Transcription
From 2020 to 2024, I was working a 9 to 5 job in finance in my home city of Kuala Lumpur. Not even 3 months into working that job, I already knew that this wasn't it. But to be honest with you, I didn't know what the alternative was. So, I ended up doing a bunch of side hustles throughout the years on top of my already demanding job with the goal of building what I called my "off fund" because although I didn't know exactly what I was going to do after quitting, I at the very least knew that I needed some cash saved up for whatever that was going to end up being.
Meanwhile, my exhaustion and burnout from my corporate job was slowly reaching a crescendo. But, you know what the scariest part was? I just felt like I didn't have anything to look forward to in life. I stopped enjoying all the things that I used to. I just felt so numb and very stuck in a life that was already fully mapped out. But the thing is, I really, really did not like how that path looked.
But somewhere along the way, I discovered YouTube. Now, I'll be super honest with you, like I started posting videos with this vague awareness that you can create a career out of content. I looked up to people like Ali Abdaal and I really liked the sound of that life. Making content to help people, doing meaningful work that you love, achieving time, location, and financial freedom. So, I tried it out and I ended up really loving it.
Now, it was hard work and the learning curve was super steep, but I think it was for those very reasons that I broke out of my burnout state. I regained a sense of agency in my life. I felt like I had a meaningful goal to work towards, a life project that I could get behind with full force. So, I started my channel a year before quitting and I made it a point to post consistently once a week, no matter what. Despite my crazy working hours, despite still doing all of those side hustles, then eventually I decided to quit my job. I reached a point where I just could not bring myself to act as if I was actually functioning at my job because I really wasn't.
And so I left my stable finance job with only 14,000 subscribers and no clue how I was going to make this financially stable. But what I told myself at the time was, "You know what, I'll figure it out. I have to figure this out." And that was how I ended up moving to Australia under a one-year working holiday visa with quite literally nothing but a suitcase and a dream. I worked part-time as a gym receptionist just to cover rent and basic living expenses. And the rest of the time I was making content and learning more about business on the side, planning, strategizing. At least that's what I told myself. When the reality was I was just procrastinating. I was scared to actually start and launch something.
But then came a very pivotal moment in my journey. It was around November of 2024 when I checked my bank account and realized that I was one rent payment away from completely wiping out the $10,000 Australian dollars emergency fund that I had allocated for myself. In that moment, I had no choice but to act and fast. I transitioned into a full-time sales job at another gym to learn the skill of sales because I knew from all the successful entrepreneurs that I looked up to that sales is the number one skill you need to master, especially as a beginner in business. I was working 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., 5 days a week selling gym memberships. And when I wasn't working, I watched, read, listened, and implemented everything that I could about business. Through all of that trial and error, I finally cracked the code. Over the span of a few months, I went from almost wiping out my savings to then earning back that $10,000 Australian and more. After a lot of stumbling and failing and trying out different things and feeling like a fool and doubting myself every step of the way, I eventually started earning triple what I used to earn in my old corporate job, which is honestly so crazy to reflect on now. From quitting my job with zero clue to being put in a position that forced me to grow beyond my current limits. Moving to a whole new country where I didn't know anybody and I needed to figure everything out along the way to then eventually launching a business for myself. That experience completely rewired my brain forever. I realized that I no longer needed to be dependent on an employer or a paycheck. That I have now unlocked the skills of how to make money on my own. That if I lost everything tomorrow, I could open up my laptop and rebuild it all again. That's something that no one can take away from me and it's a very, very powerful feeling.
I left Melbourne in June of this year and I went back to Malaysia for a little while just to figure out my next move and where I wanted to be. But fast forward to today, I can proudly say that I have full control over my time. I run a business I built from nothing and I get to travel the world whilst doing it. And now I really don't want this to come off as some big flex because I really do not view myself as someone who has made it. So although I've largely unlocked time and location freedom for myself, I still have much bigger goals that I'm working towards, especially with building the level of financial freedom that I envision for myself. And that's exactly what I hope to share more with my channel. I want to be able to share the journey of building everything, all the lessons that I've learned along the way because ultimately I want to be able to help other people thinking of making that leap to build a life of meaning, to do work that they love, and to be able to make money on their own terms. So, if you're watching this and if that's something that you're working towards, I hope that this channel is a safe space for you to figure it out and to help you along that journey. And here we are today.
