Van Life Returns: Can't Believe THIS Went Wrong! (1/2)

After two months of sun, sea and crazy adventures exploring Thailand and Vietnam, the time had come to pack up our backpacks and be reunited with our tiny home. If you're new around here, we have been living in our VW camper van since July of last year, where we sold our house to travel full-time. Since being on the road, we have been trying our hardest to chase the sun, and that had been pretty successful. But as we left our van in Croatia to get some work done after our crash, we soon realised that a two-month trip wouldn't be long enough to avoid the cold, and we'd soon be welcomed into the Croatian winter. Now, being completely transparent with you, we never knew how much we'd actually like van life before we left, so we didn't spend too much money on adding any extra upgrades to our already converted home. But it turns out, after six months of full-time van life, we really have never felt more at home, wherever we've been parked up. But with that meant that we were prepared for these next few weeks to be tough in the van. The weather forecast was shown below freezing for the foreseeable, and with no heater, and the majority of our clothes being designed for a warmer climate, we didn't know how long we would be able to cope. With that in mind, we had to make a decision about if it was possible for us to continue travelling through Europe over the next few months. Well, this was something that was going to be answered much quicker than we thought. You'll see what I mean throughout the video. But for now, it was time for us to be reunited with our little van, which fortunately had been parked up at a body shop, being repaired from, well, you know what. As you can see, Mitch was buzzing about the work that was done, and after thanking the bloke so much for helping us out whilst we were away, it was time to get back on the road and see how the future unfolds. It feels so strange to be back in here. Everything just as it was. All the noises are back. A little bit of dust, but the smell of the van is still the same, and it's just... I can barely even smell, my nose is that cold. Yeah, it's freezing, but we're back in the van. How do you feel? I don't know, I'm a bit anxious because of how cold it is now. This is one of them times where, like, you picture it happening, but then now that you're actually doing it, it sort of feels like a bit of a dream. But we've got a lot of jobs on the list today. Now that we're back, it's midday, we've had a crazy travel day, but we're back, and we've got to get the van back in tip-top shape because we emptied everything, as you know, when we left, to make it okay for us to come back to, and now we've got to do all that again, and then I think we'll head to Slovenia maybe today, so who knows. But first up, food. I wonder if our bedding's mouldy. We'll have to check that in a bit. Oh man, I don't know where to begin. This is too much. I don't think I've ever been anywhere this cold, you know, as well. Today is going to be a big part of what's going to be decided tomorrow, I think. Yeah. So, yeah, we've got a lot of thinking to do. Oh no. It's frozen solid. We didn't even leave any water in it. I hope the pipes are okay. I emptied the water tank entirely. What if that's the same? We need to do some driving so the van warms up. Back to the familiar sound and smells of Lidl Bakery, we were picking up some of the things that we'd been craving over the past couple of months that we weren't able to get in Asia, and provisioning for the cold days that were expected huddled up in the van. Oh, how quickly we have gone from eating food in the sun, or even eating food that's been prepared for us, to going to Lidl Bakery, which is eating just pure bread. I've just made myself a makeshift peanut butter and banana sandwich because I have been craving peanut butter. So I've just had a lot of satisfaction. Being able to open that up, and now we're just sitting here waiting for the van to be warm. We did make a mistake though, of not checking the cupboards before we went into Lidl. So we've got about 20 cans of beans now, and loads of spaghetti and pasta. But we've bought a lot of stuff that doesn't go off and just stocked up the cupboards again, which feels good. And it's trying to snow. Yeah, and it's trying to snow right now. Oh man, welcome back to van life. It's riveting. What have we done? I don't know why I feel more edge driving here than I did in Vietnam. And I think it's because everything works the way it's meant to. I was getting used to it being just pure chaos. It's weird, everyone stays on the same lane, and all drives in the same direction. And it's all very slow, and nothing jumps out on you every two seconds. I feel like I could drive with my eyes closed. We've just realised we spent nearly an hour in Lidl. So we're definitely taking a little bit of time to get used to just being back doing everything, and