100th COUNTRY DOCUMENTARY

as if life can I get any better we are sitting in our hundredth country and we just hit 1 million subscribers well you have the best everything else out this honestly we I think I can speak for us both are living a life better than our wildest dreams [Music] last month we reach the goal that we have been pursuing for the last four years one that when we said it felt more like a dream than a goal and when we decided to pursue it I don't think either one of us actually expect it to accomplish it so now that we're back home in Nashville Tennessee with over a hundred stamps in our passports and over a million people following our journey on YouTube it feels unreal if you've found our channel recently this could look like an overnight success something we were destined to do or even something that came easy but that is not the case at all we've told bits and pieces of this story along the way but now that we're home with one two three four five to twelve thirteen there's actually a 14th one but I can't write it fourteen old hard drives we are going to attempt to tell a story from start to finish what we really want to do in this video is give you the real story of how this all got started a lot of you have followed our journey from the very beginning and you've seen all the fun stuff but we want to pull the curtain back on some of these things that were happening behind the scenes along the way as well as the backstory that led to the creation of this channel in the first place this is where we've had all our stuff stored since we left and I don't think we've opened this door in over two years but there's something in here that I'm really hoping we can find I couldn't even told you that this was ours this feels so weird seeing all of our things that I'm so like detached from like if I never saw any of this stuff again I wouldn't even I wouldn't even miss it if you're ever gonna go travel for an extended period of time don't don't put your stuff in storage just get rid of all of it you won't want in here when you get back the only thing I want in this storage unit is that bed that's the most comfortable bed in the world and I've missed it maybe the hard drive I can't find this in this briefcase no telling how old this is on your old business cards are useless now I think it's dusty this is my hat from Oktoberfest there is there is no telling where this is so can't find the wedding video though stuff gets old when it sits around oh I see a DVD I don't know if it's the wedding video though cuz I can't get this box out of the way this is a much bigger test and I thought it was gonna be [Music] every deadline how to play that boy all right we assume we pillows okay this basket is where I used to have our disc with our wedding on it I think there are more pillows every Christmas card we've ever received this is like every picture of sleep ever okay things I said the taking back sunday concert about 2008 is moving all of the junk that's in here into the apartment this is when we got kicked off of the island a day early on our honeymoon on accident and we went to a lobster festival no so much fun this is actually our first real travel experience and it was a total accident and then we slept in the airport thanks and that changed it what one more walk I [Applause] [Laughter] was so close to giving up on that didn't I believe with all the junk we have in here that we actually found it I don't I think we'll just give up on that original hard drive though we gotta go now we just need to find a DVD player we don't have one do they even sell those anymore [Music] question what do we have a DVD player let's see if this still works good natural sounds we got married on June 15 2013 in Gallatin Tennessee in a few days after a wedding we went on our honeymoon in Belize as cliche as it sounds this is when we caught the travel bug we didn't necessarily know it at the time and we didn't immediately decide we were going to pack up our stuff and leave to travel the world but that trip planted a seed that eventually led us to where we are today the trip itself was great but it was really what happened before that ultimately ended up changing our lives Cara was in charge of planning the wedding and I was in charge of planning the honeymoon and that's when I realized for the first time how expensive international travel was I'm frugal now but I was really cheap back then I was about to explain how cheap I was when I was younger it's impossible to explain it's just had to be there when I was younger and I couldn't drive an it could you wouldn't take me anywhere no matter how much I begged gas is barri it's been sit back then you barely took care on any dates that's what that whole family knew I really like Cara's when I'd spend the gas money to drive to her house [Music] I probably been friends I remember a picture of us at your like first grade birthday party I was trying to explain in the video how cheap I was when we were growing up gosh we're in high school we would go eat at a restaurant and they would make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before we went to get full so that at the restaurant he could only live on the rolls and drink the water and not pay a dime is actually the exact story that I thought you would [Laughter] I've got more where that came from the problem I would tip more to the servers because I felt bad I had to pick up the slack so when I went to book our honeymoon and I realized how expensive it was gonna be I started looking for ways to save money and to this day I have no clue how I came across it but I found this 30-minute documentary about frequent fliers it was these guys who were earning frequent flyer miles in creative ways and redeeming them for free flights around the world and that was my first glimpse into the world of travel hacking and I was hooked but also very skeptical I consumed all the information that I could four weeks to learn how we could earn miles and points that would allow us to travel for free or cheap and that's ultimately when I came across travel credit cards I was reading all this stuff about how you could sign up for a credit card meet a minimum spending requirement and earn enough points for a free flight it's gotten a little out of hand at this point but I started slow because I'd always been told that credit cards were bad you have a lot of debt you're misbehaving with money and then you come off as prideful and arrogant about how you can handle your credit cards because you pay them off every month when 78% don't and even those that do overspend especially those of you with airline miles it's the biggest scam and freaking history but curiosity ended up getting the best of me and I applied for my first travel credit card the Delta SkyMiles card right before we got married we put all of our wedding expenses on card to meet the minimum Spinney requirement so that we could earn the sign of bonus we ended up using these points to fly to Florida to go on a cheap cruise that I found I vividly remember sitting on that flight looking around at all the people thinking wow everyone else here paid hundreds of dollars to be on this flight and we're sitting here for practically free that was the moment that I was hooked on travel hacking and from then on it became a slight obsession I think we signed up for twenty two credit cards before he left to go travel so fast forward about one year we found this in our storage unit this morning we had been signing up for is many credit cards took like miles and points as we responsibly could I had just quit my job as a preschool teacher to become a full-time nanny and Nate was starting a printing company from our apartment so he had a super flexible schedule and anytime I had time off work we would use our points to go travel we didn't have a ton of money at the time but we were using our points that we are from the credit cards to go all over the world we