What a month this has been. I cant believe its over and its already 3rd April! March flew by in a haze of moving to a farm, website work (mine and other people’s), Mum visiting and preparing for Vietnam! I have decided to (try to) write monthly update summaries as I seem to have got behind in my Diary style posts. Well, actually with all the website issues this past month I am behind on all posts but May will be my month to catch up! The Teach And Travel series will be back in full swing and I have so many Western Cape draft posts that I am excited to share…all about exploring this beautiful area way from Cape Town and seeing what else there is on offer.

Anyway, it seemed quite appropriate that on 31st March, nice and tidily at the end of the month, I found myself packing up most of my belongings from the caravan (packing, again). We head off to Vietnam tomorrow (well actually today as it’s some silly time in the morning right now) and when we come back we are coming back to the farm in Durbanville. Last time I updated you we were in the caravan in Pringle Bay and totally settled there so you’d be forgiven for having lost track 🙂 The boy has been taking on some agricultural projects and following a few weeks in Durbanville while Girl Dog and I chilled out in the caravan on our own, he was asked to build an Eco Pool on a farm close to the city. This time, instead of leaving us to our own devices, which mostly involve long walks along the beach and Girl Dog having more room in bed to sleep next to me and not listening to me when she wants to go and hang out in the pub but knows she shouldn’t, we came to the farm with him.

Our ‘plan’ was to be here for a week, max 2, while he finished the project and to make the most of being in such close proximity to the city. However, we’ve been here just over a month and there’s more project work to come. Having become so attached to Pringle Bay we just couldn’t bring ourselves to actually leave so the caravan is there, kind of as our ‘holiday home’ and we are staying in a cute little farm cottage. So, for now, the farm is home. Who would have thought it me, firstly living in a caravan and now a farm girl 😉

 

In addition to having found ourselves in a temporary new home, we have also planned a rather last minute trip to Vietnam! I mentioned before that I had been offered some education consultancy work that I was excited about, however that fell through at the last minute leaving me close to my visa end date and not many options other than to leave the country. So, the cheapest flights out of South Africa on the day that my visa runs out (today!), were to Vietnam so that’s where we are headed for a month! It’s all a little surreal because we weren’t planning it (I know, see I am embracing the no plans plan!) and with my next visa not being guaranteed, Mum bought her trip forward to come before we left the country. In addition to me rushing to get projects finished before getting on the plane and the fact that it’s the Boy’s first time leaving the continent it has been an ‘interesting’ preparation process!

I have wanted to go to Vietnam for a long time and have an idea of what I would like to do while there (see my Vietnam Bucket List here) but traveling with the Boy will put a whole new spin on it as, other than our current adventure, I have got quite used to traveling alone! We fly into HCMC and out of Hanoi…our plan is to rent bikes to get us from one end of the country to the other (although as he got into bed hours ago the Boy’s last words were along the lines of “your backpack is very big, It’s going to be heavy to carry when we walk from one town to another” I think he’s been watching too much GoT…I don’t plan to walk from town to town.)

Ok, so that’s what’s coming up, but let me tell you more about March before I get ahead of myself. During our first few weeks on the farm, we switched our brains and way of thinking, from leisurely rural life by the beach to living on a working farm surrounded by chickens, donkeys, horses, sheep, alpacas and Dan the goat. It’s awesome! (other than the cockerel whose body clock doesn’t know when it really is time to cock-a-doodle-doo). The farm is fairly new with the idea it will be a co-operative of different social enterprises and I seem to have found myself involved in several in various ways from marketing hand made knitted products to recruiting volunteers to pick olives…it’s got a great community spirit and the location is beautiful so what’s not to love? Oh yes, the shitty internet connection.

Farm views | Princess In A Caravan travel blogger

Farm views

That brings me to my next March ‘excitement’ You may have noticed (I like to think so anyway although in reality it’s probably only my Mum who would have been checking!), this lovely site was down for 3 whole weeks. I decided to make the jump from WordPress.com to WordPress.org…if youre not a blogger this will likely mean nothing to you which is totally fine as it doesn’t really matter. The point is that something that apparently should have been very simple and that other people have done in hours, took 3 weeks in total…with all the chats to Site Ground’s customer support (who are awesome and I am now on first name terms with a few) and then the waiting period while settings were reset and redirected blah blah blah, it was 3 weeks of almost tears and plenty of frustration. You’ll be pleased to know, and can clearly see, its’ up and running again and ready for a revamp when I get back from Vietnam.

Table Mountain | Princess In A Caravan travel blogger

Table Mountain

So the last 2 weeks of the month were spent with Mummy Reeves here and me getting to be a tourist which is something I rarely do. I am going to write more about it in a separate post but in summary it was lovely. Her lats visit to see me in SA came at a rather rubbish time personally so it was great for her to be able to see me in a better place, literally and emotionally. I really enjoy having you guys from home here seeing where I live and getting a feel for what my life is like (yes, that is a shameless hint that more of you should get over here!) We spent time in the city as well as out on the Garden Route and we saw the actual southern most tip of the continent. We took lots of selfies, drank lots of wine and even did plenty of shopping!

Tourists on Table Mountain

Tourists on Table Mountain

Ok, so that’s March done and dusted, I am ready for April (which also happens to be birthday month!) What have you got planned for April?

Princess In A Caravan

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