So, that was pretty much my year in Australia. Like I said, I am back in Malaysia, but I will be going away again very, very soon. Tomorrow, in fact, and I haven't started packing yet, which is very, very good. I'll share a bit more about where I'm going and how long I'm going for a bit later in this video because, oh my god, if there is one FAQ that I get all the time, it's "Where are you going?" and "What's next? What's the plan?" And to be honest, like the reason why I haven't shared too much about that is because I really didn't know the answer myself. So yeah, that's why I came back to Malaysia to sort of like figure where that was going to be and what the plan was. So I'll talk a bit more about that later.
But anyways, a couple months ago, I asked if you guys had any questions about my journey so far with quitting my 9 to 5 and doing this whole thing. So today I'm going to answer all of those questions. If you have been watching me for a while, you'll know that this is not my usual filming setup. I do predominantly talking head education type videos. And so I'm usually like in my room with my big Sony camera and like my massive softbox and light and the whole setup, but it just didn't feel right to film this type of video in that setting. Like it felt very, you know, artificial, whereas like I'm going to be talking about personal feelings and my journey and all these things. And I wanted this video to be more of a chitchat between us. I don't know. For some reason, being inside an enclosed space like a car makes me feel more cozy. I even got myself a coffee too just to, you know, make the mood a little bit more casual.
Anyways, first question is, are you happy you made the decision? 100%. Like, without a shadow of a doubt, I'm very happy that I quit my job and went through this whole journey. The reason is because I don't think I've ever had this level of insane growth in my life before, like this level of personal development. And it was a result of putting myself into very uncomfortable situations like, okay, quitting my job and then going into the unknown and trying to figure out how to start a business and then move to a whole new country and figure out how to live here and survive and all those things. So the journey of it was great. Um, Australia was also like super fun. It's an amazing place. But honestly, like I can sit here and say that now in hindsight. However, when I first quit my job, it was very far from a happy decision. I mean, at the time I was really happy that I quit because I was like, "Okay, I can't do this whole corporate thing anymore," and then I felt super free, you know, that honeymoon period after you just leave a job. But very soon after, reality kind of set in and it was like, "Oh, [ __ ] like I just did that. Now I need to figure out how to survive and do all these things." At the time, I didn't know anybody else in my life who was going through a similar journey. And so, it was extremely, extremely isolating. And all I really had to go on was all the entrepreneurs and creators that I looked up to online who had gone through that journey, but maybe like several years ago and now they're like successful and they made it and they're on the other side of things. Whereas, like I didn't know anyone else who was around the same timeline as I was. So that was extremely scary, if I'm very honest with you. And like doing it, doing that whole thing by yourself is, yeah, it's really not easy and you have a lot of emotions and a lot of self-doubt. And for a few months when I moved to Australia, I did have sudden moments where I would think to myself like, "Oh my god, did I just [ __ ] up my entire life? Like, what am I, what am I doing? Like, I'm, did I actually just do that?" You know, it's like that disbelief. So I don't want to paint this whole rosy picture of like, "Oh, if you quit your job, everything's just going to work out fine." Like, that's not a guarantee at all. And it really is a case of like, "Okay, you sink or you swim." And I think for a lot of human beings, like all of us have the capability to swim when needed. Overall, like right now, a year later, I, or a year and a half, I'm very, very happy that I did it. And if you are someone who is thinking about making that leap, then I would highly encourage it.
You guys have asked like really big questions and I can attack it from so many different angles. Being someone who is a massive overthinker, I'm just like, "Okay, how do I, you know, structure my answer and like what examples should I give to really illustrate this point?" Like, I'm going into my talking head education mode, but I'm going to, I'm trying to pretend that I am talking to one of my friends right now, but honestly, it's, it's really big questions. I also have this fear of like not sounding eloquent, you know? But that's something that I really pride myself with, especially with how I show up to my normal YouTube videos. And so, just being super like unscripted and, you know, not having a plan. I don't know. I just, I don't want to come across as uneducated and not sophisticated, but whatever. Whatever. That's not the whole point of this video, is it?
