She was married and living in the affluent Melbourne suburb of Glen Iris and had a well-paying, high-profile job as a risk management co-ordinator with an engineering firm.

She enjoyed her work, but sensed something intangible, a certain joy or playfulness perhaps, was missing from her too-full days. As her marriage fell apart in late 2012, Tan realised she needed more balance in her life.

“I would book in gym classes in the afternoon to force myself to leave work at a reasonable time,” the 32-year-old says.

She began taking dance classes, which, much to her surprise, led to an interest in the hula hoop.

“I could never dance or draw, and have never been creative,” Tan says. “When I was little, my mum took me to gymnastics to improve my co-ordination. I guess you could say I was a late bloomer.”

In April 2013, Tan took leave from her job and travelled to Ubud, in Bali, for a hula hoop retreat, where she fell in love with the people, the natural wonders and the lifestyle.

“Walking around, I just felt so much calm and peacefulness,” she says. “I love Melbourne, but once I came home I started dreaming of Bali; every night I would see these strong images of Ubud and it was like it was calling me back.”

Tan heeded the message and handed in her six weeks’ notice at work. Within two months she was living in Ubud.

“My family were actually very supportive of me, which was surprising,” she says. “Everything just came together.”

Tan has now been in Ubud for close to 18 months, and she says her life is much more pared-back and balanced than it was in Melbourne. She has saved up enough money to live cheaply in Bali for two years without having to work, and she shares a house with one other person for $350 in rent a month, which includes bills and a cleaner twice a week.

She has also set up her own “Hula Hoop Institute” in Bali and Malaysia where she hosts intensive hula hoop lessons or retreats.

But, most importantly, Tan says she is much more focused on “living in the moment”.

“I think it has been really important for me to learn to have a bit of chaos in my life and not be so in control of everything,” she says. “I love teaching the hula hoop, too, because you can see people have fun and play, and how often do we get a chance to do that as adults these days?”

Tan is not alone in her desire to seek personal and professional fulfilment in a far-flung location.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, some 91,300 people moved overseas long-term (for more than one year) between September 2013 and September last year.

And with capital city property prices at exorbitant levels and Australian utilities and groceries more expensive than many countries in Europe and Asia, why wouldn’t Australians pack up their laptops and head to Bali?

These questing spirits may come in the form of young families keen to experience the rich fabric of life in another country for a few years, while others are retiring baby boomers moving permanently to Southeast Asia where their nest egg goes a lot further.

International trend forecasting agency Logomachy has even coined the term “nuppie” to describe the hyper-mobile nomadic professional of the future, who will increasingly choose to work from a laptop anywhere in the world.

Your average nuppie is entrepreneurial, adventurous, liberal and a “jack of all trades”, according to Logomachy researchers.

Sell Up, Pack Up & Take Off co-authors Stephen Wyatt and Colleen Ryan have spent the past few years writing about the phenomenon of Australians chasing greener pastures overseas.

“With the baby boomers, the cost of living in Australia is the prime driver for their move as it is about 50 to 80 per cent cheaper to live in Southeast Asia than Australia,” Wyatt says.

“Technology is also another fundamental driver for those making the move; we can work from anywhere now, whereas in the past you couldn’t Skype, you couldn’t text, you couldn’t email.”

Wyatt and Ryan’s book is partly a how-to guide on moving to a foreign country — covering the various property ownership, superannuation, pension entitlements and health insurance regulations of each area — as well as a philosophical call to action for more Australians to “live the dream” in overseas countries.

“If you can move overseas and not have to worry if you can afford to buy that bottle of wine, why wouldn’t you?” Wyatt says.

The Byron Bay-based couple, who have worked internationally as journalists, decided to document the trend after hearing reports of more and more people chasing the good life in Southeast Asia and Europe.

“So many people are doing it, so many couples, so many singles,” Wyatt says. “All of the people we interviewed for the book spoke about rejuvenation. Some people are just really burnt out and they have had a gutful, so they move to Penang.

“For them it is about taking back control of their life.”

Just ask Serena Star-Leonard. The 35-year-old Melbourne blogger, online business coach and fundraiser has spent close to three years (so far) travelling through Latin America and the US, filming documentaries for charities about their work.

“I went into my boss’s office on the day I resigned and just started crying,” she says of that fateful day eight years ago when she gave up her secure position in software sales. “I liked my job and I knew it was a good job, but I knew it wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life.

“But I was still terrified of losing my income and not being able to support myself. I was a high-school dropout who had landed this great job and the company had really taken care of me.”

Star-Leonard, who grew up in New Zealand and moved to Melbourne when she was 21, need not have worried. She went on to set up her own successful online business coaching service and wrote the bestseller How to Retire in 12 Months, which focused on her mission to create an income from her online business so she could work just one day a week from anywhere in the world and satisfy her wanderlust.

In April 2012, she and her bar manager husband, John, took off to see the world.

