9 months in Asia with 5 children: our house exchange adventure

At HomeExchange, we love letting the people who know best do the talking: our members. This testimonial was written by Sarah, a Spanish member who spent five years planning a nine-month trip to Southeast Asia with her family of five children.

In September 2025, an adventure began for us that we had been preparing for five years: nine months across Southeast Asia with our five kids. We started in Bangkok, in a stunning luxury apartment with a pool. The culture shock and jet lag were so much easier to handle thanks to that place, which truly became our home. About two weeks and a sleeper train later, we arrived in Chiang Mai, where the kids loved having a "grandmother" figure next door - she would bring local sweets and help us with whatever we needed, despite the language barrier. Northern Thailand was breathtaking, but after two weeks it was time to move on and enjoy a dream house on the island of Koh Lanta. We got to rest and soak up the island for almost three weeks.

We wrapped up Thailand and moved on to Vietnam, starting with Phan Thiet - a place we probably never would have discovered without HomeExchange. The kids had a blast at the theme parks and the pool. We traveled through central and northern Vietnam, then crossed the border into Laos. There, we stayed in a house that is without a doubt in our top five family homes of the entire trip. Packed with toys and bunk beds for the kids. The country itself is stunning - temples, markets, the works - and it was here that we had the best rotis of the whole journey (and we ate a lot of rotis along the way).

After Laos, we returned to Thailand, first to Udon Thani - another place we never would have known about without HomeExchange, and one we would highly recommend.

We spent Christmas and New Year's in Bangkok again, as we had visitors coming in from Spain. After the holidays, it was time for Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur, Melaka, Penang, and Johor Bahru. Out of every HomeExchange on the trip, this was the only place where we ran into an issue. One home had to cancel on us at the last minute. Thankfully, the HomeExchange team stepped in and helped us find a solution together. We were genuinely impressed with how they handled it. After more than two months in Malaysia, we headed down to Singapore - the only country where we were not able to find a HomeExchange for seven people, possibly due to the dates we were looking at. Honestly, it is pretty remarkable how easily we have been finding homes everywhere for a group of seven, five of whom are children.

After Singapore, it was Bali. We felt completely at home there, right by the beach, taking surf lessons and eating incredible food. A month in Bali is absolutely worth it. From there, we took the ferry to Gili Air. Again, the house was amazing and a perfect fit for us. We rented bikes and the three weeks of beach and snorkeling went by in a flash. But we still had Cambodia ahead of us. The HomeExchange there was located inside a wakeboard park - a sport none of us had tried before - but the kids had an absolute blast the day we rented boards. Angkor Wat is without question one of the most awe-inspiring places you can visit, but it felt great to come back to a little artificial beach after all that heat. And I will never forget the lemonade at that restaurant. Incredible.

To close out our nine months of travel, we returned to the very same Bangkok apartment where it all began. It was a deeply emotional moment - it felt like coming home before actually coming home.

We will absolutely return to some of these places, and we hope to stay in some of the homes that became ours during this adventure. None of it would have been possible without HomeExchange.

Thank you so much.