Okay. How has it impacted your life a year later? Honestly, it's impacted everything. Like from the way that I live on a day-to-day basis to my mindset and the way that I show up in life now, everything, honestly. But how has it impacted my life? Like, for example, now I never set an alarm. I wake up naturally when I want to. And I think the biggest change for me is just having so much agency, the freedom to be doing whatever I want whenever I want, like working on things that I want to be working on. And I've never in my life had that before because, you know, growing up it was like school and then you, you have to study and go to school during these hours and then after that was like uni, which is similar, and then again with like my corporate job. It was like, "Okay, I got to show up 5 days a week and then I have to go to these meetings. I have to do these projects. I have to, have to, have to do this and that." And never in my life have I ever experienced this level of freedom where it's like, "You can do whatever you want. If you want to make YouTube videos today, you can. If you don't want to make YouTube videos today, you can." And that is like, I think an insane amount of power to have. Like I almost feel like I don't deserve to have this level of power. But yeah, it's completely changed the way that I live my life. And I've had to learn how to be very intentional with my time too. Structuring my week. When am I going to work? What setting boundaries with my work and making sure that I actually have downtime too because if not, I'll just end up working for weeks and weeks on end without taking a single day off, which is not great, honestly.
So that's like all the good stuff. I guess one bad thing I would say is, I don't know, especially coming back to Malaysia, I feel like it's very hard to relate to people that I used to hang out with in my life. And not to say that, you know, I don't enjoy hanging out with them. I definitely do. And I still do spend time with my friends. We grew up together. We went to school together, but it's just like sometimes I feel very isolated and lonely when I'm with other people, especially because we are on completely different paths and everyone's kind of like on a very similar timeline. And then there's just me, you know, like most of my friends, they're engaged or they are getting married. A lot of them like recently bought cars. Some are thinking about buying houses or have bought houses already. And so I feel as though everyone's slowly checking the boxes, you know, of what boxes you should be checking in your life or in your 20s. And I just feel like my list looks so completely different that sometimes does make me feel a bit like, "Oh, I'm so alone on this journey." But what's really helped me a lot is just having friends in the space, like other creators, other entrepreneurs, people doing their own thing, you know, that really helps to remind me that, no, it's, it's fine. Like, there's no one answer or one right blueprint on how to live your life. And I shouldn't feel like super influenced by that when I see most people in my life doing this one thing. I don't have to do the same.
What three things would you tell former you or someone who is unsure about taking that leap or simply investing in themselves or trying something different? Oo, this is a very good question. First thing that I would say, h, this is a big one. If I could go back and tell myself this, you really don't need to have all the answers right now. Like you can take action and take the first step towards your goals without knowing what the full blueprint looks like, what the entire journey is going to look like. Like you don't need the entire map straight away. All you really need to get going is just enough information to take the next step and then from there you figure it out again and then you take the next step based on the information that you have. I think that's really served me very well on my journey. I think one of the main things that stopped people from quitting their jobs is that they really want to have all the answers like, "Okay, if I quit, then what am I going to be doing? How am I going to be spending my time? And what is the result? What is the outcome?" Because I think all of us feel this need to justify ourselves to other people. Usually, if you're like quitting your job, it's because you're leaving it to go to a better job with a higher salary, with a promotion and more opportunities. And so that's how we've been wired. Whereas like, it's very hard to explain to other people when you yourself don't know what the answer is. You know, when I quit my job, I was telling people like, "Yeah, I'm just going to go to Australia for a year." I didn't tell them that, okay, this is something that I plan to do for the foreseeable future, like indefinitely, whereas I kind of somewhat made it seem like, "Oh, this is just, you know, me taking a break from corporate for a year." And yeah, that was kind of like what I told people. I never really told anyone that this was the plan, this is the path that I'm pursuing now. You'll never have like all the right answers in life. Like, for me, I quit my job with just this vague awareness that, yeah, you can make money online, you can start your own business through content and do that sort of thing. I didn't know exactly how I was going to do that, but I just knew that I was going to be committed to figuring it out. And then, you know, where there's a will, there's a way. You will grow when you force yourself into positions that require you to grow. That's one major thing. If anything, I would say you don't need all the answers. You just need to take the step first and like trust yourself that you will figure it out.