travel to the Bahamas Costa Rica Colorado Las Vegas Milan Prague Vienna Bangkok China and South Africa so usually for these trips we booked our flights with our miles and points and then once we got to our destination we would travel as cheaply as possible which meant we were staying at all of these hostels and guest houses and we would meet these travelers from all over the world and it seemed like everybody was either traveling for months at a time taking a gap year or traveling indefinitely and we felt like they weren't that different than us and if they could do it why can't we I specifically remember being in Thailand for one week and it was the most incredible place we had ever been and we met this couple who had been there for two years teaching English and traveling around Southeast Asia and that sounded like a dream and then we met this other guy in Costa Rica who was playing poker online and learning how to surf in his spare time these interactions would open our eyes to the world of full time travel we started having all of these dreaming conversations about how awesome it would be to do that one day [Music] so at this point it's January 2015 and we came on a date Dairy Queen which was a regular thing for us because we were part of the DQ Blizzard fan club which is their actual thing they send you emails with buy one get one free coupons but only in the winter so here we were in January in the freezing cold eating our blizzards and money and at this point we've been talking about this idea of full time travel for probably about a year but I think every time we talked about it it had never been very serious then the conversation came up again on that date night one of us had an epiphany that night I don't remember which one it was but we realized we didn't have kids but didn't have pets we lived in an apartment we didn't have career building jobs and if we were ever actually going to travel long-term it had to be right now there was at least never gonna be an easier point in life to do it but I think that's what shifted the conversation from dreaming to let's make this a reality and then make up this grin he gets the sneaky look on his face when he's really excited about something and he said if we're gonna do this we need to set a date and we need to start telling oh I'm sorry so that night we decided to give ourselves one year to get everything in order before we left on our big trip but we knew if we didn't start telling people and we didn't have that social accountability we'd always find some excuse for why it wasn't the right time to leave Cheers and that is the story of how we made a life-changing decision at Dairy Queen we spent that whole next year saving every penny that we could and every mile and point that we could but there was one more decision we made that year that ended up changing the course of our lives we bought a camera this camera we figured since we were traveling for a whole year we needed a proper camera to capture it with instead of just the cell phones that we have anything so something that you should know about me I may be cheap but I also don't do things halfway so I spent a month researching what camera we should get and ended up spending way too much money on that one you see because I'd spent all that money I made a very poor decision all right she's here so Juliana push him okay do you remember that time you were a wedding planner I do yes do you remember that time you asked us to film a wedding for a bride who had a really tiny budget and couldn't afford one I do remember remember when we told you we would only do it if you told her that we had never done it before and we had no idea what we were doing and then you didn't yes sorry I knew you guys would do a fantastic job so I've been in weddings and I know is there life and I was not about to film a stranger's wedding when I don't even know how to use our camera yet much less edit a wedding video I thought we'd just spent like tonight's money on the camera and this would be a good opportunity to make some of it back the night before the wedding I realized that was a massive mistake literally we were in the car on the way to the wedding watching youtube videos on how to film a wedding long story short we kept the camera rolling all night and Keira with the help of one of our good friends spent the summer learning how to edit a video the entire and by some miracle we pulled it off the bride cried she loved it and we ended up doing a couple more weddings for friends and that is how videography entered our life all thanks to Julia great behind-the-scenes audio hi this is where we lived before we left this feels so weird know that one that top left apartment we have it back here in four years and that thing has changed so this is the apartment where we were when we watched this documentary made by our friends he's Melissa when they are vide to all 50 states and it gave us this idea we've been filming all these wedding videos and at the same time trying to figure out how we were going to capture our one year trip around the world and we decided we'll just make a documentary how hard could it be shortly after that I found round-trip business class flights from Sao Paulo to Hong Kong for only $700 I booked three of them and plan to spend two weeks living on airplanes and in airports to earn the miles and status and I thought this would be a great time to film our first mini documentary on this interesting trip so I picked up our big camera carried it with me around the world and shot some footage that now is very painful to watch this is video diary day one this was really my first time ever putting myself in front of the camera and being behind the camera and being in front of the camera are two totally separate things it was also exercise not caring so much about what people think about me carrying this camera around and doing this vlog is also an exercise and not caring so much about what people think about me because everywhere you want with camera everybody thankfully something serendipitous happened I was telling a friend about my plans to go on this trip and attempt to document it and he said hey you should check out this guy called KC nice that he makes videos flying on airplanes so with all my free time that I had on airplanes in airport lounges pretty much living in airports I ended up watching about 50 of his videos honestly at this point I didn't even know that YouTube was a website that people went to every day the only thing I knew about YouTube is it was the website that hosted the funny viral videos that people would send me on occasion I definitely didn't know that there were people making a living uploading videos to YouTube by the time I got home I had watched so many of his videos that I've practically felt like we were best friends and I was excited to share his channel with Kara and I thought it was super weird that Nate had just watched all of these videos from this random guy I had no idea what vlogging was I thought the word vlog was super weird but somehow Nate convinced me to watch a few of his videos and before I knew it it had become our routine to watch KC nice sights new vlog in bed every single night before going to sleep we just really enjoyed his casual style of filmmaking it seems like he just picked up the camera and films whatever he did that day plus it seemed a lot less intimidating than the documentary we're planning on filming so we bought our first point-and-shoot camera this camera recording looking at the screen our first video on our new camera travel camera vloggers for life I think we're gonna be good I was getting tired as we packed up our apartment and put everything we owned in storage we attempted to use our new camera to document the process phase one moving out of the apartment it's almost empty Christmas tree staying up til Christmas though Scrooge over here wants to take it down there's the first truckload of stuff