So if someone saw us there, they might have been very intimidated. It's so stupid. We were fighting about water boiler. Which one to use? Using a water boiler versus using, what do you call those? Like a water heater. Like an electric box in the shower. So a lot of this is not even a preference of style. It's just we need to do the research to see which is better for us because we both don't like to just blindly be like, yeah, sure. We like to know things. Even that is a bit of a challenge, but I think it's a good test. We are planning to document most of the building process and share our experience with you guys. Hopefully we can start building by July. Like break ground? Break ground. Yeah. We'll tell you more about it in the future when we have more information. And because of the house, we have to change our plans of how we travel this year. Because what we have learned from our friends who are building on the island is that you physically have to be here to check things. I mean, not me physically, but he physically should be here to check things. So that really changes how we travel. We should be traveling less, be here more starting July. That means either more house videos or more similar videos or just kind of closer travels in Asia. Maybe we do short trips here and there. Oh, we're actually going to go on a road trip to Southern Thailand, visiting some new places and old places on our new motorbike. So that's one of the series that we can look forward to coming up. So that's kind of our update for now. We'll have more information as it happens. But let's get to some of the Instagram questions we got because we put out a story a couple of days ago and we got over, was it 80 or 90 questions? No, we got like 150 questions. So we have combined some, as in we chose some that, you know, lots of people have repeatedly asked. Like similar questions. We have 40. We're going to try to just quick fire and answer as many as we can because I think they're good questions. You ready? Start with the easy one. Okay, this one is easy. How did you two first meet? So we met in university my first year and you were just doing an exchange. It was your third or fourth year. This was at Griffith University in the Gold Coast. In Australia. This was back in 2009. 2009, yeah. And then we long distance for four years because you were only in Australia for about six months. And then after four years, we got married and moved to Thailand. No, no, we moved to Canada. To Calgary first. For four years. And then moved to Thailand. Yeah, and we've been in Thailand now for, this is our seventh year. So Thailand's actually the place that we have lived together the longest. Tell us more about you guys' hobbies besides traveling. We like to play badminton. We play twice or three times a week. We like fishing. I like to read. I like to do puzzles. I like to cook. And I'm looking forward to the new house because I would have a nice big kitchen to cook. This kitchen is super small, but I still enjoy cooking. How different would both your lives be if you guys never met? This is a very good question. Yeah. I think if I didn't find a partner who was willing to be so adventurous, I might not have wanted to travel and do this. Like, I don't know, maybe I would go back to be a flight attendant so I can travel. Or maybe I would, you know, try to work up the corporate ladder in order to make money so then I can have holidays to travel. But I think travel is still a big part of it. But I just may not have had that leap because if I chose someone not as adventurous, I would most likely stick to the get a good job, maybe get married, buy a house. Like, I think it would be easy to stick to that path. But because we're both crazy, it was kind of nice to do something out of the box. Yeah, I think I would be very miserable. Corporate? You mean miserable? I think I could still be happy, but I just wouldn't know this life. I would never have imagined this life, that's all. What equipment do you use for filming? So we have a selection of equipment now. We have downgraded multiple times. We used to use a Canon M150. We went to a Fujifilm camera. We started big, and we're slowly reducing the size of the camera. But we've been using the Osmo Action, Osmo Pocket 3 for three years, I think. And it was a really good change because everything is good about it, like the color, the stabilization. We have the wide lens on top, so it's perfect for both of us. For the sound, we use the DJI Mic 2, connected with the lav mic. Lav mics, yeah. And attach it to our T-shirt. We'll leave all the equipment that we use in the description so you can check them out. And also, we use our phone a lot for B-rolls. This is just an iPhone 13 Pro Max with a broken zoom lens. And yours is an iPhone 12. How long do you see yourself doing what you're doing? I can say that at least three more years because we need the money to build the houses. Okay. What pushed