They started filming documentaries for charities under the umbrella of their Five Point Five project (based on the concept that we all have 5.5 litres of blood and, therefore, are all the same), and the pair make ends meet by filming promotional travel pieces for hotels and tour companies from the road.

So far the couple has filmed 24 documentaries about grassroots charities in 13 countries, which is quite an achievement considering neither had any video production skills before they left.

“We arrived in our first destination, which was Venezuela, and we really had no idea how dangerous it was,” Star-Leonard says. “We didn’t speak any Spanish, either, but John taught himself how to make professional videos off YouTube and we have gone from there.”

It is the kind of innate scrappiness that Star-Leonard has turned to her advantage, but she is adamant anyone can have her life.

“There are lots of people out there doing what I am doing and if you can sell yourself in some way, you can use your skills in a mobile manner,” she says.

Life on the road has also cemented her relationship in ways that have surprised her.

“People warned us that spending so much time with each other would either make or break our relationship and, in our case, it has definitely strengthened it,” she says. “You go through so much crap together right down to having Delhi belly in a hotel room with only a thin shower curtain cordoning off the toilet.

“You cannot help but be closer to someone because you are so much closer (physically) to them.”

She is hoping to spend a year in Africa “before we have kids”, but says her gypsy spirit will not be dimmed by the advent of babies.

“Maybe we will build a little eco village somewhere and stay there for five to 10 years,” she muses.

Former executive secretary Michelle Tupy, 42, is proof that a young family does not have to spell the end of overseas adventures.

Tupy runs a hostel with husband Matt, 57, and two children, Matthew, 4, and Emilia, 9, in the Peruvian city of Cusco. Before moving to South America almost a year ago, the family lived in Melbourne’s inner west, and Tupy says some of her former work colleagues couldn’t understand why she was trading a reliable pay cheque for life in Peru.

“The reaction is always the same: one of surprise,” Tupy says. “People wonder why you would leave a comfortable and secure job to go off and travel. My reaction is always the same, ‘Why wouldn’t you?’ Just because you have a return ticket as a safety net, doesn’t mean you have to use it.”

The couple took on the lease of a 10-bedroom property, called it Casa Emilia after their daughter and took two rooms for the family. They rent the remaining eight to tourists.

“It was a lot of hard work as the building was in quite a state of disrepair but luckily we are pretty handy with a hammer and a paintbrush,” Tupy says.

Matthew attends a European-style, Spanish-speaking daycare centre, while Emilia takes part in a mixture of home school, summer school courses, online art classes, dance classes and writing groups.

“There are plenty of opportunities despite it being a relatively small town, and if you take a short stroll outside of the city you are out in the countryside exploring the valleys and lakes,” says Tupy, who also makes a living as a ghostwriter.

In March, when the 12-month lease on Casa Emilia is up, the family will bid farewell to Peru and drive from Cusco to Niagara Falls in Canada (in a Kombi, naturally), where Tupy plans to write a book about their adventures called And Off We Went.

Tupy can see the family staying in Matt’s home country of Canada for a while, but is doubtful she will ever return to a traditional office job.

“I love being able to work around the kids or around a trip to Machu Picchu without having to negotiate time off with the boss,” she says. “If I had to go back to work tomorrow, I think I would find a nine-to-five job quite stifling. Although a full-time wage would be nice.”

Tupy maintains any family can follow in their footsteps, but it helps to have a relaxed approach to the unexpected.

“You don’t need to be wealthy to do what we are doing, but you need to have a certain attitude to make it work,” she says. “You have to learn that you cannot be in control of everything all of the time and you just have to simply go with the flow.

“I am sure if I looked at my bank account today, I would be very disappointed, but my husband and I are not afraid of hard work and doing what needs to be done to make something happen.”

Sell Up, Pack Up & Take Off by Stephen Wyatt and Colleen Ryan, Allen and Unwin, rrp $28

EXPENSE ACCOUNT

Average cost-of-living comparisons between Melbourne and Bali

Rent a three-bedroom apartment in the city centre: Melbourne: $3129.89 (per month). Bali: $1113.51 (per month). 64 per cent difference

Buy an apartment (per sq m) in the city centre: Melbourne: $8771.11. Bali: $1338.08. 84 per cent difference

Loaf of white bread: Melbourne: $3.05. Bali: $2.68. 12 per cent difference

Mid-range restaurant meal for two (three courses): Melbourne: $80. Bali: $24.34. 69 per cent difference

Domestic beer (500ml): Melbourne: $4.39. Bali: $1.80. 59 per cent difference

Basic utilities (electricity, heating, water, garbage) for an 85sq m apartment: Melbourne: $206.48 per month. Bali: $91.64 per month. 55 per cent difference

Taxi (per km, normal tariff): Melbourne: $2. Bali: $0.54. 73 per cent difference

Summer dress in a chain store (Zara, H&M, etc): Melbourne: $78.39. Bali: $42.59. 45 per cent difference

Source: Numbeo.com

Originally published as Expat adventurers are living the dream