What made you take the leap to travel long term?

For me the final straw was in 2004 at a job interview in Chicago. I flew out from Seattle, put on my monkey suit and went through the most grueling and soul-crushing 3-stage interview I have ever experienced in my life, trying to sell myself as a businessman, et cetera...in the final round, 10 minutes from getting the job one of the interviewers said, "Interview over. You know what, Mike, you seem like a really smart guy but I don't think this company is for you. We like to work hard and get rich. It sounds like you should go to Asia and teach English or something."

The fact that a complete stranger could read through my "businessman" guise in less than 10 minutes was the final straw that pushed me over the edge...3 weeks later I was in South Korea in a classroom.

Now, to be fair, prior to this I had been on several 2 to 3.5 month trips, so the idea of extended travel wasn't new...but this was the final push to get me to go live/work somewhere for a full year and to not worry about what would happen with my roommates/renters and who would pay the bills/mortgage/etc. I gave one of my buddies a cut on his rent while I was gone to collect from the other dudes and pay the bills and whatnot and all was fine.

11 years later I still haven't returned (for visits, yes) and my life has definitely taken a direction that I wouldn't have anticipated.

I met my wife in Korea, who was also teaching, and then we lived in Vietnam, Chile and Korea again...we saved up our teaching money to build our own boutique beach hotel in Mexico and so that's where we've been for the past 4 years now.

Anything I miss? Not too much...I miss football season, proper Microbrews, my friends...but even friends are mostly married with kids and so the life I "miss" is more so the same nostalgia from the good old days I'd have even if I still lived in the United States.

/r/travel Thread