South Villa Neighborhood friends: Alia, Ashley, Chin-chin, Josiah
Becky and I have traveled internationally before, and so we know how nice it is to have a house/place to land for a week while you acclimate. Showing up to a country and not having a place to sleep is one way to blow out your budget on hotels when doing travel as a lifestyle.
House 1, South Villa, Ma-a Davao
So we booked this house on Airbnb in Davao. We had looked at various houses but in the end we chose that house because of the mix of affordability and size. We had booked it for a week to serve the purposes of giving us a place while we connected with people here, found out where we want to live and connect with local real estate agents who help navigate the properties available.
We took this walk through video (Click to watch on YouTube) to show our audience/friends/family what living in that house was like. We really enjoyed the part of Davao that we were in, and the house's caretaker as well as the neighbor kids.
But some things we knew about ourselves is that we need our own space. The kitchen and porches at this house were shared with the caretaker, and he only had a bedroom so he was often in the shared space. The kids hung out with him (Dexter, pictured here) every day and while it was nice to have a playmate for the kids, it was a bit awkward to live in a shared space when the kids were up at 3am and crying most afternoon/evenings.
So we looked, and frankly it was pretty quick to find a new house.
House #2, Villa Josefina Matina Davao
We moved in 24hours ago (Sunday morning our time, Saturday evening Eastern time) and have found in the first 24 hours a ton of blessings in this new house.
First of all it's a whole house, we still have a dedicated care taker who lives on the property, but we have our own outside spaces, and our own kitchen (which happens to be huge).
We think it's a very luxurious house, it's not incredibly expensive by our standards, but has large windows, a formal dining room and an incredible chandelier.
We're in a very quiet subdevelopment with excessive speed bumps. So the kids can roam and play without concern of being in the way of a taxi or jeepney.
The negatives so far? The roosters in this neighborhood are up at 3am, two hours before the sun. And we're in the flight path for the airport, so about every hour a large plane flies over, ending at about 10:30 at night and starting again at about 5am in the morning. But those are it for negatives (so far).
Here's a walkthrough video (see it on YouTube)
Now in our new house we're getting into the routine of life, working and homeschooling. We're only here for one or two months and the routine might make life appear "boring." But right now we're loving it here!