leaving our apartment I feel weird looking at the camera but also weird you're looking at you because it looks good both ways really yeah just look at this screen no I don't want you to just like say everything and once said it are you guys sounds really until you maybe like you say something our stuff is in the black hole behind us that's good oh yeah look at that all of our stuff hey Dylan yeah it's so painful to watch we were so awkward but we thought it would just be easy to pick up the camera and film what we were doing we obviously had a lot to learn we continued to play with the camera for the week leading up to the trip but the first day we ever filmed an actual video was this day [Music] Travie vibes we decided we're just gonna use this same song every time we travel and that's just gonna like set the mood you know Karen Nader on the road if you hear that song people come in it please never play this song again January 10th 2016 the day we boarded our one-way flight to Japan and started this crazy journey we were filled with the mixture of emotions excitement for the adventure that lay ahead but also sadness because we just said goodbye to our closest friends and family and we were attempting to film our first vlog we don't know how to get out of this kind of like our first wedding video we just kept the camera rolling for the entire day and that night when we got to Japan we sat down to edit our first vlog Hey feelin so Casey and I said is the one who inspired us to film in this format and he published a video every single day so naturally that's what we decided to do going from zero to daily vlogging plus learning how to live full-time on the road all in the same week it was it was a lot to take off but I'm so glad that we did because now we have all these really funny videos to look back on how hard can it be really best become a theme in this story that I hadn't really realized in our lives I don't think anything we're like oh how hard can it be and then we dive straight into something and we learn real quick I mean we captured the whole process and you can really see just how far we've come even though I've been tempted to take some of these videos off of the internet so nobody can go back and watch oh now the contest it zoomed in squad deeper at this point it may seem like wow you found your calling you started making YouTube videos and the rest is history but the reality is it wasn't easy especially not in the beginning after spending a week traveling around Japan we flew to the Philippines where some poor planning led to things not going as smoothly as we'd hoped to our market wedding it was only our second week of travel we were still getting the hang of things and it just felt like things were already starting to fall apart our wanted to bus ride care throughout not only was our travel not going as planned but making videos was hard I'm tired and there's no coffee here I specifically remember one night when Karen spent a few hours editing a video and it wasn't turning out anything like she wanted it to and she felt like she needed to start all over and she literally broke down in tears we are sitting in the Philippines at the start of our one year trip around the world and carat is crying and at that point we felt like we really needed to re-evaluate how we were spending our time we didn't want to look back at the end of this one year trip around the world and then regret all the time that we had spent sitting behind our computers instead of being out traveling we decided to just close the computer that night and sleep on it and take the next day off and then we made this video explaining why we decided to keep going so we knew we were gonna travel this year we knew we wanted to capture it somehow we've been watching some vloggers on YouTube and decided that we would try that out so we started making vlogs and we didn't know if anybody would watch them or care but they took a lot of time and still take a lot of time to put together if nobody watched and we will probably just stop but so many people have reached out and encouraged us and texted us we feel like when we're not vlogging that we're missing out on capturing days of the trip that we might not remember otherwise even if this may not sound like a big deal but this was a very pivotal moment we weren't fully committed to making videos and we could have easily stopped and never made another one the amount of nice things that people have said about the vlog has meant so much to us it really has been the people who watched our videos who have kept us going especially in the beginning I remember getting messages from people who we hadn't talked to in years saying that they were loving following our journey around the world and that just blew our minds and then people who we didn't even know started commenting on our videos which was really crazy it seemed like every time we got like frustrated or down and we were ready to quit we would get the perfect message or just hear from the perfect person and it motivated us to keep going and over the next few months we became much better travelers and slightly better filmmakers as we traveled around Southeast Asia thankfully after the Philippines we went to Singapore where we stuffed ourselves with some of the world's best street food from there we flew to Hong Kong mainly so we could use our status to go to the incredible first class lounges in the airport Wow celebrated Chinese New Year in Taiwan and tried with is still our least favorite food in the world stinky tofu [Music] we actually tried it again to make sure it was still as bad as we remember and we saw the iconic Petronas Towers in Malaysia and got surrounded by monkeys at the batu caves jumped on a cheap flight to cambodia and spent a few days exploring the incredible temples of ankor wife it was also in Cambodia where we had our first taste of bugs and he did not start small oh girl from there we jumped on a bus to the south of Thailand that took us about half way before it dropped us off in the middle of nowhere somewhere around 2 8 eventually we did make it to the islands where we got our advanced scuba certification during our certification we're paired up with this other couple who is traveling the world and making money by writing blogs about their adventures and we learned that they were getting their certification for free by featuring the divers were on their blog we had heard the word influencer before but we figured with Oh your breath oh we figured we'd have to have tens of thousands of followers before anybody would give us something for free but we ended up comparing numbers and our youtube channel was getting more views than their website was and so we figured if they could get stuff for free maybe we could - why can't we how are you gonna be how hard can it be the thing you have to remember is at that time any money that we could save meant we could stay on the road for a longer so next we headed to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand which required a 14 hour overnight train ride on a wooden bench they had a hard time sleeping last night this position every time I was to this day I still remember that as one of the longest nights of my entire life once we arrived in Chiang Mai and got a little sleep I reached out to three businesses about partnering together a zip line company an elephant sanctuary and a cooking school and to our surprise all three of them said yes kind of the Thai secret cooking school is the first company that we ever worked with it required me getting on the phone and practically begging for us to be able to do it for free we'll do anything anything post a million exactly what we're doing and they gave us one spot not to one spot Kerry got to do it for free I filmed it and I got to nibble off the scraps that she cooked at least that's our event but we were pumped wait yes we were we were so grateful to have that one free spot