Who are Matt and Perlie?
As we have just started our travel blog for you to follow our travels from past, present and future, we wanted to formally introduce ourselves. We are Matt and Perlie AKA Makin’ Moves with Matt and Perlie. Makin’ moves has truly become our mantra from when we started dating over three years ago. Fast forward to today and we have reached 26 countries together with several new countries planned to hit! So how did we meet, you might ask?
How We Met
Well, let me paint a picture for you… I (Matt) just arrived in Busan, South Korea, to begin my one-year adventure of teaching English as a foreign language to the young, bright minds of Korea. I had already spent nearly two years teaching English in Spain and truly fell in love with the lifestyle of hitting new countries to call home for a year. After arriving in Korea, I shared a post on the Facebook page of my TEFL Academy saying something along the lines of, “I’m new to Busan, anyone trying to hang?” While I am a very outgoing and talkative person that is bound to meet anyone and everyone, I wanted to get a head start on creating my network. I then received a DM from the one and only Perlie Yang, asking about my experiences in Korea. It was ironic because I literally just arrived in Korea and had little to nothing to say to Perlie. Yet, it was truly the spark that brought us together. Many months later, we became an item and haven’t looked back since.
Our Journey To Where We Are Now
Since our teaching contracts didn’t align as I had arrived in Korea six months ahead of Perlie, we had to endure a long-distance relationship as I departed Korea, no longer interested in extending my stay to teach there for another year. While it was tough in terms of communication, as I was 13 hours behind Perlie, we survived and we became stronger than ever. We knew we didn’t want to do anything close to long-distance again and decided to pursue teaching English together in a new destination together. This brought us to Türkiye’s largest city, Istanbul, where we spent a year in and were able to see so much of the beautiful country and some new European countries together.
After an incredible year spent in Türkiye, we decided to teach English online while also looking for other remote gigs to allow us to maintain our travel lifestyle. Since making this decision in July 2023, we have hit so many wonderful, unique places. Our goal was to spend at least a month in each country to really get to know the culture, language and of course the food. In some countries, we spent less time in due to circumstances (Singapore being crazy expensive, having a lacrosse tourney in Greece, pit stops in Istanbul, Manchester, and Dubai as a few examples). Nevertheless, these are the countries we hit within the past 14 months:
- Guatemala (1 month)
- Greece (1 week)
- Türkiye (1 week)
- Montenegro (1 month)
- Poland (1 month)
- Japan (1 month)
- South Korea (1 month)
- Hong Kong ( weekend)
- Vietnam (1 month)
- Singapore (1.5 weeks)
- Malaysia (1 month)
- India (1 month)
- United Arab Emirates (1 week)
- Türkiye (1 month)
- England (1 week)
- Ireland (1 month)
- Mexico (2 months-present)
Each country has been incredible in its own way and we are so excited to share with you our insight, tips and recommendations for all these places and so much more from previous trips together. Thank you for supporting us as we continue to make travel content and hope to inspire you to get out there and make your own travel memories. Our future travel plans include some pretty gnarly places, many of them completely new countries! We’d love for you to join us in the future, as we hit:
- El Salvador
- Costa Rica
- Argentina
- Antarctica
- Uruguay
- Chile
- Peru
- Colombia
It’s a big world out there, and we plan to make as many moves as we can to enjoy this beautiful planet that we call home complete with incredible people, delicious food and stunning scenery. So, welcome to our page. Never stop making moves!
