Why a bus?
Updated: Aug 31, 2019
So we bought an American school bus with the intention to convert it into a tiny home. We bought it on e-bay, in the US, in landlocked South Dakota. We live in Singapore. There are no American school buses and campervans in Singapore.
So why did we buy it?
I think partly because we secretly loved the YouTube videos our boys were watching. ‘Expedition Happiness’ was really well done and maybe it reminded us of ourselves in our 20’s in the 1990’s. We loved adventure. We were living in Perth, Australia but as we felt it was a little too unexciting at the time and we decided to move back to our child hood home, Singapore.
In 1993 that was quite a move. Most ‘expats’ were often on generous packages. We rented a cheap little sublet apartment in the jungle, bought an old VW van and collected furniture from the street. The intention was to stay for a year or 2 and then move on. But things worked out, we moved to another house in a really lovely but at the time remote area of Singapore and our adventures were road trips in our VW van in Malaysia.

Kids came along in 03/04 and our adventures took a bit of a back seat, although looking back, road trips for some reason have always been our favourite. On family visits we would make the most of exploring France and Scotland and a caravan holiday in 2013 that took us around Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Austria opened our minds to taking the ‘comfort of a tiny home’ on the road.
When we visited Australia, we’d visit car junk yards, and at a big bus grave-yard our dreams started to take shape.
So here we are, a few years on, and ready for bigger road trip adventures. Being a bit older & wiser and with a bit more life experience, we are totally overjoyed we bought a silly big bus!