Transcription
Hi everyone and welcome to Mazatlan in Sinaloa, Mexico. Today is Friday afternoon, right now, and you'll actually be seeing this on Saturday because I haven't had time to film a proper big travel video yet that I would normally upload on a Saturday, because shockingly, I have a job. And today we're having bida apple. My place is a mess. This is like totally real me. There's no fake YouTube personality, and my place is a tip. There's a saucepan full of cold pasta from two days ago behind me. That's life.
So today, I thought I would sit down and do a lot of weighted video that I've been meaning to do literally forever, well, like a month, about two things really. About the big question: why I would never move to Mexico. I'll cover that later. But also, I want to go into a bit of what's going to happen in the future after I leave Mexico. And I talked about this in another video recently about what's going to come in terms of moving back to Europe, gaining Polish citizenship, living in Europe basically permanently again. But the biggest thing is about not traveling full-time anymore, which I've been doing for five years, and I'm exhausted, which is going to be a theme.
So, um, yeah, let's get going. The thing I wanted to say first, I'll do a bit of a recap. So I know there are many new subscribers from the Torreon video. I've been traveling full-time for five years: Asia, Latin America, Europe, whatever. And during that time as well, I've been working online. And for the first sort of couple of years, yeah, it was great. That kind of lifestyle of constantly moving worked for me completely. It was absolutely the right thing at that time.
But let's fast forward or go back to November 2019, when I was in Tlaxcala. Love Tlaxcala, by the way. If you haven't been to Tlaxcala, Mexico, I would 100 percent recommend it. It has the best al pastor I've ever had in Mexico, sorry to anywhere else in Mexico, but it's true. Yeah, I was in Tlaxcala and I did a video there, this one, when I was talking about the fact that I was gonna become a semi-nomad, basically. That means that I would still be doing everything that I'm doing now, but I wouldn't be having to constantly book a new place like every month. I would actually be based somewhere and I could use that place to do little trips like to another country or another city or whatever and still do filming. And I said I was going to move to Serbia, to Belgrade, where I've been, I think, three times now, four times, I think.
And six weeks later, January, New Year's Day 2020, yes, 2020, that came around and I moved to Serbia. I moved to Belgrade and I was there for about two and a half months. And it worked. I went to Austria, I went to Bosnia and Herzegovina. I then went to Sweden. And long-term viewers will know what happened when I went to Sweden. I, I got stuck there because of Corona. I couldn't enter any country in Europe except Belarus. So I was in Belarus for three months. During that time, things kind of changed because among the YouTube world, there was this whole rhetoric, narrative about we can't travel, we shouldn't be traveling, we should be personally responsible and go back to our home country. Well, that wasn't an option for me. I didn't have a home in the UK. I wasn't going to go to my mum's place and give her Corona because I had it before, I think about February 2020. Probably there wasn't any testing there, so I don't know.
Anyway, I made the decision then to start traveling again. Well, with the aim of showing that it was possible to travel. So I went back to Serbia, I went to Macedonia, to Mexico, to Latvia, Estonia, Poland, and now back to Mexico again. So I think I've shown that you can travel during a pandemic. But despite all of that, my end goal, my end game, if you like, hasn't changed. And a lot of people would say, you know, you seem so much happier in Mexico than when you do Europe videos. Probably because when I do Europe videos, it's the middle of winter and it's minus 20 degrees. Um, and yeah, I am very happy in Mexico. And actually, this time around, I've had some issues before in the past and with previous trips here, but this time, I love it. Durango was like my ultimate home. I would move to Durango in a heartbeat. There's that, there's the Mexico thing. And you could say that, you know, a lot of my videos recently since I've had my break have done really well. Despite all of that, does that change my mind that I would want to continue living this lifestyle of full-time travel? No, it doesn't. Nothing is going to change my mind. Even if I had millions and millions of views, I was living in a mansion in Polanco or something, I don't care about any of that because ultimately, it's about my own happiness as a human being. Yes, shockingly, I'm a human and I'm not a cyborg, which some people seem to think. Yeah.
So my end goal hasn't changed about moving back to Europe and settling down a bit. A lot of people say, you know, oh, you have to settle down someday. People have been saying that for years. I did settle down in my 20s. I turned into a drug addict, was diagnosed with a mental illness, was arrested, you name it, and generally had complete burnout from work. But I feel like I've come full circle to the point where I want that again. And that's the thing with life, you know, we don't just settle down once. We don't have to follow these rules of just settling down once and that's it. We can change things. You know, in five years' time, I might get bored of it again and do this again. Who knows? We don't know what's going to happen.
So moving back to Europe, yeah, I'm currently in the process of obtaining Polish citizenship. It's still happening. I had an update this week. Realistically, because of the amount of travel I've got coming up in Mexico over the next two months, yep, I'm gonna be in Mexico until mid to end of August. Realistically, I'm not going to be in one place long enough to have an address for that documentation to be sent to me in Mexico City. So realistically, I'm going to have to find an interim home in Europe, which is going to be Belgrade. Yes, Belgrade will be back in my life. It's like my, for those of you that don't know, it's like my European Mexico, if you know what I mean. It's just got that thing that I love. And yeah, that will be my interim home where I can resolve all the stuff about Polish citizenship.
