From Vietnam to Vlora: The Move Nobody Saw Coming (Including Us)
Why we left Southeast Asia for the Albanian coast — and what the first weeks have actually been like.
After 3 continents, 5 flights, 3 layovers, and one missed flight, we arrived.
We arrived with our entire lives — which, for a family of seven, looks like 15 suitcases.
And somehow, we were ready.
More than ready, actually. Ready for food that reminded us of home in ways we didn't know we missed until we got here. Ready to be received instead of just observed. Ready for whatever this next chapter wanted to teach us.
When we tell people we moved from Vietnam to Albania, we usually get the same three reactions:
- Why?
- Where?
- Wait... is that safe?
Yes. To all three.
This isn't the move we planned a year ago. Vietnam was supposed to be a long stay. The kids had school friends. We had a routine that finally felt like life and not like travel. Then we made a call most people don't make: we left while it was still good.
This is the honest story of how that happened, why Albania of all places, and what the first weeks in Vlora have actually been like — not the highlight reel.
Why We Left Vietnam (When We Didn't Have To)
There wasn't one reason. There never is.
It was a combination — the kind that sneaks up on you over months, not all at once. Visa logistics. The pull toward a base closer to Europe. The slow, persistent feeling that we'd absorbed what Vietnam had to teach us in this season, and staying longer would be staying out of comfort, not out of growth.
We left while it was still good — on purpose.
There's a version of expat life where you stay somewhere too long, watch the magic wear off, and leave with a slightly bitter taste. We didn't want Vietnam to ever feel like that to us. We wanted to remember it the way we lived it.
But here's the part nobody warns you about when you romanticize "moving abroad":
Leaving is the hardest part. Even when it's the right call.
Asia taught us many things. Patience that isn't passive. The art of slowing down without stopping. How to be the foreigner gracefully. How to eat with strangers. How to let the kids be raised partly by a culture that wasn't ours, and trust that they'd come out richer for it.
We're grateful for all of it.
And we're ready for whatever Albania and Europe want to teach us now.
What We're Actually Going to Miss
Honest answer? Not the food (though we'll miss that). Not the weather. Not even the cost of living, which spoiled us in ways we'll feel for years.
What we'll miss most is the kids' friends and routines.
Watching our children build real friendships in a country that wasn't ours — kids who didn't share a first language with them, who learned each other anyway through games and snack-sharing and the universal language of running around together until somebody cries — that was the gift of Vietnam we didn't expect.
The rhythm of school pickup. The same auntie at the corner shop who knew their order. The motorbike ride home that became normal. The little life they built that was theirs, not ours.
That's the thing about long-term travel with kids: every move costs them something. Every move asks them to start over.
We don't take that lightly. We never will.
So Why Albania?
The short answer: it kept showing up.
In conversations with other long-term travelers. In research about visa access. In cost-of-living comparisons that made us double-check the numbers. In one specific quote from someone who'd lived there: "It feels like Italy 30 years ago, before everyone discovered it."
The longer answer is this: Albania checks an unusual set of boxes that almost no other country does.
- One-year visa-free stay for Americans — almost unheard of in Europe
- Cost of living that's still genuinely low — a family can live well on €1,500–2,000/month
- Mediterranean coastline — turquoise water, mountains, beaches that don't feel processed yet
- Italian influence everywhere — espresso, gelato, pasta, evening zhiro (the Albanian version of the Italian passeggiata)
- Fast ferries to Italy and Greece — Vlora to Brindisi in about 6 hours, Saranda to Corfu in 30 minutes
- A safety record most people don't know about — violent crime rates are among the lowest in Europe
We chose Vlora specifically because it's not Tirana (the capital, where most expats land) and it's not Saranda (which goes full tourist in summer). Vlora is a real city — third-largest in the country, around 188,000 people — that still feels like a town, on the southern coast where the Adriatic and Ionian seas meet.
It felt like a place we could actually live, not just visit.
The First Weeks: What Surprised Us
We've been here long enough to form impressions but not long enough to be experts. So this is the honest, in-progress version.
The warmth of Albanians is real. And almost overwhelming.
This is the thing we weren't prepared for.
Albanians don't just tolerate foreigners — they welcome you. Aggressively. Generously. With coffee you didn't ask for and conversations that go longer than you planned and a kind of sincere hospitality that catches you off guard if you're used to Western politeness.
In Vietnam, we were guests. Welcomed warmly, but always slightly outside the circle.
Here, within the first weeks, neighbors have invited us in. Shopkeepers remember our names. The man at the bakery refused to take our money the second time we visited because we were "new."
It's a kind of warmth that feels older than tourism. Like a cultural muscle that hasn't been worn down by being a destination yet.
The food felt like home in ways we didn't expect.
This is the one we didn't see coming.
After 18 months of phở and bánh mì and sticky rice — which we loved — we didn't realize how much our bodies had been quietly missing. Bread. Real cheese. Olive oil. Tomatoes that taste like tomatoes. The Italian shadow over Albanian food meant our first meal here had us looking at each other like, oh.
There's something powerful about eating food that tastes like the kitchen you grew up near.
The pace is different — slower in a different way.
Vietnam was busy-slow. The streets buzz, the markets pulse, the traffic flows like water around stones — but somehow life still feels unhurried.
Albania is quiet-slow. Cafés where people sit for hours. Streets that empty out in the afternoon. An entire culture that takes a real evening walk together. The zhiro isn't a tourist activity — it's just what the town does when the heat breaks.
The kids.
This is the part we're watching closely.
They miss their friends. There's no version of this where they don't. But they're also adaptable in ways we keep underestimating. By week two they were asking how to say hello in Albanian (përshëndetje — yes, it's a mouthful). By week three they were waving at the same kids in the neighborhood who waved first.
Children build a life faster than adults do. Always.
What's Hard (Because It Should Go in This Post Too)
It would be dishonest to write a "moved to Albania" post that's all glow and no friction. Here's what's actually been challenging:
The language barrier is real. Albanian isn't intuitive. It's not Italian, French, Spanish, or anything you can fake with high school memory. English is more common than we expected (especially with younger people), but daily life requires a translation app and a lot of pointing.
Driving is its own sport. Aggressive, fast, lane-optional.
Bureaucracy moves at its own pace. Things take longer. The grocery store doesn't have your favorite brand. The pharmacy is closed when you're sure it should be open.
Vietnam's prices were a fantasy land. Albania is cheap by European standards, but after Vietnam, even European-cheap feels expensive. We're recalibrating.
The kids' grief is real. They'll cry sometimes about a friend in Vietnam, or a routine they miss, and there's no fixing it. Just sitting with it.
These aren't deal-breakers. They're just true.
Today, Albania Feels Like Home
That's the sentence we didn't expect to write this fast.
Three continents, five flights, three layovers, one missed flight, fifteen suitcases, seven people — and somehow the dust has settled. Somehow the bakery already knows us. Somehow the kids found a corner of the neighborhood that feels like theirs. Somehow the sound of the zhiro outside our windows in the evening already feels familiar.
Asia taught us many things, and we are grateful for those.
We are ready for whatever Albania and Europe have to teach us now.
What's Next
We'll be sharing more from Vlora and around Albania in the coming weeks: cost breakdowns, kids-abroad updates, the practical stuff and the messy stuff. If you've been thinking about Albania, or about leaving somewhere good for somewhere unknown, here's what we'll say:
It's terrifying. It's right. Both can be true.
Read about our time in Vietnam →
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— Mike & Stacy