you both the hardest to make travel vlogging your profession? I push you. Yeah, I was like, never. I don't even watch YouTube. Why would I start YouTube? But you saw the potential. I saw the star in Flora. I did not. But I remember watching Cara and Nate and seeing the two of them travel and then they're very natural with each other. This is like their old videos. I remember Bangladesh was the one that I watched. I was like, oh, this is very natural and they can look back at it and enjoy. So might as well do it for memory. But I think the turning point for me for making it a profession as in I really wanted to do this and do it well was when I saw that it was starting to bring in money and if it was bringing enough money then you can quit your job and that would give us freedom. Because I was working remotely as a graphic designer before. So I think it was that freedom is what pushed me to want to do better and overcome my shyness on camera. Honestly, how hard is it to travel for a living? Is it more rewarding than tiring? Want to try. Definitely more rewarding. Because YouTube, it pushes us to go explore new things all the time. Explore new countries. Meeting new people. We make lots of friends because of YouTube. I think it's interesting because we make friends on YouTube through the creators but also through our community but also through the businesses that we visit or we film. Most of them are not sponsored. We book hotels, we stay there, homestays and we have great experiences and it helps their homestay if our video does well. You make these good connections all over the world. It's very rewarding for us. Or when someone tells us that I've just visited this restaurant or I've just visited this hotel and thank you so much for your recommendation. I had a lovely time. That is very rewarding. Tiring is tiring but if you're asking just if it's rewarding or tiring then rewarding. Are you done exploring Asia or is there more you want to see? We're definitely not done exploring Asia. There's so much to Asia. There's so much left to explore. You see, we haven't explored all of Thailand yet. Yeah. We even haven't filmed Indonesia. We haven't gone back to the Philippines. Sri Lanka. A lot of Central Asia. There's just so much Asia to explore. And not just that but I also believe in visiting, revisiting places. Especially places that you enjoy because the first time you go it's almost you want to see all the touristy things. You don't want to miss out. The second time you go, you've done all of that. You want to do a deeper exploration. The third time, you want to just go and kind of live there. I feel like I would never say that we would be done with Asia because we keep going back for more things. You may have noticed we always go back to Vietnam. We go back to Korea because there are a lot of things that we haven't experienced the first few trips that we went. And I don't think a couple cities represent a whole place. So yeah, I love revisiting places. Okay, this question we get a lot in our comments. How rich are your parents? I feel like we get this question less now that we've shown our parents a lot and people know that they are just normal people who have a good sense of humor and love to travel and just not like rich parents. So the life that we live right now is not because of rich parents. They gave us a good foundation for us and we got good education. And then, yeah, now we try to give back. How is your life with no kids? I would have to say we got about 10 questions about kids. Life is great. We are busy without kids. We still have our cat. We have our dog. We have our travels. We have all of our hobbies. We spend a lot of time with our parents going on vacation. Yeah, vacations or adventures together. And I think that has been really rewarding. Having kids is a huge responsibility and a number one priority for people. Once you have kids, that's where you spend all your time. So it's kind of hard for us to want to give up what we have right now because I think what we have right now is pretty amazing. So life is good. Life is good. Life is busy. Yeah. What are things you believe in which helps you in your life? Oh, this. It says, if not now, then when? So if you want to do something, you want to achieve something, do it now. Don't push it. The longer you wait, the most likely you're not going to be doing it. Yeah, there's no perfect moment, right? Just do it. What would you suggest to someone who wants to travel the world with their partner? I think the number one thing that you need to know is both of you have the passion to travel. You have the same excitement level to go explore new places. Because if one person is not into traveling and one wants to go see the world, you can spend most of the time trying to make the other person happy. Yeah. I know people who are very opposite in terms of who wants to travel and who wants to just stay at home. I think also if that