Um, what else would I tell myself? Yeah, that nothing is permanent and that nothing is irreversible except for maybe death and entropy. But other than those two things, like if I wanted to, I can go and get a corporate job again. It's really not a big deal. Yes, it might be humiliating because it's like, "Oh my god, I made this big deal about quitting my job and now I have to go back to corporate with like my tail behind my legs," or whatever the saying is. We'll make like such a big deal in our heads over certain decisions like, "Oh my god, okay, if I quit my job and then, you know what? If it doesn't work out and I fail and I lose all my money and I end up on the streets and blah blah blah." It's like, no, that will not happen because you can always just go back and get another job. You know, like for me, that was sort of like my mental safety net. I knew that, okay, if things really didn't work out, worst case scenario, worst case scenario, I would just go and apply for another job. I have a degree, I have credentials, I have a few years of working experience in corporate. I am more than capable to find another job if I really wanted that. And so when I was making that decision to quit my job, I rationalized with myself like, "Okay, well, if I quit and everything goes to [ __ ] and I have to move back from Australia early because I ran out of money and like nothing worked out, then I would just go on LinkedIn, get another job, and like guess what? Worst case scenario, I would end up in the exact same position that I'm already in right now in a corporate job." And so when I thought about it, it was like, "Okay, I'm already at rock bottom or at least like my version of rock bottom, which is I'm very deeply unsatisfied and unhappy in this corporate job. Then it's only really up from here." Um, so yeah, that's the second thing.
The other thing I would tell myself or anyone going on this journey is that this is the youngest you'll ever be. This is the point in your life where you're going to have the least amount of responsibilities. This is when you have the most amount of energy and freedom. And so if you want to like make some big crazy decision in your life, now is the time to do it. Because the older you get, the more responsibilities you're going to have, the less energy you'll have, the more things that you have to worry about. Like if you get a car loan, if you get a mortgage, if you have a family, you know, that's goodbye to your spare time. If you're going to take a risk or take a leap in your life, now is the best time to do it.
Oh, I love this question. I was wondering why did you pick Melbs when there are so many sunny beach options in Australia? That is a very valid question. Melbourne is very known for having like the worst weather in Australia. Like, okay, in general, compared to the rest of the world, especially places like Europe. Australia has incredible weather. Wherever you go, the winters are milder. It's just generally a warmer climate, but Melbourne is known as being the place with the worst and the most like bipolar weather in the whole country. There's a saying where Melbourne has four seasons in one day, and it's so true. Like, when I first moved to Melbourne, it was during wintertime in July. My friend was really not kidding when she said that in Melbourne you can experience four seasons in one day. Like this morning when I arrived, I could literally see my breath. But now, like a few hours later, it's so sunny and so hot. I had to take off like all my layers and I'm just in my sweater right now. So pretty wild. The swings are crazy.
Anyways, um, why did I move to Melbourne? Honestly, the reason was because I had one friend that was living in Australia at the time. So, we grew up together. We went to school together in Malaysia and she studied there and had been working there for a few years. And so, I was like, "You know what? It felt like a no-brainer decision." It was already super scary taking this leap, quitting my job, moving to a whole new country where like I really didn't know anyone except for Marina. And so, I told Marina I was going to move to Australia and then we decided to rent a place together. So, yeah, that's why I picked Melbourne really. And also like I have heard many, many good things about Melbourne from people that I know personally. Like I have quite a few friends from school that went to uni there and they only have amazing things to say about Melbourne. It's so cool. Like I love it. It's one of my favorite places that I've ever been to, ever lived in. And if you're considering going to Australia, honestly, go to Melbourne. It's really great. It has everything like from beaches to nature to like city life. Massive coffee culture. People are so nice and there's so much to do.