also realising how long stuff with van life does actually take. But we're back now, and now we need to try and get some fuel because we left the tank empty. And then I think our plan is to just drive for a little bit. We should head into Slovenia, because that's where we're going to fill up the water, fill up the toilet. And then, I don't know, I really don't know whether just to carry on driving a bit through Slovenia. We've not even made a plan of what we want to see or what we want to do. If you're watching our Vietnam series, then you know how little we plan everything. And considering we've had this flight booked since we left, we never really planned for the day that we came back. And now we're here, and we have no idea what we're doing. We don't know how we feel. We're all a bit over the place. On travelling as well as travelling as well. Yeah. We forget that we've been travelling for 30 hours altogether. So we're all a bit of a mess. But I have thought about this moment a lot, especially on the bike when it was raining, about sitting in the van with the heating on, in our own little bubble. Like now we're out of the cold, like in the cab, nothing, no worries really. Yeah. I've missed this. We're on our stop for fuel, and we've already been stung by van life. Mitch has got a fuel up, and he was trying to find the cheapest fuel. Diesel. Oh, we're getting to that point where we're so tired. Yeah, and basically we just drove 18 minutes out the way, and it's the same price as... It's the same price as where we just were. But if you didn't know, when on January 1st of this year, Croatia entered into the European Union, which now means that they are now in the Schengen area. And it also means that they've now gone to the currency of Euro. I don't know much more than that, but I know that we're now in the Schengen, so we're not currently out, which is why we want to get over to Slovenia. And it's also, yeah, in Euros now. So this diesel is costing us €1.51 per litre. Oh my god. Just minutes after recovering from the price of the fuel, we were assertively waved down by the Croatian police. Hello. Sir. Yeah. Car document. This, or the insurance. This one, or the insurance. I don't, I don't know which one that is. That is, open that. This is, this is the car document. Oh, this? Yes. We've been stopped by the police. I don't know what for. Thank you. How extremely weird. Well, that was weird. I don't know what he was even checking, because he never checked insurance or anything. He just asked for my driver's license, and then the car document. Which is the V5. The V5, yeah. And then he didn't really know what the V5 was. So, oh. Oh. Eh? Oh. We're at the border. Right. That's so weird. Oh, I see. Are we just going to drive straight through now? Yeah, we're driving straight through to Slovenia. I still don't know what his reason was for checking us in case. I wonder if it was just in case we were taking like a stolen vehicle over to Slovenia or something. Well, um. Because all he did was he matched my driver's license name to the V5. The last time that we had our V5 checked was actually going into Montenegro. And it was the only other time we've had our V5 checked since we've been away. So, I didn't, I didn't realise we were that close to the Slovenian border. And we, he just pulled us over and flagged us down. And we were just having the conversation before he pulled us over about snow chains and winter tyres and the toll roads here. And then he literally pulled us over. Yeah. My heart stopped. I thought he was going to check that we've got snow chains or not. Yeah, but actually he was just obviously doing the checks. I wish he had explained. Yeah. It's fine. Oh well, he was only doing his job. Yeah. There we go. Well, we're in Slovenia. It's always nerve-wracking when you get pulled over for no reason, isn't it? Like, you instantly feel like you've done something wrong. Yeah, it's hard to not feel guilty even though you've done nothing. But this is our fourth country in 24 hours. Yeah. Thailand, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia. Wow. We're just world travellers, we are. We've just got to where we're meant to be filling up with water. And it seems to me that there's no water point here. I don't know if we're completely missing it or are in the wrong place. I don't know. But there's nothing here. No? And now we've got no internet. This is great. We're doing really well. Oh, man. I need to go to sleep. I am slowly starting to regret that we didn't book, even if it was just a night somewhere in an Airbnb. Just... No, you can't do that. I'm just not used to van life again. We've not even got a toilet right now because it needs water. And now I've got no internet to find where we can get water. We're really rusty at this. Well, no, I thought my phone was going to work in Slovenia. I'll have to restart it and have a look. What are you like? I told you we were rusty at this. The water