is the case, you need to be able to do things independently. If you want to keep the relationship, instead of trying to push the other person to do everything you want to do, it's okay, we might have to do some things independently. Because when you travel, it's almost like a fast track to learn about yourself. And you see so much in you, learn so much that you are growing into a new person. But at the same time, your partner is as well. So if you expect the other person to not change to be the same person as when they first started traveling with you, I think that doesn't work. That's not realistic. How do you film on days you're not in the mood but you have to or when you had discussions before? I would say that if we don't have to film that day, we just push it. We just push it. Because we travel slow. And we are our own boss. Example, I got really sick in Korea. So we didn't film that day. And then we said, if I feel better tomorrow, we can film. But if not, we'll just skip it. And we can just make content at the next place. So I think it's quite flexible. Because if you really are not in the mood to do it, unless it's something really special, like we're only going to be at this place once. Or we already spend a lot of money on it. Yeah, then I think we would do it. But I would try to be honest with, like I'm sick, not feeling good or something. So I don't have to push myself to be excited about this. It's okay to just be honest, I think. What's the best way to pull together an itinerary? How do you always pick great spots? Flora loves to just zoom in on Google Map and just look at hidden places. But honestly, I look at places that are near where I'm going to be because I don't like to make us travel too much when we're filming. So it's like, I know I want to go here. So I zoom in around where we're going to get an idea of what else is around there. Even if something has like five reviews, I would be like, okay, are they good reviews? Are they worth going? When I see like a thousand reviews, usually I'm like, no, thank you. No, don't want to go. Yeah. And a lot of time when we go to your first spot that you chose on Google Map, we get talking to the owner or to the locals around there. And then they would suggest different places. We would scrap our plan and just follow the local suggestions. Yeah. We have a rough plan. Usually when we film, it's like we're going to pick maybe two or three spots, but we're pretty happy if there's something better, we'll just go. Yeah. We don't have to stick to our plan and we don't really pre-plan what we want to say. We just go there and see what happens. And then I look up facts about something if I'm curious so I can then tell you. You guys look so young. How do you stay healthy with travel, diet and exercise? What do you eat? I think because I used to work out a lot. I used to do bodybuilding. So I always have this foundation. So I don't really get... Activated. Yeah. I don't really get fat. So if I want to get muscular again, I just hit the gym two or three times and activate my muscle and I will look fit again. I may look fit, but internally I'm not feeling 100%. Right now I'm battling with cock ear. And it has been five months. I went to see five doctors, ENT specialists, and none of them helped. It could be related to allergies. But you checked lots of things and they said you don't have structural damage. So we're still trying to figure out why. I actually have one side, but you have both sides. And if you have experience dealing with cock ears this long, please let me know what else I can do because I feel like I exhausted all the options that I can do now. Now that I'm 37, it's harder to feel energized. So I bought a trampoline to jump to music at night and it makes me happy. But I'm losing motivation to go to the gym and eat healthy. Yeah, not at my fittest. But thank you for saying that we look fit and young. When will you be back in India to explore other places? We actually were looking to go to Ladakh. In September. But because the house plans are going to start earlier than we expected, so we might push it to next year. What is your biggest travel hack? SIM card. Don't use SIM card, use eSIM. Yeah, use that SIM card. You meant eSIM. Yeah, eSIM. Honestly, we use eSIM. Sometimes it is a little bit more expensive than going to line up for a SIM card at the airport. But it's so convenient and I think it's worth it. And now that there's so many places with Wi-Fi, the limited amount of data that we buy with the package, like 10 gigabytes, honestly, it lasts me my trips for two weeks. And if I need to top up, it's not that much. The best one is Aeroville. Use Flora and Note 3 to get $3 off your first eSIM. How does it feel like to be well-known on social media, to have people greet you in real life? I honestly enjoy it when people come up to us and say hi. A lot of time they talk to us like friends. Like they know us. Which