VAN TOUR // Female Van Dweller And Her Dog Chase Freedom In A Converted Van
2 Video Views·Dec 10, 2025
Meet Vi and her dog Marco. They have been living in a van that she bought already converted. After she purchased the van for full time van life she added her own touches to the van to make it her own. This is her story. What an amazing girl. Such an inspiration
My name is Vi and this is my dog Marco and we are in our van. It's 1994 Dodge Ram 250.
Come and check out my house.
What made me get into van life? At first, I kind of got interested in tiny houses.
I was watching a lot of YouTube about tiny houses back when I was in Vietnam.
Hold on, this is a very long story. I'm not really sure because I'm not actually completely
living in Vietnam for a really long time. I lived in the U.S. before that and I had to get out of
the U.S. because my visa was jeopardized. I was working in Boston so I went back to Vietnam
for two years. During that time, I started my immigration process to Canada
and I knew that I wanted to have a different life in Canada because I know if I come here,
I'm gonna make a life of my dream with all the freedom that I have because that's something
that I didn't have in the U.S. Everything I did there was just working for other employers
and just keep running chasing after the visa because I didn't have the freedom to choose
I find it super useful and it keeps the place a lot cleaner especially when I have a dog in here
and he sheds so much in the wintertime. He sheds a lot so it drives me crazy.
So I have to constantly clean it every single day. I'm not really a clean freak but I like to keep my
place clean and tidy. I also have a solar panel. This is the solar controller on top of the roof.
I have a 50 watt solar panel. I have it installed about three months ago and I bought it online
through Amazon. It's the Renogy one that made in the U.S. I find it pretty good so far. I haven't
had any problem with it yet. I have a house battery down here just right underneath this
side of the bed. I just replaced it with an AGM battery so it's super low maintenance. Actually I don't
have to do any maintenance at all with the AGM battery because I had the lead battery in here
before and it just kept dying on me. There was a whole week that I had to go with no power at all
like really no power inside the van except just the LED light and then I ran out of battery for
the LED light. It was completely dark in here for the whole week. So now I'm kind of spoiled having
a new battery. Everything works really great and people just keep asking me about how you survive
in the wintertime. It's too cold in the van and all that so I have a little furnace in here.
It does use propane and it also draws some power from the battery as well
but since it's the new AGM battery it's quite powerful. It's actually a 100 amp power
battery so it's pretty efficient. So that's what keeps me warm at night but I never let
it run overnight. I just turn it on before I go to bed and when I first wake up in the morning.
It's still pretty nice and toasty under the blanket at night so I haven't had that much
problem yet. If it gets a lot colder with the snow then I'll think of buying an extra heater but so
far so good. I want to be an entrepreneur and I want to have more time to work on myself
and grow myself as a person. So living in a van which is a low cost I don't have to work so much.
I only work part-time at Starbucks for about 20 hours a week and the rest of the time I
work on my self-development and work on ideas being an entrepreneur and I get to hang out
with my friends and go explore different places in BC. I'm so much happier now as a person living
van life than living in a one-bedroom apartment in downtown Boston. I lived in here for seven
months and I don't think that I have had any regrets so far even though there's so many
challenges. It took me a couple months to get used to van life. It was a lot of challenge in
the beginning like how everything works and where to park where to get water
and just get used to this small little space. I have to push so many times just get rid of
my stuff so many times to fit all my stuff in here so before I used to have like a
even two walking classes in Boston but now I just have this for all my clothes so I just
really minimize everything and I feel like the less you own the lighter it actually feels and
the less you have to take care of things and cleaning and I get to be outside all the time and
get to do things that I really enjoy. I get to take social classes and learning finance
basically everything that I'm interested in so this lifestyle is I feel like it's like an
awakening process for me because I really get to be myself and learn things that I want to learn
and I have the time to do that. I think it's it's beyond the cutting cost for living but it's also
about earning more time to live the life that you want to live and that that's what van life is for
me and that's why I enjoyed it so much. Thank you so much for coming and if you're interested in
following my journey you can check out my Instagram account is at smileyvv05. I'm not
super active on social media but I try to post pictures of places that I travel to
sometimes on Instagram but mostly landscape photos because I love to travel and I love photography
so I take a lot of photos and I post it up there so go check out my Instagram and thank you very much
bye