All right, so next up is some money questions. Thank you, Ryan, for submitting these. Ryan's one of my friends. So, how much money did you save before quitting? What was your financing budgeting plan to prep for your move and to sustain your time in Australia? Was there a target amount you had reached or passed before you thought, "Yep, I'm ready to go for it." Was there a minimum amount you tried to hit each month from ancillary revenue streams or side hustles? All right, big, big question. Um, overall, I'm going to be super honest and say that I didn't have a very specific plan for, you know, exactly how much I was going to have saved up and how much was going to come from this stream and each month I need to like put aside this amount. I didn't really plan any of that. The plan was literally just save as much as you possibly can before you quit. What do I do now? All right, so okay, bit of context. I was bonded to my company for 3 and a half years. Meaning that if I wanted to quit before that contract was up, I would need to pay a penalty of 6 months worth of my annual salary, which is honestly super crazy. >> Oh my god. Okay. >> Right. So, I mentioned before that like a few months into me starting my corporate job, this was way back in 2020, I already knew that I wanted to quit. And at the time, like I didn't really think about, you know, content creation. Didn't know that I wanted to start my own business. Like I just had this idea that, "Okay, I really want to quit this job and I'm probably going to move to another one and I should probably just like save up money for when I do make that move." So I always had this intention of like, "I'm going to build my [ __ ] off fund," but I don't know where I was going off to. And there was one piece of advice that I read in Morgan's book, "Psychology of Money," that honestly saved me. It helped me a lot. What he said was along the lines of, "Just save money for the sake of it. You don't need a reason to save money." Cuz, you know, like all these personal finance gurus online, they tell you like, "Okay, have a goal. Have a specific goal in mind so that you allocate a certain amount from your salary into your savings pot each month so you have like a, you have something to work towards." But what he was saying was like, "Actually, you don't need to necessarily have a goal. I think you should just put aside some money just in case." And that's not your emergency savings. It's just savings that you can play around with because when you have money, you have options. Let's say, you know, this time next year, you feel like you just want to quit your job out of nowhere. You know, maybe something happens. You're not happy anymore. You want to quit your job. At least you have like a pot of money that can act as your cushion for whilst you're making that transition. And so that was what ended up happening with me. Like, initially I thought to myself like I wanted to buy my own apartment, have my own house and that was what I was kind of saving towards. But really, I was just saving for the sake of it ever since I started working. What I did was I kept my expenses very, very low, living way below my means. Whatever I wasn't spending on necessities or investing, I would put into like a separate savings account and that money was not going to be touched until I decided to use it in future for whatever reason. And so, yeah, initially I thought I was going to save up money for an apartment and what ended up happening was like 3 and a half years later, I, you know, decided to make content, quit my job, moved to Australia, and all those things. So that money ended up being used for buying my camera and my lens and all my like filming equipment and helped me pay for my visa for Australia, my flight ticket, and part of that was also allocated for my float money, the $10,000 Australian dollars that I mentioned before. And so for me, it wasn't necessarily like a number target that I was working towards. It was more like I gave myself a time constraint because I knew that I wanted to quit as soon as possible. Like as soon as I was out of contract, I wanted to leave my job. It was a year before I moved to Australia where I knew that I wanted to do this whole thing. And so I gave myself a whole year to save as much as humanly possible. That was when I was doing a bunch of like side hustles. I have a whole video on this actually where I talk about how I was making money at the time. Zero business experience and I had no clue about leverage. And so I was really just trading my time for money, doing all these little jobs and gigs and whatnot. But yeah, I was taking care of other people's cats because at one point I was living by myself. Basically like when people went away on holiday, they needed someone to take care of their cats and I would just like do that for them. I was also like a ghostwriter for this girl's literary book blog and so she would pay me per article and I would have to make it like SEO optimized and everything. I was also doing some modeling, but it wasn't like fashion modeling or modeling in the way that you might expect. It was more like there's this commercial or advertisement for Greenpeace or this laundry detergent or like this, you know, perfume. Then that was the kind of gigs that I was doing. They would pay me like per shoot. So yeah, that's that on the money aspect.