is, that's the kind of awkward part for me is because it's like they know us, but we don't know them, so I don't know what to ask. And I'm a little bit socially awkward sometimes, but you're really good at asking like where they're from and how long they're traveling and kind of, you know, get questions going and get to know people, not just like a say hi and then bye. Like it's nice to know their names, know where they're watching from. Yeah, I enjoy having a conversation with our subscribers and knowing that we have built this community. Worldwide, yeah. And be able to have this friendly connection with you guys, even though we have never met. I think it's really special. If you see us anywhere, feel free to come and say hi. Maybe say hi to me first, so it's not too awkward. I know, hello, and then I'm really awkward, but I'm, it's just me, but I'm not, I'm not trying to be rude. It's just sometimes I get caught off guard. And I've also been told that I tried to say hi to you, but you walk really fast. I'm just like, I'm so sorry. What is the one place that absolutely took your breath away? Alton Arashan in Kyrgyzstan. That's a good one. Yeah. Yeah, that was a good one. Two days off grid, just looking at nature, looking at horses. Breathing in fresh air. Yeah, that one, that's a good one. What destination would you most like to visit that you haven't been to yet? That's always a tough one. I have one. Okay. Alaska. Oh, that's a good one. That's a good one. Because I was watching this video where it was a salmon season or salmon hunting season for the bears. And then they would go into the river. You see the bears grab the salmon out. Grab the salmon in the air, mid-air. Yeah, I want to see that. What do you think is an underrated travel destination? Kyrgyzstan. So Alton Arashan. Not just Alton Arashan. I think the whole country. From the people, from the food, from the culture. The sightseeing in Kyrgyzstan is just out of this world. Why did you rent a car at Udo Island if you already rented a car in Jeju Island? So this is very specific, but I thought I would answer it in case someone else is going to Jeju Island. You cannot bring your own rental car to Udo Island from Jeju Island. There's a lot of restrictions in the contract because I guess they cannot help you if something is wrong. So that's why we had to leave our rental car in Jeju Island. And then when we went to Udo Island, we had to rent another one for the day. And it's cheap. It was like 30 U.S. dollars a day. How can I buy land in Samui legally? Well, if you're Thai, it's very easy. You pay the money and then you own the land. Or if your partner is Thai, it's really easy because then he can buy the land. But if you're a foreigner, you technically cannot buy or own the land. You can buy a condo. Or you can leasehold. You can leasehold for 20 years or 30 years. I don't really know the process of that, but I know people have done leasehold before. Or find a Thai partner. That you love. Legitimate relationship. What would be your must-do in Italy? Your favorite thing you did. They're going in September. Rent a Fiat and drive through the countryside. Drive through Tuscany. Stay in a small medieval town and go to the grocery store and cook a little dinner at your Airbnb and just enjoy the view. Like what we did. What are some things that make you miss living in Canada? Our friends. Yeah, my best friends. Family. Vietnamese food. Vietnamese food is so good. So good in Canada. I guess that's it. How do you deal with disappointment when a trip doesn't meet your expectations? Well, don't set too high expectations. Yeah. We usually don't have a lot of expectation when we travel. Couple. No kids from UK. How much per month needed to retire in Thailand? This one is really difficult to give you one answer. Because it really depends on your lifestyle. Where in Thailand you want to live. We did cost of living video for Koh Samui. And in that video we spent 116,000 a month. Including everything. Accommodation. Food. Everything. I know a couple who spend 40,000 a month. 10,000 on rent and 30,000 on daily expenses. But I would say don't come to Thailand thinking that it's so cheap. I'm going to live like a king. You can live cheap. But you also have to sacrifice a lot of things to live cheaply. So it's really up to you to control that budget. Since you travel a lot, what is something that you have no patience for while traveling? Oh, man. I feel like this is hitting you harder as you age. I think I have a few. Especially when we land at a place. There will always be some people rushing out of the seat. Run to the front of the plane just so that they can get off first. And also when it's our turn to leave a seat. And they don't let you go first. That also bothers me. Yeah, you actually would say something. I'm always like, he's blocking the thing. You can go now. And I'm like, okay. If you had an extra 100K US dollars, what sort of