because that cooking school was willing to take a chance on us which we are so grateful for that opened the door for us to work with companies down the road which has led to so many unique experiences over the past few years from Thailand we cruise down the Mekong River into Laos where we watched this really beautiful tradition that was kind of ruined by tourists then climb to the top of a really cool waterfall our last country in Southeast Asia for the year was Vietnam where we fell in love with the food and cruise through the stunningly beautiful halong bay from there we traveled to Australia where we felt like we were spending every penny that we had we saw the iconic Opera House and drove the great ocean road we met up with our friends Jordan Julianne in New Zealand for a campervan trip or on the South Island then they went home so we got a man that we could afford by ourselves and spent a week driving around the North Island from there we made our way to Nepal where we landed at one of the most dangerous airports in the world before trekking to Everest base camp after we finished the trek we did something that we had been putting off for six months it was a really big deal we made a video about turning ads on our channel don't like what you put in there's this monetization tab in YouTube and I think all I have to do is click this enable button and ads will be on our video oMG we felt like we needed to spin like 10 minutes justifying why we were turning ads on our we were gonna lose the few hundred subscribers that we had at that point we're terrified that people were gonna stop watching our videos cuz they were gonna think that we're only doing it by me we still don't have the annoying pop-up ads because I still don't like this you're welcome totes and the worst but to be fair this was the point when I think we actually had started thinking about extending our trip past that first year honestly when we left to go travel we didn't know if we would like it we've never done it before we've never spent 24 hours a day together seven days a week we we could have hated each other we could have hated travel or it just it was home too much it could have sounded like a much dreamier idea than it actually was and if we could help it we didn't want it to end after the first year or at least like that was starting to become our thought process at this point from Nepal we use points to fly home from our brothers wedding I literally went from not having showered in 13 days to the fancies business class lounge and flight of my life this was like kind of the deal care really wasn't into this idea of trekking to Everest base camp for two weeks and I said how about we use our points to put business class if you do that way the contrast was home I just imagined two kids living off $75 a day being invited into that kind of luxury we took full advantage more food yes more drinks yes can we put some in our backpacks I literally war the jammies that they gave us on the plane to the Dallas Airport oh good times after the wedding we flew to Kenya with my mom to help with medical clinics went on safari and then flew to South Africa where we went cage diving with great white sharks oh my gosh our time in South Africa was another very defining moment for us because that's the first time that we started talking about this goal of visiting 100 countries we knew we didn't want this trip to end after just one year but we also didn't want to just like that's traveling with no direction I think we wanted a goal so I sat down and I made a spreadsheet of all the countries that sounded remotely interesting to us and it came out to about a hundred and we went on this hike up Table Mountain and I remember having this really serious conversation about whether we were both actually willing to devote the next few years of our lives to chasing this goal Nate is crazy it sounds like it should have been an easy decision at the time but one of the biggest things for us were just the sacrifices that we knew would have to be made if we were gonna continue like not being home for friends and family and events going on here like we had missed a lot as romantic is full time travel sounds there are sacrifices that have to be made in order to do it I mean this has been our life for the last four years filming and editing these videos there's there's very little that goes on outside of that we have zero hobbies we also have zero regrets I could not be happier with with where we are it's been worth it but but not easy I guess that's what we're trying to say so that week in South Africa is really when we set this goal to visit a hundred countries although watching those videos you would have no idea because I think it was something that we were too embarrassed to say out loud it felt it felt too crazy to put out into the world at that point how are we as two 20 something-year-old with a tiny youtube channel and really like no income because when we did turn on those ads back in Nepal that was like 15 dollars a day how are we going to accomplish 100 countries I didn't want to publicly give up I'll say that yeah and I didn't know at that time if we were both willing to make the sacrifices necessary to do it from South Africa we flew to Victoria and then timorous where we rode in a submarine in vans bar we got lost in the alleys of stone town and after leaving Africa we headed to Europe where we met up with Kayla and Barrett in Portugal in Spain we saw the sagrada familia drove a Ferrari and went to the world's largest tomato fight with our crazy Australian friends we continued our European summer in Poland when we went on our first food tour somehow we had traveled for eight months straight and had never heard of food tours before took a bus to Bratislava than a train to Budapest another bus to Munich where we celebrated Oktoberfest and jumped on yet another bus to Sylvania where we visited the beautiful lake bled blue to Croatia where we saw some really cool waterfalls rented a car and drove through Bosnia and Herzegovina where's the beginnig of Enya I'm giving it up on our way to Montenegro where were you rented a boat that didn't actually go anywhere then we paraglider and fed donkeys in Cyprus met back up with Jordan and Juliana and Athens and stayed in an incredible Airbnb in Santorini from there we flew north to the Netherlands where we learned you should never try to drive a car into Amsterdam I see where everybody rides bikes around here then to London for the World Travel Market where we pitched ourselves to every company under the roof of that building to let us come and do something for free we were doing whatever it took we've come a long way we ended the year with an epic trip to Morocco where we experienced our first huh bomb and spent the night in the Sahara Desert our first year of travel was officially complete so we flew back home where we had a really hard decision to make over the holidays we spent time in spare bedrooms here at Kara's parents house and my parents house at this point are your travel was supposed to be over we didn't want it to be but we were running out of money and it seemed like the responsible thing to do was to come home and get real jobs to make that even more tempting I got a job offer that was supposed to pay me over a hundred thousand dollars a year and after living off $75 a day for an entire year and feeling super poor that hundred thousand dollars was very tempting and it was also scary to keep going not knowing where the money would come from but as scary and as tempting as it was we made the decision to leave for a second year because we knew in the back of our minds that we would always ask ourselves what if if we didn't try we were fired to 2017 as our year of free stuff because we didn't actually have enough money to keep traveling so we reached out to as many businesses as possible to do as much free stuff as we could and that is how we ended up as broke 