Next is, while doing all of this, how did you not let it stop you from having fun and living your best life? This one's really hard because I would say that I'm definitely someone who like if you think about it on a spectrum. On one side, you've got someone who's very carefree and like lives in the moment and doesn't really like, you know, think too much about the future, they take life a lot less seriously. And then you have someone on the other end who's always planning stuff and always grinding and, you know, very type A person. I wouldn't say I'm all the way there. But I'm definitely like way more on that side than I am on this side. Whilst I was in Australia, honestly, like for the past year, my big overarching goal, my north star was building the channel, building the business. That was my main focus every single day. And I never had it in mind that, you know, I'm moving to Australia to explore and have fun. Like, yes, that was a small part of it. I had to put a percentage, maybe like 10 to 20%, but for the most part, it was like, I needed this one year to just like grind it out and build everything, figure out my life. H, it's super hard, but I, I was also very mindful of the fact that, you know what, when else am I going to live in Australia? Maybe this one year is going to be my only chance and I should really just like appreciate my time here and make the most of it. So for the first 6 months, I didn't really do much of that like living it up. But definitely when I reached the six-month mark, that was when I told myself like, "Okay, if I don't want to look back on this time with regret, I need to intentionally like schedule in, you know, fun time." And it doesn't sound like spontaneous or adventurous or whatever, but like I really needed to do that. And so that was when I started booking all of these tours. I had my bestie come over from the UK and then I deliberately like took two weeks off of my gym job to just like explore Melbourne with her. We went on like a little Great Ocean Road trip thing. I drove a car for the first time in a foreign country. That was kind of scary at first, but yeah, that was really cool. What else? Oh, yeah. And just like there was one day where this was during the summer time and I was doing the full-time sales job at that point. It was like between January and March where I was doing that. And January to March time is also peak summertime in Australia when the weather is super amazing and really hot. And I was like, "Man, I'm spending most of my time like grinding and working at the gym and making content, whereas it's like peak weather right now." One of my friends at the gym, he was just like, "Yeah, you just need to chuck a sickie, go out and have fun." So that just means to take a sick day off because you're sick and then do whatever you want. It was like a random Thursday and I told my boss like, "Hey, I'm not feeling well," and I just ended up going to Half Moon Bay with one of my friends who I met in Australia. So, she's Malaysian, too, and was also on a working holiday visa. We actually met because she commented on one of my YouTube videos and then dropped me an email and we met up in person for the first time and the rest is history. We went to Half Moon Bay together. That was a very, very nice day. And now looking back, it's like, "Oh, when else would I be able to, you know, go to the beach on a random Thursday afternoon with my friend in Australia?" Like, when else am I going to have that experience? I think I had way more of that towards the second half of my year. Whereas the first half, it was very much like, "Okay, I need to get a job and I need to figure out what I'm doing." And I was just like, really stressed out about money as well, cuz like I said, I was very quickly running out of my money reserves. It was a hard balance, but I think I only got that towards the second half.
All right, now drum roll, please, because we're going to get to the juiciest question. What everyone's been asking me, what everyone's been wondering. What is next? What is your plan or goal in life now? And if you're happy to share, what is your next adventure? And finally, are you going to go back to a corporate life in Malaysia? Okay, so what is next? Like I mentioned before, I am getting on a flight tomorrow. So, I've been in Malaysia for the past 5 months since leaving Australia. I'll tell you guys the whole thing, how I came to this decision. I initially was thinking about extending my stay in Australia. But the thing is, for the working holiday visa for Malaysian passport holders, you would need to do 3 months of work in remote Australia. And so I needed to move away from Melbourne to do work for 3 months full-time. And that was just something I didn't want to do. I was super sad to leave Melbourne, but yeah, I just didn't think it was worth it. And I thought, "Okay, let me find another adventure." And so the next best thing I thought was to go to New Zealand cuz New Zealand has the same partnership, the working holiday thing with Malaysia. And I was genuinely like ready to apply and everything. But the issue was the application opened and within less than a week it closed because the quota had already filled up for that year. So I didn't really get the chance to apply. Yeah, that door closed. Didn't end up going to New Zealand. And then I thought to myself like, "Okay, well, where else is, um, a possibility?" And I don't know who it was. It was my friend Joy that planted the seed in my head. So Joy is one of my creator friends who I met online and so we met for the first time in Australia when she came to visit cuz she lives in San Francisco. And at that point, she had just been to Bangkok with her family and she sort of planted the seed in my head cuz she, I think like met her brother's friend or something who was nomading in Thailand and she was saying how much she loved living in Bangkok and stuff and I was like, "Actually, yeah." I was very well aware that like people do this whole digital nomad thing and they travel around Southeast Asia. And I initially thought like, "Okay, what