Jessica Hemby Mangano & Kyle Mangano

September 2024 Issue
Photography submitted by Jessica & Kyle Mangano

Married? Yes!

Careers:
Jessica: Owner of Soirée Social Media in Beaufort, SC, also a former Beaufort County school teacher
Kyle: Past career in Property Management

Hometowns:
Jessica: Brandon, Mississippi
Kyle: Beaufort, South Carolina

Known and Loved For:
Two 30-somethings touring the world together
& sharing their story along the way.

Follow Their Journey:
Facebook: AsWeAbroad
Instagram: As_We_Abroad
YouTube: AsWeAbroad
Website: www.asweabroad.com

You and your husband, Kyle, left last September for a year of travel with the mantra: “Two 30-somethings touring the world together and sharing our story along the way.” What does an experience like this mean to each of you?
Our dream has always been to see the world, to learn from others, to search our souls and open our minds, heal our hearts, and better ourselves.

In the past year, you’ve visited 20 countries, five continents and circumnavigated the Earth. How did this magnificent plan for travel arise?
Another part of our dream was to find the freedom to go. In 2022, we made it our goal to travel somewhere every month. We would make weekend trips to St. Augustine, Savannah, and to see my family in Mississippi. We hopped on planes to England, Greece, Guatemala, and Mexico. Traveling and experiencing new cultures and ways of life is what makes us happy, so we mapped out a plan to do that full-time for a year, at least.

What life changes did you and Kyle have to make in order to realize your travel dreams?
We’ve sacrificed a lot to see this dream come to fruition. We put our careers on hold; we closed a business we loved; we sold almost all of our worldly possessions, and we left our friends and family stateside for an indefinite amount of time. We have missed holidays, celebrations, and weddings. We’ve missed precious months with my grandfather. And we are both missing our dog, Baloo.

Why did you decide to do it all at once? Has it been overwhelming or just right?
There came a point where we both felt stagnant in life. We were both feeling the burn out of running our businesses, and we had recently gone through two major losses in our family. I think these combined situations made us realize life is too short to put our dreams on hold. We had planned to take this trip of a lifetime when we retired, but the more we talked, and the more we dreamed, we decided we didn’t want to give fate that big of a chance to intervene. We thought, “why wait?” Why not do it now while we’re still young and healthy and while we still have the energy for the adventures we want to have? We know we aren’t guaranteed anything in this life, and it just felt like something was urging us to take the leap.

Tell us about your Top 5 locations and why they are favorites?
Speak to any traveler, and you’ll find this is one of the hardest questions to answer. We’ve truly loved so many of the places we have been lucky enough to explore—and all for different reasons.
1. South Africa- The natural beauty of the Western Cape.
2. Brazil - The dreamy beaches in Rio de Janeiro.
3. Sri Lanka - The temples and blend of Hindu and Buddhist cultures.
4. India - The absolute madness and sensory overload of it all.
5. Botswana - The majesty of the Okavango Delta.

Throughout your travels, you’ve made new friends. What’s the most special time shared with friends so far?
The amazing thing we’ve discovered while traveling long-term is that there are so many people, for one reason or another, who have made the decision to leave their countries and forgo their creature comforts to travel as far and wide as possible. We have met friends from every corner of the world with this same philosophy of life.

We spent 35 days tent camping across the southern part of Africa with five other people from different countries. Among those was a girl named Thalia from England. She had just started her year abroad, and we traveled with her through six African countries. Since then, our paths have crossed in Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

Apparently, many people believe Kyle is a celebrity. What’s your theory behind this? Does he just go with the flow when asked for photos?
One of the most comical things we have encountered while traveling through Asia is the fact that so many people want photos with Kyle. At times, it’s felt like I’m traveling with a celebrity. We’ll be casually walking down the street, and a group of people will come up and ask for a photo, which turns into a hoard of people grabbing us to snap selfies. We’ve been interrupted on tours so Kyle can snap a photo with someone’s children. I have even been handed a baby once. I’ll never forget the time we found ourselves in India at a ceremony for a man who had passed away. There were crowds there, paying their respects and snapping photos with Kyle in front of the memorial. We honestly could not get away fast enough. Once at the airport, a group of kids ran up and started yelling for a photo because they had mistaken Kyle for a professional soccer player. Other times, people joke and call him Jesus because of his long hair. Either way, whenever it happens, Kyle just laughs and takes the photo. We really find it kind of funny and would love to see all of the random photos of Kyle floating around out there.

You’ve documented your journey through videos and social media.
What does it mean to be able to share the world with your followers?
How can our readers join in and follow along?
I am usually the one behind the screen on social media sharing our travels. I wanted to have a space to document them so we could look back at all of our memories after our trip comes to an end. Also, our family loves to see what we’re up to.

Since we started sharing our story online, we’ve built a small community on Instagram and Facebook. We have people from all over the world who reach out every single day and message us as we share our latest adventures, and it has been so much fun to maintain relationships with people we’ve met along the way. We even get messages requesting an update when I go a few days without posting.

Anyone can follow along with us at As We Abroad on Facebook or Instagram to see where we have been and our current travels through Cambodia.

This type of trip must take some major planning.
How long did you plan before starting out?
How do you continue to plan throughout your journey?
Any travel planning tips for our readers?
Kyle is our unofficial travel planner. He does an insane amount of research before we decide to move to the next place. I’m not just saying this because he’s my husband, but he is the best travel planner I’ve ever met. He can rattle off the currency conversions, he’s up to date on political climates, he knows the most efficient routes with the best flight prices, and he’s already three steps ahead when it comes to applying for visas. He has created impressive spreadsheets to track our daily budget. He arranged our appointments for travel vaccinations and international driving permits. My only contribution is that I usually pick our accommodations.

Prior to leaving in September 2023, we spent a lot of time discussing how we would travel full-time for a year. The first step to our planning was to nail down our budget. Our goal was to work as little as possible for the year so we could spend our time enjoying every moment of our experience together. We read several blogs and watched hours of YouTube videos explaining how other travelers budgeted for their trips and their outcomes.

We have found that we are happy to be mid-range travelers. We are not on a shoestring budget floating from hostel to hostel, but we are also not staying at 5-star hotels and eating at the coolest restaurants in town. We are very aware of how much money we’re spending each day, but we are living very comfortably most of the time.

So far, you’ve traveled via plane, train, bus and moped...
have you used any other interesting modes of travel?
We have used every form of transport you can imagine and some I can confidently say I’d never use again! Our main source of transportation has been planes, trains, cars, motorbikes, and tuk-tuks. But we’ve also traveled by helicopter, rickshaw, canoe, and camel.

All the ladies want to know... how could you possibly pack for a year-long trip and keep it light? How much luggage did you take?
We each have a backpack and a small carry-on suitcase.

You initially planned to travel for a year. Is that still the plan,
or do you have plans to expand your trip?
Our original plan was to travel to 39 countries in 12 months. At this moment, we are 11 months in, and we just hit country 20. So, a lot of things have changed for us. We learned halfway through that we really prefer slower travel where we can spend time immersing ourselves in a foreign place. With only a few weeks left in our journey, we are at a point where we need to figure out what’s next. The question for us right now is do we find a way to keep going?

What do you look forward to most about returning home?
If I am being honest, neither of us miss much about the lives we were living before we left. Being away for so long has made us realize what we value the most and none of that involves the hustle and grind culture of the United States, or the excessive consumerism. The only thing we look forward to when we return home will be seeing our family, friends and dog.

What are you two ROARING about?
You can hear us ROAR about all of our latest adventures—the good and the not-so-good—on social media at As We Abroad.