Writes the dispatches you read here. Overjoyed there's a pool shack nearby.
Previously: in a thankless job, where time dripped yet somehow the years flew. Now: on the back of a scooter with two children behind him, asking what's for dinner.
Plans the routes, finds the rooms, knows where the nearest pharmacy is in every town we land in, and keeps the family's documents in an actually-coherent system. Has talked us into more good ideas than any of us would have managed alone.
The reason we are here. The reason we are still here, fourteen months on.
Spends 90% of the day thinking about Lego. Enjoys beef pho like a local. Slowly but surely building a love of reading. Finding his feet and flourishing.
Started this trip in spectacular fashion by somehow sneezing blood up to three rows in front of him on the plane.
Yes, two e's. The younger one. Dog be-friender. Voracious reader. Soul of a creative, appetite of a fly-half.
Developing his drawing and painting-side, along with Dad makes up the one-half of the family that actively likes Bánh mìs.
The morning we left London Heathrow with one-way tickets to Bangkok we had no real plan beyond a vague easterly direction and a quiet conviction that the long, retirement-deferred life of the West was not the only one on offer to us.
We had recognised the limits that mainstream education has for our two boys — both bright, both experienced in classrooms that asked them to sit still and be quiet. We wanted to show them another route. We wanted them to remember that we went on an adventure.
The West's bargain — work until you retire, then live the life you wanted — assumes a perfect health and a surviving pension that we are not prepared to bet our family on. So we sold most of what we owned, strapped on four backpacks, and started moving east.
It is, fourteen months in, the best thing we have ever done. The hardest, also. The two are usually the same thing.
Three months across Rajasthan and into the foothills of the Himalaya — Diwali in Udaipur, dal in Pokhara.
A long lazy month of laksa and street art and humidity that taught us how to walk slowly.
One-way tickets booked. Heathrow → Bangkok. Backpacks on. No return.
A month in the foothills — the slow start to slow travel, and the boys' first lessons in Thai.
Two weeks of flooding and the end of the rainy season.
Home, for now. Between rice paddies and the sea. The longest we've been anywhere in fourteen months.
Hà Nội. Then maybe Laos. Then we shall see — that, after all, is the whole point.
If we haven't answered your one, please write — we love a good question.
The short answer: the world is the curriculum. We follow the UK curriculum and use a framework of reading, writing, maths and project work, but other days look more like field trips than lessons. The boys learn currencies by buying fruit, geography by booking trains, language by haggling at markets. We keep a portfolio of their work and involve them in where to go next with their learning.
The long answer: a whole blog post — read it here →
We sold most of what we owned, and we live carefully. J is a freelance writer and music tutor; R consults remotely a few hours a week. The day-to-day cost of living in Hội An is a fraction of what the UK cost us — rent on a two-bed family home here with a pool and huge roof terrace is about a third what we were paying in the UK.
The most common question, and the easiest one. Both boys have more friends than they ever did at school. There is a substantial worldschooling community in Hội An — hundreds of families at any time, from all over — plus the local boys they play with, plus their friends back home over video call. They are, if anything, over-socialised.
Yes, often. We miss particular people, particular places, flapjacks (specifically for J), the quiet of a Sunday morning. But "home" has turned out to be a less geographical thing than we thought it was. It is, mostly, the four of us. Except if one of us is gassy.
Probably, but again — we don't know. The plan is no plan. We have some stuff in storage and other stuff at a friend's. We will probably go back to visit. Whether we settle there again, or somewhere else, or just keep going for as long as the boys will let us — we genuinely have no idea. Which, fourteen months in, feels right.
A short letter every other Saturday with the latest entry, a photograph, and a daft thing one of the boys said this week.