20-somethings traveling South America in luxury we started the year in Argentina where we learned how to play polo that was so much fun and then traveled to Uruguay because well it was close cheap and a short ferry ride away we spent the next couple of months traveling around South America on epic luxury tours including an incredible trip to Patagonia where we trekked on a glacier and hung out with Gauchos spend today playing on the largest mirror in the world and had dinner as we watched the sunset over the Bolivian salt flats met back up with Jordan Julianne on the equator stayed in the middle of the Amazon rainforest in Peru and then cruised on the river and a luxurious suite before flying to Cusco to meet Nate's parents and track to Machu Picchu which we barely saw but that was okay because the highlight of the trip ended up being staying in glass pods that were hooked to the side of a mountain overlooking the sacred valley after filming what we thought were some of our best videos ever in South America we learned an important lesson and that's it just because we can get companies to give us a bunch of free trips didn't necessarily mean that that's what other people wanted to watch people seem to be much more interested in our videos where something went wrong instead of when we were doing really awesome but unrelatable stuff like this here's a good example I stuck my toe in Santiago a hundred and forty-four thousand views oh here we go this video we got out of a taxi 134 thousand views penguin island and Patagonia epic penguin island 55,000 views like the best day of our lives and the Galapagos swimming with sea lions 40,000 years so we learned a lot about relatability this year we still do luxurious things here and there but we try to strike a balance and when we do we make sure we're telling the story that we want to tell and we also try to infuse as much of our personality as possible into the videos back then we felt like because these companies were working with us we needed to pretty much be shooting commercials for him so while we were in South America we basically shot a couple months worth of ads lost a lot of loyal viewers understandably so but we will learn from our mistakes after our summers spent at home with friends and family we flew to Italy did all the touristy things visited the smallest country in the world before meeting some very special people for the first time who took us to another microstate located inside of Italy we spent the rest of the summer knocking a lot more European countries off our bucket list starting with Belgium where we ate our weight in chocolate we took a day trip to Luxembourg then travelled to Paris and had a magical technique dinner in front of the Eiffel Tower and rode a Vespa around every corner of the city we took a road trip around Ireland and had incredible weather on the day we visited the jaw-dropping cliffs of mohair we flew to Iceland to meet back up with Kayla and Barrett experienced nature at its finest ate a ton of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to save money because a chicken sandwich from the gas station was 16 dollars and swim between the North American and Eurasian continental plates that was before I lost a bet and had a two sheeps eye ball it was on to the Baltics starting with bobsledding in Latvia visiting a hill with over a hundred thousand crosses in Lithuania and locking ourselves out of our apartment in Estonia then in Korea we got naked with strangers in a traditional spa called a gentle bang so he just fit the last two hours naked and separated eight octopus that was still wiggling step foot in North Korea at the demilitarized zone between the north and the south we flew back to Italy to harvest grapes with our new friends Bob and Gina before flying to Moscow to board the trans-siberian railway and spent over a hundred and forty hours riding a train across Russia little did we know us being cooped up in a train car for days on end eating ramen noodles and consuming way too much instant coffee would be very entertaining to the Internet our trans-siberian series we're really the first videos that we had uploaded to our channel that really took off and we had our first video hit 1 million views honestly if it wasn't for that series doing well we probably wouldn't have been able to continue because we had made this deal with each other that when our bank account got to fifteen thousand dollars that's when it was time to go home we figured that was enough money to give us a few months to get back on our feet and after barely breaking even all year we were dangerously close but at the end of quarter four we had made ten thousand dollars which felt like so much money at the time and it gave us the confidence to keep going also for those of you who have never been to our website before we've been writing income and expense reports documenting our financial journey for the last three years so that's what we're referencing here just to step back and put this into perspective it took us two years of uploading a video almost every single day before we made any real money from YouTube if we would have set out in the beginning to create a successful YouTube channel we wouldn't have done it we would have been disappointed with how long it was taking and we would have given up but we were just happy that we were still travelling like travel was the priority not YouTube and looking back I think that's why it worked it was our passion for travel that kept us going [Applause] thank you this is the year things really took off shortly after the start of the year we found ourselves in Oman where we hit a hundred thousand subscribers which was a massive milestone for us after a mod we jumped on a cruise that took us to the United Arab Emirates Bahrain and Qatar we ended our trip in Dubai where we skied it inside of a mall good luck I love you don't hurt yourself and jumped in an aquarium full of giant sharks then we made our way to Aruba for a friend's wedding that just happened to be the same week as carnival next there was India colorful crowded chaotic and delicious India after almost a month in this crazy country we needed some downtime so we flew to Bangkok for our first work ation this is where we found majority of the leaf up until this point we'd either been on the road traveling going 100% pull speed or back home with friends and family and this trip to Bangkok is the first thing that we realized that we could take time off while on the road and we came up with the word for it we're tasting taking a vacation from travel to get work done as weird as it sounds these brakes are would've enabled us to keep going for the last four years without getting burnout when you're on the road you're constantly moving you're you're in new environments and you're just on and even though during these breaks we're probably spending eight to ten hours behind our computers it just it feels restful but by the end of a week or two of that we're sick of being on our computers and we're ready to get out and go again and this has become our routine for the last two or three years we'll go really hard for a few weeks traveling and filming videos and then it's time for a location where we can sit down kara can edit and we can push content out most importantly we don't have to repack our stuff for like two weeks just one place I will say this after four years of being on the road packing is not any easier packing is always terrible it never gets better after our first vacation we flew to Myanmar where we spent nine days cruising up the Irrawaddy River visiting Riverside villages and meeting tons of friendly locals from there it was on to Bali which we thought was going to be super overrated but we quickly learned why it's on everyone's bucket list and then there were the Shorty Awards which is basically the Grammys for internet creator we flew to New York and that started one of the best weeks of our lives