was literally 10 metres away. But it was hidden behind this big motorhome. I hate the water. This is a snazzy little fill up. It's just literally on a flow meter where I can pull the hose off. It's costing us 10 cents for 10 litres. Pretty good. Little... Oh, no. Oh, there you go. Stop. Start. And then we've got to do the toilet. What? Stop. It can't be done already. Is it done? It's not up to the top bit yet. But it's coming out though, isn't it? No, I think that was me. Oh. Making a bit of a mess. Were you doing it then? Well... One side, this is all to do without having two hands. What's going on? We're having a bit of a nightmare. The battery's having a bit of a tiffy. I've just put the fuse back in for the water pump to work and it's popped, which is really bad. Basically... The toilet's overflowing. Yeah, because it's flaming up because there's too much pressure from the pump. The kettle had like two inches of limescale in it. We're just not having much luck. I'm gonna have to get another fuse for that and see if it pops it again. But that's not good, that, isn't it? Oh my god, and this is what the van looks like right now. This is really not how I envisioned coming back to the van to be like. And the battery's... Did you say that? Yeah, I said it's having a tiffy but... Yeah. It's basically... I think it's ran flat while we've been away but nothing's been connected to it. I disconnected everything from the battery. So... Oh, I don't know. And Martha's dancing around like a fairy because she says she's got trapped wind and keeps saying she wants to be sick. Yeah, I'm not having much help right now. I don't agree with flying. My stomach does not agree with flying. So right now, I'm really, really, really struggling. I've got really bad stomach pain. I've just taken a like chewable tablet thing that we had in Thailand because I get this quite a lot. So I'm like no help right now too much because standing up is absolutely killing me. And we're just here in the middle of nowhere and the light's gonna go soon. We're gonna run out of daylight hours. Look what we've done to this place. I don't even have any seven and a half so ten's gonna have to do. Will that be okay? It'll have to be. What does that mean? There's more... Just means that more ants can fly through it before it pops which means the wire will probably end up catching on fire and killing us. What? You're joking, aren't you? Partly. Popped again. That means the pump's kaput. You know what's happened? It's just clicked. The pump's seized. Too cold? It's either frozen and that's why it's not spinning or it's seized up while we've been away. Has that just made our decision? Well, that's a big, big problem. Oh my god. We're gonna have to see if that sorts itself out while we're driving like with the warmth on it. I don't know, can we put... Have you got a hot water bottle or anything we can put on it? I know we can't... Yeah, we can. We're gonna have to fill your hot water bottle, leave that on top of the pump and see if it's frozen or if it's seized. If it's seized. Oh man. Does that mean we can't wash up? No, you're gonna have to make most of the water while we're here. I can't make the most of the water when we've got to wash up after dinner? Yeah, it might sort itself out. Okay. Well, we've sort of sorted our dilemma and we're back on the road again trying to warm up the van. If you could have told me 12 hours ago of all the things that have kind of happened since we got off that plane I would have been like, leave me in Thailand, I'm all right. But as we're just driving now, the sun's setting and I was just about to say to Mitch that with everything that's gone wrong and how I'm feeling and just how cold it is I've just got this really weird sense of peace since we've come back to the van. I can't explain it but there's something about just being back in the van being on the road it's just made me feel zen, relaxed, I don't know. Even though we haven't got a water pump and yeah. We might freeze to death. We might freeze to death tonight, yeah, literally. Have we even said today that we don't have a heater in this van? I don't know if we have. If you've seen our van tour and followed us for a while you'll probably know but we don't have a heater in this van as we basically, being the tight arses that we are wanted to see if we'd need it and it's getting to minus seven tonight so I think we might need one but it's a bit too late for that. So yeah, we hadn't planned that in so we're just relying on the fact that we're driving now to warm the van back up and then also when we cook dinner tonight the gas and hopefully just being warm ourselves will keep us warm, I don't know. We'll see, I think we'll be fine until we've been asleep for a couple of hours and the van's properly cooled down but I don't know, our quilts are pretty good. I can normally last fine until the morning but then when we have to peel the quilt off in the morning that's