travel-related business would you attempt? No, no travel business. Just buy more land. Yeah. Property. I think property is the way to go. What was your experience like on House Hunters International? I think we have to explain what House Hunters International is first. So it is a show on HGTV. It's like helping people move from one country to the other. Most of the time, it's like North American. Helping North Americans move abroad. And we used to love watching that show because we had the dream to move abroad. That's why we emailed them when we were moving to Thailand. And be like, can you help us find a house in Chiang Mai? And we got accepted. Yeah, we got accepted. So we did an episode with them in Chiang Mai. This was back in 2018, maybe? Or 2019? Yeah. Before COVID and before YouTube. They're still airing it now. But it was a fun experience. Yeah. Our very first experience. On camera. And I would say that it's very difficult because even though it's not scripted, you can say what you want to say. But because we agree on so many things when we look at houses, that eventually they told us. They find it too boring. Yeah. They're like, there's no drama here. They are still kind of a reality show. So they're like, you gotta make some drama. So you started saying weird, mean lines to me. And you look like a terrible husband. And people leave comments saying that I should leave you. If you get to see that episode, you'll understand it's not really us. And from that experience, I learned that I cannot be an actress. Who shoots what and how do you plan the shoot? We both shoot, I guess. We film each other. But you do a lot of the B-rolls while I kind of do research. Or I just enjoy myself. And he likes to go take B-rolls. So I think you do more of the shooting. Planning, it depends on the destination. I think I do more of the planning in general. But there are some destinations where you've seen something you really want to do. So you plan it. A lot of the Thailand stuff, I think you plan as well. Any videos for Bali or KL soon? We might be going to Bali in June or July? June. Not sure yet. If we can, we would love to. Because we have two of our really good friends going to Bali. We would love to meet them there. Have to wait for this house thing first. The house thing is kind of stalling some of our travel plans at the moment. Top three most favorite countries so far. I never like to answer these questions. About favorite country, favorite city. Because it's so hard. Thailand. Oh yeah, we always love Thailand. Thailand for the food and convenience. Vietnam. Food and convenience. And affordability. And Nepal. Because it was the very first country that we went to. And we felt like, wow, it changed our life. Okay, the last question. It's the two-part. A two-part question. If you were to start your content creator journey again, what would you do differently and why? And what do you think has been the most important to the success of your growth? I don't know if it would change anything. Because whatever we did in the past kind of helped us grow to be who we are today. I agree. Because I feel like we needed the learning curve in order to know what we enjoy doing and what we don't enjoy doing and what we're good at and what we're not good at. Because if we didn't go through all of that, we cannot find our niche. I guess so. Or like our style of video. And I honestly think your views come as you deserve them to. Because in the beginning, I don't think we deserved as many views because the content was not as good. The way we presented it was not as good. And we kind of change as we travel and grow. So I think you need to go through that journey. And to answer the second part, I would say consistency. You probably hear this from a lot of creators out there is that consistency is key when it comes to content creating on YouTube. And we believe in that too. This is our fifth year, and we haven't missed a single week. Sometimes we post it earlier or after, but for us, it's still that week. You know what I mean? We haven't missed a week. We haven't been completely, this week there's no video at all. So I think that's the tough part is you have to continue planning for the content even though sometimes you don't know what to do, but you have to keep doing it because every single video you put out is practice, but also an investment because you don't know if that video is what people like to watch. Well, that's it. Thank you for watching. Hopefully you learned a few things. About us and about our journey or about YouTube, it's always nice to do a little Q&A to also help us reflect on our own journey so far. And I think sometimes these Q&As, when we look back in the future, it's like, oh, we were like this back at this time. So, you know, right now, 2026, this is us. Thank you so much for watching. And as always, have a wonderful day. We will see you in the next one. Bye. Transcribed by https://otter.ai