Hi,

We are Mike and Jo Coad, two 50+ year olds from the South-East of England. We have taken the decision to give up our home and jobs and join the numerous other back-packers travelling around the globe in search of new experiences.

Whilst it would have been nice to say we came to this decision after winning the National Lottery, sadly that wasn’t the case. We plan to sell the house that has been our home for the past 25 years and use the bulk of the equity to buy a smaller property outright. Any remaining balance will fund our trip. We reasoned that we could never benefit from the equity whilst living in our house and that if we put off the decision for a few more years, we might make a larger profit but other factors such as health may possibly prevent us from such adventurous travels in the future.

Whilst many people travel without having seen any of their own country first, we are fortunate in that we have had the opportunity to extensively visit almost every region of not only England but Scotland, Wales and Ireland too. Our travels have also taken us to the USA on several occasions as well as to two Caribbean islands and a fair number of European countries.

However, we have never visited Asia before so this seemed the obvious first choice. Not only would the culture be totally different to what we are used to but our money would go much further there than most parts of the world. The plan is to travel for about a year or so, come back to England for a month or two and then go off again to another part of the world providing we have some funds left over. If not, at least we will have had the pleasure of experiencing Asia.

After our ‘Grand Tour’ is finally over, we hope to pursue our interest in family history by setting up our own genealogical research business.

Whilst we have had every encouragement from family and friends, we have no doubt that one or two of them are secretly thinking we have lost our marbles to take such a risk at our age but as the saying goes ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained’.

We hope you will follow this diary which will be regularly updated as we make our plans, go on our trip and finally return home.

If you wish to be added or deleted from the list of regular recipients each time the diary is updated, please let us know. Likewise, if you have any comments, please feel free to add them using the link at the bottom of each diary page.

Thank you for your interest in following our trip and we hope you can, in theory at least, share some of our experiences as we tour Asia.

Mike and Jo Coad

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