Why do I want to do this? It's about exhaustion. I'm absolutely shattered, knackered, exhausted from doing this. And equally, you know, things about not having a home and not having friends, not having stability. There's only so long you can do it. And there are very, sort of, it might seem like really stupid, trivial things, but things like the fact that in Europe, I can go to a supermarket and get the same sort of ingredients that I would in the UK. Like the washing machine, to the same type of washing machines. You can actually get a washing machine, for a start. Stupid little things like that. It's all about familiarity. And it's connected to what I'm going to say about Mexico in a bit. Um, you know, I want to have a life where I can actually have belongings and not just live out of one bag, which is somewhere over there. And I can get things that I can put on the wall, pictures or ornaments or whatever, because I've actually got space for that. Clothing, you know, I would love to get a pair of nice smart black shoes, some nice trousers, some nice shirts that I can use to go out with friends to a restaurant in the evening. I haven't done that in years. I always look like a [ __ ] you know, a a tram. Yeah. Even though obviously I have clean clothes, I regularly refresh my wardrobe, it's just not the same as having a wardrobe full of clothes that you can, you know, there's variety. Things like that. It's a lot of the reasons for me making this decision are stupid things, but actually, they become more prominent over five years. You know, it's fine to do that for a couple of weeks when you go on holiday somewhere, but imagine five years of not having those almost like basic things that we would expect from life. And that's kind of where I am.
I also want to get a cat. You know, I love cats, beautiful angels. It's my dream to be settled down somewhere relaxed, not stressed about moving on and filming and teaching and whatever, lying there in bed with the cat and go for a nap in the middle of the day with my cat.
Why Europe and why not Mexico? The biggest question I'm always asked, especially lately, is well, why don't you do it in Mexico? Why don't you settle down in Mexico? And there are many, many, many reasons. There's one major reason, but the little things are very much logistical. So, and also about my willingness or energy to do certain things. Things like residency. I could quite easily probably do get residency right in Mexico, but I can't be bothered. I could quite easily become fluent in Spanish. I can't be bothered. And that's me, right? It's no one else's problem or Mexico's problem. I could stay in Mexico for six months on the 180-day visa thing, go to the US after six months and come back again. But two things with that: I feel like I'll be taking advantage of the system by doing that. And also, there's that uncertainty. You know, I might not be able to get back into Mexico. US immigration things like that. There wouldn't be that stability that I want. Whereas when I have a Polish passport, I'm an EU citizen. I can quite freely live in an EU country again without that worry of constantly having to move.
But ultimately, the reason why I would not move to Mexico is all around the fact that I am not from this continent. This might sound really weird, but when I look at, you know, other travel YouTubers in Mexico, many of them are from the US. And as a result of that, they're familiar, more familiar with certain things about Mexico, even down to, you know, the fact that you can go to Costco or Walmart or certain products that are available, or even down to the history. You know, I know more now than I did say five, three years ago when I first got to Mexico. Even though I know all that now, I still feel very much detached. I'm not one of these American people in Mexico. I'm never gonna be this moving to Mexico expat person. I don't want to be that. Being from the UK, I do feel quite often as the minority in terms of those YouTube foreign travel immigrant expat gringo people in Mexico. Whereas in Europe, there's something more that is just there. It's that familiarity, feeling of home. I can be in somewhere like Latvia, Estonia, or Poland, and it's just got that extra thing where I don't feel detached or separated or isolated from others as much as I feel at home in Mexico. I would always feel at home in Mexico. It's a friendly place. Everyone has always been welcoming and hospitable. It's, I've never had any kind of negative experience in Mexico. I'm not saying that I would never come back to Mexico ever again, but I couldn't live here. There's just something about it that wouldn't make me want to live here. Whereas I'm extremely comfortable in Europe. I miss, you know, eight-month-long depressing winters with snow. Even though I'll complain and moan about it and be miserable and suicidal with the cloud and the rain and the snow, it's what I'm used to. I grew up with that. You know, waiting for the one week of summer that you get in the UK. So that's that.
And that's kind of what I'm going to be doing in two months. I cannot wait. As much as I'm really looking forward to what I've got planned for the next couple of months in Mexico, it's gonna be epic. By the way, probably season six of the Town of David is gonna be the ultimate. Looking at what I've got planned coming up, there are going to be some epics. Yeah, uh, including a week in Teyona, five videos I've got planned, the return to Teyona, hmm, with some lonches adobada. Anyway, thanks for watching. Um, yeah, I'll see you in a couple of days after this video for the first Mazatlan video. Just keep in mind that I'm not gonna put everything in that video because, like I said, I'm not a cyborg. I suffer from heat exhaustion and sunstroke. So, um, I can't film for like 12 hours in boiling hot sun. So there will be two videos from Mazatlan, more than likely. So things will be spread over two videos. Brilliant. So thanks for watching. I'm gonna go and edit this video in Starbucks now and send my drone off, the original drone, which I've got a buyer for. Yes. See you soon and I'll catch you later.