our moms met is their into our utter surprise we actually wanted the shorty award for best in travel goes to Karen needs then we had the opportunity to fly business class to my dream destination I'm gonna cry I don't know where to start I can't believe we're here and we got to stay in the most expensive place that we stayed in all 100 countries it was all so good that it felt like life had to be all downhill from there but it wasn't we traveled to Egypt where we saw the pyramids and celled down the Nile River in Turkey we soared over cappadocia in hot-air balloon stared in wonder at the ruins of Ephesus my boy and got stranded in a rainstorm Oh looking back it wasn't a big deal at the time then we took a quick business trip to Sweden and stayed in a 747 airplane that was converted into a hotel from there it was back to Italy where we hosted our first ever tour for 40 people who were crazy enough to let two youtubers plan their vacation we ate tons of pasta drank delicious wine and crashed a lot of us buzz we learned a lot by hosting those first few trips but looking back we wouldn't change a thing it was one of the most rewarding weeks of the entire year we got to meet a lot of cool people it was awesome it was way to responsible for people's lives everyone's fine from Italy we travel to the Caucasus where we met back up with our friend Charlie who always seems to get us in trouble hope he doesn't get himself arrested in Bosnia we road trips to Georgia and Armenia exploring an underground city stay with the best Airbnb host in the world Eddie huh and rode in rusty Soviet cable cars goodbye to Charlie and jumped on a train to Azerbaijan kind of 24-hour layover in Kazakhstan on the way to Kyrgyzstan where we were invited to cover the world now my games as oppressed we got these really cool this that's it press on us flew back to the US spoke at our first conference let's back up with our friends Heath and Alisa in Canada for an epic road trip from Vancouver to BAM I'm gonna head it to one of our favorite cities in the world Chiang Mai Thailand where we took the longest break that we've taken in the last four years we spent six weeks there catching up on videos and also going to the awesome lantern festivals there's fireballs falling out of sky during our time in Chiang Mai we had our first truly viral video that hit 1 million views within a week once again on a dream and over the last couple months of the year our channel grew to over half a million subscribers up until this point we always figured that after we reached a hundred countries we would have to go home get real jobs and do responsible things like save for retirement that's why our original goal was to hit a hundred countries by my 30th birthday that just seemed like the right time to become a responsible adult however now that our YouTube channel is growing faster than either one of us ever expected we were making more money than we would have if we would have moved back to Nashville and gotten real jobs and I think this was the first time that either one of us ever looked at our channel as something more than two kids irresponsibly chasing a crazy dream that's when we decided to push back our goal and we started looking at our YouTube channel as more of a career moving into 2019 honestly facing your entire livelihood predominantly on one platform that we ultimately have zero control over is scary and we are fully aware that all YouTube has to do is make a few quick changes and everything we've worked for the last four years could be taken away so we've always tried to approach any success that we've had on YouTube with gratefulness in the current moment but no expectation that it's gonna continue into the future so we went into 2019 thinking there was no way things could get any better but it was our best year yet we started in Cuba where we had an eye-opening experience flew to st. Maarten to take off a major bucket list I did landed on the shortest cruise around the Caribbean and through the Panama Canal with scuba diving and underground caves in Mexico flew to the Middle East where we floated in the Dead Sea and saw one of the seven wonders of the world in Jordan someone ate lamb testicles in Lebanon but I went first travel to a country that we never thought we'd visit and experience incredible hospitality from the Kurdish people in Iraq there's no will fight in the mountains of Kurdistan then Tesla invited us to Finland to jerk cars on the world's only sea ice cream we also slept in a house made of ice drove snowmobiles with dog sledding and experienced our first finish in Denmark we rode in a hot tub boat then we traveled to Mexico to meet up with our friends and family and learn how to surf after a nice break on the beach we flew on Cathay Pacific's business class and met some friends on the flight who invited us to their birthday party in first once we landed in Vietnam we got in our first car accident from there we went on the most intense but most epic dive of our life on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia then flew home for a wedding and to celebrate my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary that summer we headed back to Europe where we met up with Kayla and Barrett in Italy then we hopped on a train to Switzerland where we crossed a glacier students of epic accommodations and rode the Glacier Express went to a party in a castle in Liechtenstein where I met the prince who talked about race in Ukraine we spent two days exploring the abandoned yet still radioactive town of trinova flew back to Vietnam to surprise my dad with a trip to his number one bucket-list destination then it was back to Europe to stay in some unique accommodations in Norway from there we flew to Israel where we wandered around the most holy city in the world traveled to Myanmar to host our second tour where we spent a week cruising of the Irrawaddy with 36 new friends after wrapping up the tour we headed to the neighboring country of Bangladesh where we explored the beautiful countryside as well as the chaotic streets of Dhaka I somehow talked Kerry into flying into one of the most dangerous airports in the world and the captain invited us into the cockpit for the landing after safely touching down in our 90th country we spin our week in Bhutan immersing ourselves in local culture and taking in the breathtaking scenery from there we made the long journey to our 99th country the remote South Pacific island of Vanuatu where we stayed in an incredible treehouse and climbed to the top of an active volcano so now that you're all caught up you'll have a much better appreciation for why today's three hour flight is such a big deal this is our last vlog we're going to our hedges Kenji [Music] we are currently in our 99th country of Vanuatu where we flew to the small island of Tana to climb to the top of an active volcano and this morning we are leaving the incredible treehouse that we've called home for the last three nights to fly to our 100th country via Tom but mercenary bumpy and wet to our truck ride to the airport [Music] thank you lady to the tiny airport this isn't the fight that's taking us to our hundredth country this is just taking us to the International Airport thank you very much I think this is the first time ever we've had a handwritten boarding pass I love it all right just the 30 minutes like we are literally booking our combinations for our 100 country right now talk about last minute not the first time we've done that I can't do this before the quite a tells me but you would think on our hundredth country we would have it together by now I'm doing pressing the button it's probably most money I've ever spent to go anywhere got out of the bank thank you your reservation has been confirmed we're looking forward to your visit tomorrow thank you look 40 short 35 minutes to make a mini tie together the wave will take CL take off towards the southeast right after takeoff