So many places...

We started with a long list of countries in Asia and began rating them based first on healthcare, crime rate, and pollution/congestion and secondarily on cost of living/job opportunities, attitude towards foreigners, and weather conditions. We used consular information sheets from the US, lonely planet websites, and other travel sites and fairly quickly came up with a short list.

The list was so very exciting that it was difficult for us to settle on just one. As we began to look at each country and the possible side trips that we might do, we began to re-evaluate the original plan of staying in just one country. We began toying with the idea of becoming nomads for a year. This presented a different set of challenges.

• Were we prepared to home-school the girls?
• How could we experience the culture deeply and connect with the locals if we were just passing through?
• Living out of a suitcase for a year was not that appealing.
• Could we afford extra travel costs without part-time work?

After many discussions we came up with the following:

• With a little research we felt sure we could home-school the girls. How hard could grade 3 be?
• As members of the Baha'i Faith in Canada we felt we could connect with other Baha'is in different parts of the world. We also felt that extended stays in a few places would be in order.
• We decided to rent apartments in at least two countries for a 3 month period and use those places as home base. We would also have some shorter stays, but not too many in a short period of time.
• Given the low cost of living in Southeast Asia we were quite pleased to find that we could afford the travel without extra income from part-time work.

Ultimately we decided upon one month in China (Beijing area), two weeks in Vietnam, three months in Thailand, four months in India, and simply because it was "on the way" we decided on two or three months in Eastern Europe!