It’s been awhile since I last wrote about how life is going for us here in Malaysia. In three words, life is good 🙂
We left Australia nearly 5 months ago. In that time, we have used Penang as a base while exploring other parts of Asia. We all went to Kuala Lumpur, Bali, Langkawi, Krabi and Sri Lanka. I have also travelled to Myanmar and Phuket.
It’s been tiring, but it’s been good. More importantly, we have reached our main goal which was to have a better lifestyle.
We love living here in Penang. It’s so easy and wonderful. The kids have a preschool they love, we get to eat absolutely delicious food whenever we want and there is enough to do to keep us occupied. We love all the chances to explore the rest of Asia and we love all the quality family time. Having a home base is working very well for us.
But what about money?
To make this work, we have been working online. J has been freelancing and I have been growing my existing online businesses. It has been going very well and I am now earning enough that J is going to stop freelancing and help me out so we can go both grow our income further and also not work as much.
Working on our private terrace in the gorgeous Andaman Langkawi
It is not without its stress though. Having to rely on unreliable income sources has kept me up at night many, many times. There’s been many tears. However, the stress has been well and truly worth it. We have our dream lifestyle and we are reaching all our goals. Best of all, our kids are happy and with both their parents the majority of the time.
What next?
One of our big goals this year was to have my business going well enough that we could travel to Europe – we have reached that milestone! Early next month we set off to Bangkok where we catch up with friends before heading to Europe for 3.5 months – we hate cold weather so we didn’t want to stay longer than this.
Our Europe plans
I am such a planner that most of our time in Europe is already locked in! Besides, with parenting, working online and travel there is little time to actually plan ahead once we are travelling. This is our itinerary so far:
June
- Stockholm, Sweden
- Helsinki, Finland
- Tallinn, Estonia
- Riga, Latvia
July
- Vilnius, Lithuania
- Poland
- London, UK
- Paris, France (1 month)
August
- Paris, France
- Cinque Terre, Italy
- Italy (?) road trip finishing in Venice
September
- Slovenia
- Croatia
- Oslo, Norway
I am nervous how we will go with so long on the road. There are many one week stops in here as well as the month in Paris in the middle, so I hope this will make it easier. We are absolutely exhausted after our three weeks in Sri Lanka which has made us weary about travelling for so long BUT that was harder travel and we had lots of little short stops – we had 8 x 1-2 night stops in Sri Lanka (madness) versus 3 nights minimum in Europe – so hopefully Europe will be easier on us.
After this?
Hanging at home in Penang
We are heading back to Penang for the final term of preschool. We really do love it here and it is just so easy. S also really wants to be in their special preschool concert at the end of October. We are lucky in that we are even able to return to the same house. My brother and mum are both planning to visit us so that will be exciting too.
We will leave again towards the end of November. At the moment, we are planning on heading to the Philippines, United Arab Emirate, Oman and back to Bali. There are plenty of exciting adventures to come!
You can also read out our daily routine in our last update about living in Penang and our 8 month update about travelling in Europe with kids.
Tags: Living in Asia Malaysia Travel Blog