climbing to a cruise over to 14,000 feet first officer Stephanie will be handling the fly so to cap a teacher at the parking upload of the weather expected with common now we have three hours at the International Airport until our next flight takes off to our 100 country it just kind of hit me on that plane ride that we're kind of making the last travel day blog [Music] so the closer we've gotten to reaching our goal the more reflecting we've done lately which we don't do very often mostly because we're usually traveling so quickly and always looking forward to the next place but the one thing that we know for sure is that there is no way that we would be here today if it weren't for this incredible YouTube community if it wasn't for you watching our videos we would have had to pack up and call it quits a long time ago and we're not just saying this like make you feel like part of the team it is 100% true if you looked at all of our numbers when we made this goal that first year we had no reason to think that we can actually achieve it I think at that point it was like more of a dream like not something we thought we could actually do but like something just to shoot for I guess we figured what could go wrong like if worst came to worst we we went home and we had traveled a little bit longer but now we're here about to check in for a hundred country flight it's honestly hard to like like I'm trying to soak it in and take it in that like this is what we've been working for for the past four years and we're about to step on the bike that's going to take us there and unless like some dad heavens on the flight we were doing it we've done it we're obviously still reflecting trying to process [Music] well we spoke too soon turns out our flight is three hours delayed which gives us plenty of time to explain how we chose 100 countries CentOS been such a huge part of our journey we wanted you to take our hydras country and I'm super indecisive and I never kind of chosen it anyway so we listed out all the countries that we haven't been to yet and put it up for a vote so over a hundred and fifty thousand votes were cast and there was the clear top three but there can only be one entering try number two [Music] we have our boarding passes and we are in our last lounge before country number 100 [Music] [Music] here we go we are boarding our flight to country number 100 please give us your full attention as we demonstrate the safety equipment and procedures of this aircraft your seatbelt should be done on tightly whenever you are seated you should also note your emergency brace position it is clearly shown on your safety information that in an emergency follow the instructions of your crew exactly they had on all emergency exits on this aircraft this is a requirement that was requested oh I can't forget your seatbelt is securely fastened so it nail you put yourselves in business class to celebrate a hundred countries but in reality you only put these voice last night this is the only thing available you think maybe more on top of things by now the more you travel the more you aren't faces like workout so you can do things more more last minute [Music] honestly I can't think about our very first light of this entire journey from Nashville to Tokyo I thanks for here it honestly makes me tear up a little bit just trying to stuff it all in tell us about it very happy this will hit me for weeks and when it does I want Dennis [Music] [Music] for those of you were here for the first time we stopped will have enacted to you and for those of you are returning home we welcome you [Music] country number 100 we have stepped off so many planes in the last four years and like [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] thank you so so much to everyone who voted especially those of you who voted for Fiji because we were so excited that this is our hundredth country a lot of you who voted for Fiji told us that you did so because you wanted us to have a proper vacation and just relax and apparently we've really taken that to heart the morning after we arrived we jumped on a ferry and headed north to a small island [Music] for the last three days we've just been hanging out at this beautiful resort and doing a lot of nothing most of our time has been spent underwater in our pool eating delicious food playing chess they've even been exercising we've basically just been here reminiscing about the last four years of our life it's been so nice is to actually have a minute to slow down and think through all of the incredible experiences that we've had over the last four years all of our good time it is seriously been just just fun thinking about all the things that haven't gone to plan I think those are the things that have come up the most and all of our conversations this is that's on like their most interesting I don't care if I don't watch their subway ticket it's very pleasant we enjoy the view Kara I asked you before you left should I bring my rain jacket should I bring the rain cover for the camera and you right now it's beautiful outside I made this cell for the night this is not good I'm pretty sure that I just ran the drone into a rock my house home point is updated well so we've had a few roadblocks along the way but we have been so fortunate with how everything has worked out the last four years it's actually incredible if you think about it as many flights as we've been on we've had one canceled flight and one lost bag and should we got back outside of like a few small bouts of food poisoning our health is stayed pretty good and somehow after four years of full-time travel we have yet to go to the hospital that's pretty incredible maybe we're just not adventurous enough maybe we need to like do more stuff [Music] [Music] the menu even says our names [Music] so as if life could not get any better at the current moment we are sitting in our hundredth country a goal that we have like devoted our life to for the past four years and we just hit 1 million subscribers and our 100th country exactly halfway through our week here the timing is impossible we achieve the goal that we've been working towards forever and we hit what's probably the biggest milestone that will ever hit in our YouTube career in the same week this is like stuff you write a movie about it doesn't feel real like there's no way it worked out this perfectly it's it's like somebody at YouTube had their like hand on the throttle and they were like nothing I think yeah we can't give it to him and then as soon as we got here it was just like boom here we go to a million there's so much to celebrate right now like I was I was still like getting used to the fact that we made it to a hundred countries and now this the the timing honestly feels impossible like YouTube is just like it's this beast that's just totally out of your control you do your the best you possibly can to put out the best videos that you think people will like in that like you hope people will subscribe to but I think hitting hitting 100 countries felt much more in our control and hitting a million subscribers on YouTube I honestly never in a million years thought we would be here having this conversation right now especially four years ago when we started this channel it took us two years to hit 100,000 subscribers on YouTube and when we hit that and we got the silver play button at all this is the only play button we'll ever get and I'm just so happy with it and we're together without you bang and I just got to travel the world with my wife for the last four years everything else we know the best everything else out this honestly we I think I can speak for us both are living a life better than our wildest dreams yeah just look at where we're standing right now this look this is our life I can't I'm standing here having what we're trying to say is thank you we're so grateful [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Kara and Nate