going to be a rough hours but we don't know until it happens. Yeah, exactly, yeah. It's all just what ifs right now which is just pointless talking about because you don't know what's going to happen but yeah, when it has been cold in the van before we went away I remember like waking up and your face is cold as everything else is pretty warm because it's under the cover but your face is like really warm. It really, oh my god, I can't even speak. We'll talk again when we get to where we're going. Yeah, I'm not making much sense but I just wanted to say I love being back in the van although we're being tried and tested I still love it. If you're new around here we'd love for you to click that subscribe button to see our upcoming adventures. It's completely free and really supports our channel. Thanks guys. Why is no water coming in? I don't care that there's no water coming that just means that the pump's spinning which is good, so it was frozen. I was convinced it was going to be locked. I don't know why no water's pulling through it should be unless the pipes are frozen but they shouldn't have had any water in but I'm just happy that it's not. The pipes must have frozen water in them. Realising this wasn't going to be a two-minute job we lit the hob soaking in as much heat as possible before pulling out our comfy bed that we'd been waiting for all day. It's so disgusting where we sleep that it's so brown. Because someone wanted a white bed sheet! What a fantastic idea! The sheets are so cold. Oh, good morning. We're very cold and feeling a little bit defeated. We woke up this morning the van was just full of ice and the plan was this morning to go for a walk take a coffee, try and get our bodies moving and we made it like two minutes up the road and my fingertips felt like they were going to fall off. Yeah, we spent the last 24 hours in the van to come up with our decision of whether we can spend the next month slowly making our way back to the UK which has kind of been our plan all along. Or if we can't last and we need to get home sooner. Yeah, and the latter's happened as you've probably seen. We reckon that we could stay in this van in terms of like taking our time getting back but it just wouldn't be fun, it'll be miserable and it's more survival than actually like enjoying being in the van. Yeah, like how many layers and stuff and what we've had to do this morning it just doesn't become enjoyable and we know that we can go home and do stuff to the van to make it better in the winter so it seems silly to like put ourselves through that for no reason. So it's about eight o'clock right now and yeah we've got on Google Maps to the Eurotunnel which is what I think that we're going to be doing to take the van back over to England. It says that we've got 17 hours to get there and we want to do a big stint of it today maybe like halfway. So we've got a lot of time to explain like what the future plans are and what the main reason is why we're going home. So we want to get on the road now, set up the GoPro in the front of the van so we can sort of journal the whole way. We never do things by halves. If we've made the decision that we're going back to England we're like how quick can we get back to England now? Because also we're in the Schengen so if we can... Yeah the other thing is as well why I want to get back so fast now is because I've never really seen a country where I've thought it was beautiful as much as I have Slovenia. I've not stopped saying how beautiful it is here so we're going to have unfinished business here and I don't want to think oh should we stop here to have a look at this? I just want to get back so that we can come back here and do it fully, have a full experience. So we're just taking the quickest route on Google. I'm tunnel visioning now. I don't want to see what we're missing. I just want to get there so we can sort the van out, sort ourselves out and get ready for another season in the van. I think we need to crack on and get going because we're literally sat outside now recording this and it is freezing. The van's behind us and we both feel very weird but it's the right decision I think. We need to process our thoughts and have a chat and stuff. Well we've got a long time to chat. I wish I could help with the driving too. Unfortunately it is just Mitch on this one because I'm not insured. So that's what we've also got to be wary of but we're just going to get started and get on the move. None of our family even know either so that's going to be a shock for them. And just like that, we set off on another ridiculously long journey only a few days after completing our one in Vietnam. 1,200 miles and 22 hours of driving is coming up in our next video where we're on our mission to reach home without losing our minds. Make sure to subscribe to see if we can make it in two days without ripping each other's heads off. Thanks so much for watching. We'll see you next time.