After a little more than two years of living the slow travelin’ life, we have decided to venture on to our next, and third, worldly destination.

First off, I have to say that we have absolutely loved living on Maui. Despite the high cost of living, it’s an unshockingly kickass place to call home. You’ve got the mountains, a ginormous volcano, 81 beaches, a rainforest and a whole ocean of eye-poppin’ beauty to explore, not to mention the radical culture and human beings we’ve met since moving here.

No matter what anyone says, Maui is an easy place to live – I don’t mean in terms of cost or convenience or the nitty-gritty of daily life – those stressors exist everywhere – but in the way that it’s almost always relaxed, calm, peaceful and accommodating. There is a Target on this island… the struggle can only be so real, you know? And to all those naysayers who assume that everyone who moves to Hawaii is ill-prepared to live on an island and will move back within a year – suck it! Just kidding. But really.

Moving Announcement 2015

If we love Maui so much, why are we leaving?

Well, basically because the world is a wonderful place, and we want to keep exploring it. That’s been the plan since the beginning, and at least for now, it’s what makes us happy. Who knows, there may even be somewhere else out there that we like more than Maui (gasp!), but we’ll never find out if we don’t go, don’t try, don’t keep on keepin’ on. Plus, Maui’s not going anywhere.

Hence the moving.

Where do two relatively broke, relatively planless, relatively young people move after adventuring from Texas to Costa Rica to Maui?

Another 4-letter wonder of the world, and a place neither of us have ever been – BALI. That’s right, we’re headed to dang ole dang Indonesia, y’all! But why would we continue to move further and further away from our hometowns, much to the consternation (p.s. that word is too close to constipation) of our parental figures? Well, ’cause we’re grown ass adults, yo! Just kidding. But really. And more importantly, because we can, and we should. And why the hell not.

What made us choose Bali?

You know how you never really hear anyone say that they freaking despise cookies? Like, they dry heave at the thought of the sweet gooey goodness that is a modern cookie, and wouldn’t wish it upon their worst enemy? Yeah well, Bali is the cookie of destinations. No one seems to freaking despise it, and that’s good enough for me.

Plus, you may have noticed a trend here, but we like to live in places that are tropical and lovely. Asia’s been on my radar for a while – look at this old ass blog post I wrote about places I’d possibly want to move (notice some familiar destinations?) – and the cost of living is low, plus not living in the most isolated population center on Earth will allow us to do lots of traveling to other nearby countries, too. Win win.

What will we do for work? …asks the parent slash prove-you’re-not-living-off-of-your-parents-debit-card accuser inside all of you.

To be fair, I seriously, seriously lucked out on this one. If you weren’t aware, my current day job is to write about the island of Maui for a mixture of local websites, including general Maui sites that belong to my boss, as well as several blogs for our growing list of on-island clients. We’re called Hawaii Web Group, and we will web your face off. In a fun way.

My boss, a radical surfer-dude, dad and human being named Chris, also loves Bali. He and his wife honeymooned there, and he already has a whole website dedicated to Bali. And because I am seriously fortunate, he has agreed to keep paying me to not only continue writing about Maui, but also about all things Bali, whilst living in Bali. That’s a triple win, if you’re keeping score.

And since I am far too young and lazy to be a sugar mama, and Peter has many skills both above and below the ocean, including amazing photography, scuba diving/kayaking/SUP’ing/snorkeling/surfing, he will figure out a way to make a living (and it’s doesn’t take much in Bali) doing one of those things.

When’s the move?

We will be leaving Maui in late August/early September to head to Texas for at least three weeks. One of my best friends is getting married (lovely lady Anna Lea), we’re taking a quickie road trip to New Orleans, have tickets for the first weekend of the Austin City Limits music festival, and need to catch up on hang-time with family and friends in Dallas and Austin.

After that, we’re out! I expect we’ll arrive around the first week of October.

Another thing I should absolutely mention, and I’m not sure if I ever have before, but we have an airline hookup, which has absolutely saved our bank accounts, time and time again. My grandpa is a mechanic for American Airlines (and has been for the last 20 something years), which allows us to fly for extremely discounted prices, a privilege my family has taken advantage of since I was a baby. Because of this, and the fact that we don’t need to be in Bali by a specific date, we can hop on a standby flight generally anytime between now and when we’d like to arrive.

We have absolutely no clue where we’re going to live, what the island is like, what’s up with Balinese culture, or generally anything else you’d ideally like to know before moving to a foreign country, but like everything else, we’ll figure it out. We’re good at that.

So cheers to new adventures, and stay tuned for plenty more updates about our final months in Hawaii and our upcoming move to mystery paradise.