Meet Tanya, Andrew and Zoe

Hello and welcome to our site. Our little family of wandering Aussies has been traveling full-time since 2011 although our daughter Zoe didn't join the party until 2014. We go where we want, eat good food, meet interesting people, see beautiful things and we want to help you do the same.

Our Story

Once upon a time we both worked in IT and spent our days sitting in cubicles looking forward to nothing beyond our next trip to the coffee machine. To call it unsatisfying is an understatement. We had bills, a mortgage, two cars, wardrobes full of clothes and a social calendar full of other perpetually busy people.

In 2008 we began to make plans to relocate from Perth in Western Australia to the bright lights of Sydney. We had both visited Sydney a few times, we knew a few people there and we were desperate for something, anything new.

Then one day Tanya hit on an alternative. What about moving to Thailand? Life in Sydney would be much like life in Perth. The city is bigger and glitzier sure but we would work, come home exhausted at night, the usual routine. Thailand though… What is the worst that could happen? And the flight to Thailand is only slightly longer than the flight to Sydney.

We spent 2009 living in Thailand, teaching English to support ourselves. 2009 was an amazing year. We made some great friends, ate a lot of amazing food and had a lot of so-called once in a lifetime experiences (that we have now had multiple times). Most importantly our eyes were opened to a lot of ways to live our life aside from sitting in a cubicle all day.

At the end of the year we ultimately returned to Perth. We had some learning to do about squaring away life at home. Over the next two years we got married, renovated then sold our apartment, bought another nicer apartment to eventually rent out, whittled our belongings down, saved a bunch of money and prepared for round two.

This period of our journey was marked by late nights assembling kitchen cabinets, seemingly endless painting, parting with prized possessions that have now been forgotten entirely and cutting our spending until we were spending less than 50% of our combined income.

In late 2011 we caught a one way flight to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. What followed was a leisurely unplanned stroll through south east Asia. Traveling from town to town, we rarely flew opting instead to make our way slowly by train and sometimes bus. Our plans were extremely fluid and we frequently changed them whenever somewhere else just down the road seemed appealing.

Traveling As A Family

2014 saw the birth of our daughter Zoe. We returned to Australia for the second half of the pregnancy, the birth and Zoe's first few months. Then we were off again. In her first year Zoe has spent time in Perth, Bangkok, Edinburgh, London, Barcelona and Kuala Lumpur.

Zoe is off to a great start. It has been a big change in our lives but we are all learning and growing together.

This Site

We started recording our experiences while living in Thailand in 2009. Our lives at the time seemed to feature an endless stream of emails from friends and family requesting updates on our Thailand experience so we just started putting our updates on the net.

In the years that have followed, Magic Travel Blog has become an important part of our life and our daily routine. Despite having a silly name and despite being far more time consuming than most people probably realize running this site has greatly enriched our lives and allowed us to provide helpful information, tips and inspiration to tens of thousands of people.

Our greatest hope is that this site will inspire others to demand more from life and then provide them with all of the info they need to get out there and have an adventure.