if I try Bangkok?" It's not that far from home. For me, it's like an hour plus, maybe 2 hours flight. There's like a lot of nomads there. And I really just wanted to meet more people in the same headspace, kind of on a similar journey, maybe like building their own business or maybe they're content creators. You know what I because I think that's one big part of my life that is missing right now is just having more of a community, more people around me doing something similar, which I think is so, so important when you want to like make this sustainable and you want to, you know, keep doing this. Like it really helps to have that support. So yeah, I was like, "You know what, Bangkok sounds like a pretty good idea." And I thought to myself like, "Okay, Bangkok feels like it's probably going to be an alternate universe version of Kuala Lumpur, which is where I'm from." You know, big metropolitan city, super busy, lots of people, it's super packed. And when I think back to, you know, how much I dislike that about KL, don't get me wrong, KL is home and whatever, but I just really my environment really affects me a lot. And it's so chaotic and so like I just, I can't, I can't handle big city vibes anymore to be very honest with you. So, I thought, "Okay, maybe not Bangkok." And then I thought, "Next best destination would probably be Chiang Mai." I know Chiang Mai is like this massive hot spot for digital nomads. It's like northern Thailand. It's more of like a mountainous, natury region, you know, small city. Everywhere is pretty walkable. And so that was where I decided on and I'm going to be flying to Chiang Mai tomorrow. I'm super, super excited for it cuz I just came back from Dalat in Vietnam. I did like a 10-day solo trip for my birthday. It was like a little treat to myself a couple weeks ago and I absolutely, I loved it. I just, it's kind of similar. It's like very mountainous, colder climate, very, very chill. I just hung out in a bunch of mountain cafes every day. It was amazing. So, I'm hoping for similarish vibes in Chiang Mai. So, I'm going to like try out Chiang Mai for 2 months. I'll be there all of December and January. And after Chiang Mai, I was thinking of going to Da Nang in Vietnam potentially because I know that around February time, that's burning season for Thailand. And so, the air quality tends to be like super, super bad. And I thought, "Okay, maybe I might just want to like leave Thailand for a little bit." Da Nang is like another big digital nomad hot spot. So, yeah, figured it would be nice to like explore there. I have fallen in love with Vietnam. I really, I just, I like the vibes there and I want to explore more of it for sure. But I got told by a friend recently. So I just recently met this couple who moved from living in Bali for 2 years. They just relocated to KL and, um, yeah, what they were telling me was, "You know, don't tie yourself down or like plan everything out step by step like in advance because you never know where life can take you and you kind of want to let serendipity do its thing. Don't book Da Nang just yet. Just like see how Chiang Mai goes and then who knows, maybe you meet people there and then your plans change and just like be open, you know, whereas like if you have everything planned out to the tea like way in advance, then you're kind of like trapped or stuck in that plan and there's no room for like flexibility and adventure." So yeah, I'm taking their advice on this and I'm just going to like see where the winds take me in a couple months time. So I may be in Da Nang, I may not be in Da Nang. We shall see.
And overall, what I envision for my life is for the first 6 months of 2026, I think it's going to be a lot of moving around, exploring, trying to figure out like, "Okay, what is important to me when it comes to picking a place to live? How, what do I need to be happy? What kind of environments do I enjoy?" Because I know at this point like big city life, KL, Bangkok, that sort of thing. Like I don't think I could do that long term. And so, yeah, I'm just trying to figure out where my place is in the world. My vision for myself is I also want to explore more of Asia. I studied in the UK and so during that time I was very privileged to be able to like travel around Europe. So I think I've covered a lot of that part of the world and now I just really want to like explore more of the neighborhood. You know, it's so weird like living in Kuala Lumpur my whole life, I never took the opportunity to like travel to the different Southeast Asian countries. And I also want to go visit my sister too in Sweden because by that point it would have been like 2 years since I last saw her and the kids. She, I've got a niece and nephew, so I think it'll be really nice to go there at least for like a month or so. We shall see. But yeah, long story short, a lot of plans up in the air, but in terms of like life goals, it's going to be more or less the same of what I'm doing now. Just same vision, same north star, building the channel, building the business. Um, because now I've pivoted more towards like helping creators to monetize their content and build a business around their channel. So yeah, there was a lot of pivoting in terms of content that I did in the past 6 months, just building that side of things. Yeah, hopefully that answers your question.
Anyways, I think this video is going to be insanely long, so I hope you guys don't mind all the yapping. I'm going to go home now and start packing for tomorrow and I am going to go grab some nice lunch as a reward for filming this video. This is something that I really put off for ages. I'm thinking of like making more of these kind of vlog videos, especially since I'm going to be moving around a lot next year. Let me know if you guys would like to see more of these kind of like update vlogs and like I was thinking of starting a digital nomad series as well. I think that would be really fun. Anyways, hope you guys take care and by the time this video gets released, I'll already be in Chiang Mai. Anyways, see you in the next.