10 Ways to Know You’re Finally at Home After Years on the Road

After obtaining our one-year Cambodia visas, we spent several months searching for somewhere to live here in Siem Reap before finally finding an apartment we liked. After years living out of our suitcases, we signed a lease and have somewhere we can really call home. Relate? Based on our experience, here are 10 ways to know you’re finally at home.

It’s been a huge year of travel for us here in Southeast Asia. Most of it was a crazy blur of photo shoots, working in hotel rooms, and having endless restaurant meals and street food. So after we finally decided to make Siem Reap home, following stints living in Thailand and Vietnam, we were thrilled to get our one-year Cambodia visas.

Little did we know was that we’d spend several months living in a hotel room while we looked for a home to rent. Not an easy task; for tips, see our guide to how to rent apartments in Siem Reap. But when we finally found a place to call home, I can’t tell you how good it felt to unpack our Samsonites after more that seven years bouncing around the planet.

While we have a long list of destinations we’re going to next year on assignments for magazines and guidebooks, for now we’re wrapping up the last of this year’s work and enjoying settling into our new home.

But I can hear you say, “Don’t you guys often rent apartments and houses? What’s so different about this place?” Well, here are some of the things that make it ‘home’ for me after almost eight years out of our suitcases…

10 Ways to Know You’re Finally at Home After Years on the Road

Here are 10 ways to know you’re finally at home after years living out of suitcases.

1. You Have a Set of Keys

You finally have a set of keys! Not a collection of hotel credit card-type door keys, but a real set of keys that I have to mark to identify which doors in our abode they will open.

2. You Have a Street Address, Not Just a Post Box

It’s a nice feeling to finally have an address I can give to people with confidence, so parcels don’t have to be couriered to the front desk of a hotel or serviced apartments or to a hotel concierge.

3. You Have a Server and Your Own Wi-Fi Network

An old MacBook Pro now sits in the corner of our new living room so Lara and I can send files and photographs to a central server. No more emailing images! Half of which end up going to spam! We can hang out, we can play games, we can watch stuff. That server is also home to all of our music so we can play whatever we want when we want, especially when we’re cooking. And…

4. You Can Use Your Apple TV Properly

– and the Apple TV finally has a permanent home, so I won’t have to keep hunting around the back of hotel TVs looking for the slot for my HDMI cable.

5. The TV Channels Don’t Change Every Day

I no longer have to search for the Australia Channel when we’re craving a little Australian ‘culture’ when we’re travelling, or Al Jazeera so we can catch up on the Middle Eastern news, or the trashy American drama channels that Lara likes to unwind to.

6.You’ve Gone From “I’d Love to Cook That” to “I’m Cooking That!”

The local markets here in Siem Reap are brilliant, as is the beautiful fresh local produce. I almost feel guilty buying such inexpensive seafood, chicken and pork. The beef? Not so much…

7. You Have a Freezer Full of Homemade Stock

Even when we’ve rented apartments for a month or two and I have been able to cook, there has never been room in the tiny freezer or a pot big enough in the cupboards to make stock. Some people say that store bought stock is just as good. Just like fresh verses dried pasta, each has its place, it’s just that store bought stock has no place in my kitchen.

8. You’re Buying in Bulk

Four litre tin of extra virgin olive oil, I’m looking at you! Those chef-loved catering-size rolls of plastic cling wrap and baking paper? I’m taking you home.

9. You Have a Growing Collection of Cookbooks You Can Use Every Day

The cookbooks are not weighing down Lara’s carry-on anymore. They’re no longer just salivated over. They’re finally getting sauce-stained. Pictured above is a Thai red curry paste, made to a recipe from Ian Kittichai‘s Issaya Cookbook that’s been in my bag for months.

I’m about to embark on a project where I spend a year (or two! however it long it takes really) cooking from Asian cookbooks to better understand the connections between the cuisines now that we’re living in a new Southeast Asian country.

10. You Can Make a Big Batch of Ragu Bolognese

Lara is especially excited by the fact I can now make big batches of ragu alla Bolognese. That means homemade tagliatelle pasta, made with my own hand-cranked pasta machine, and then lasagne the next day. For me this is a great signifier of home.

You have time and room to make brodo (stock). You have a stove and a pot large enough to make a big batch of ragu. And you have the time to stir it. The aromas that permeate through the apartment while making it? That’s another sign of home.