Views: 3,970,971

Rating: 4.9418373 out of 5

Keywords: travel, travel movie, travel documentary, full time travel, vlog, travel vlog, 100th country, documentary, 100th country documentary

Id: FuFv4iF8wgg

Length: 72min 10sec (4330 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/huthletthedogsout]

It feels like the primary reason they included the 100th country at the end of the documentary is because they may not have had enough footage of their time in Fiji since they mostly took it as a time to relax.

[u/venelon]

Am I the only one that was disappointed with their last vlog? The doc was nice, but the vlog itself was probably their most boring episode from an activity point of view ever. Not to put a downer on everything, its a great achievement and they are definitely great story tellers!

I think someone mentioned that Yes Theory had used a pay what's fair model for one of their productions and that's why Kara and Nate thought of testing it out, the reason it worked for Yes Theory is because they announced this in advance so everyone had the choice ahead of time if they would want to pay and watch or not....unlike here where everything was delayed and then bang! Paywall.

Either way, a great achievement from them, it will be interesting to see what they do next, I wouldn't be surprised if they settled down for a bit though.

[u/SpenceAlmighty]

Content availability and consumption behaviour has changed dramatically over the last decade and to put yourself behind a paywall of any sort these days is a risky move when there are hundreds of other content creators out there.

Kara and Nate make good content but to be fair (and I'm not trying to be negative or mean) It's not good enough for me to pay for. I would expect that they have a few hardcore fans but ultimately Youtube viewers have so many options and offers that its not like we are so starved for content that we will pony up.

I just looked at their site and saw their most recent income statement (humble beginnings yes but...) they are making hundreds of thousands of dollars for travelling the world and producing videos of their apparently endless vacation. At this point I think they are making an active choice to fly economy so as not to alienate their viewers.

I understand the negativity to a point as they outwardly appear to be leading a charmed life while making more money than any regular person and they are upset because regular Joe's don't want to pay them when they are already more wealthy than all but a few of their subscribers.

They should count their blessings, review what they did that made them this successful and do more of that!

[u/kpg4923]

I am going to miss them. I signed up for Reddit just to respond to this thread. I first found them when they were on the Trans Siberia.

I thought they handled their mistake really well. I tend to watch in clusters, as in I sit down once a month and watch the last month, so I didn't realize any of this was happening until it was over.

There were several other posts about people being upset about Kara calling people 'meanies' and showing a picture of her crying. Unfortunately there is always that 1% that will say things on the internet because they can. As we all know Kara wears her emotions on her sleeve, and a part of the beauty of the entire run of content was how well she brought her emotions to the vlogs. It made perfect sense to show the picture, and to turn the comments off to protect her from not from legitimate criticism, but from nasty people. I applaud Nate for doing that for his wife.

Last, the documentary was fantastic. The entire show was fantastic, and I am sure they will both find success in whatever comes next.

[u/arpus]

stupid question because i'm at work, but is the title suggesting that they are done with youtube travel vlogs?

[u/jaeindoh]

The comments section seems eerily sanitized of negativity.

[u/LakeSuperior29]

I think Kara and Nate made the best of a bad situation, but I couldn't help feeling bittersweet during the "last vlog" portion where they thanked their YouTube subscribers and said it wouldn't be possible without them. I would have felt proud and happy to have supported them on their journey if this vlog was published freely. Instead, my disappointment with the paywall colored the whole experience and I wondered how they could disregard all the fans that followed their adventures. Still, they should be proud of what they've accomplished and I'm interested to see what's next for them.