Hello, we’re Rina, Michael and (our two dogs) Maui and Maru! We’ve finished our van in December of 2020, and we’ve begun our journey of living the van life. This is our story!

Why did we decide to Vanlife?

We first came across the idea of minimal living after watching an episode of Tiny Homes on Netflix in 2019. During that time, living the minimalistic lifestyle wasn’t even something we’d even considered or thought much about. However, it was interesting to see how people lived in such a small space with so little possession, and that was that. One thing led to another, and we started watching vanlife videos on Youtube, and we got fascinated with how people designed their vans in such a small space, and we asked ourselves, could we live like this?

Whenever we go on vacations, with 2 fairly big dogs, traveling with them is pretty much impossible. The more we learned about vanlife, the more we were able to picture ourselves living a lifestyle of freedom. The idea of living in a van became more realistic the more we researched and thought about it, and the more we asked ourselves, why not?

We started talking about our perfect van layout, what we would want in a van if we were to build one, the style, etc.

One of the main questions we had was making money while living the vanlife. Rina had been working from home for the past few years, but working “remotely” in the literal sense never crossed our minds. We thought some more and it turns out it was possible. Michael is a real estate investor, and he flip homes in NJ. He work with a great team, and he knew leaving New Jersey was possible, but it’s just a matter of time and if it made sense for him and his business.

Then, Covid happened.

If we need to be stuck at home, why can’t we be stuck in a van in a beautiful location? The experiences from the stay at home orders helped prove that we can live and work remotely, and it actually expedited the transition. We decided to plan it out to make this a reality.

In June 2020, we started researching what van we wanted, what layout would fit our lifestyle, and how we could get the built done. We went to different dealerships to check out the vans we were considering. Ultimately we decided to go with the Mercedes Sprinter. The timing worked out as well because Mercedes was offering a 90-day no payment option and 0% finance on their Sprinters at the time, which we took as a sign that it’s time to do this! (we figured the build will take around 3 months, which was kind of perfect). All said and done, we got our new Mercedes Sprinter on August 5.

It was time to get to work.

We got started right away. We’ve already done our homework while we were waiting for the van to be delivered, planned out what we wanted to do, and we were ready. It’s overwhelming how much work was ahead of us, but we focused on the build one step at a time, starting with insulation. We planned ahead as we began the build and ordered the materials and parts as we needed them.

Building the van during the summer months was not fun, and the mosquitos don’t help either. We soldered through the build as fast as we could, and we needed to make sure we completed it before the cold would set in. We completed our build during the first week of December. (Watch our complete time-lapse of the build)

We officially moved into our van in December of 2020, and we’ve been living in it ever since.

Living in the van has been one of the best decisions of our lives. The ability to literally go anywhere has been awesome. The places we’ve been to, the experiences we’ve had, and the people we’ve met has been absolutely priceless and memorable. We have visited 37 states as of this writing (August 2022).

Watch our [Cantonese] vlog if you want to follow our journey!