SE Asia: Set Up Shop Anywhere in Less than 8 Hours

Some places are made for laptop nomads.

You arrive with no plan, no contacts, no reservations, and in just a few hours you have cell service, a furnished apartment, transportation, a gym membership, and a bead on the best co-working spaces and coffee shops in the area. That is what we’re talking about here.

It’s not that I’m in a hurry, it’s just that I value efficiency and flexibility. Any place where you to set up shop in less than 24 hours usually lets you leave in the same time-frame. Minimum hassle, maximum results. It’s also really fun, and is probably the closest I’ll get to feeling like Jason Bourne. Continue reading >>

Lifestyle-Overhead: Why Chiang Mai is Ground Zero

Some things we value: simplicity, focus, quality of life. 

There are numerous reasons to ‘retire’ in SE Asia, including low-cost of living and high quality of life. But for laptop nomads, the goal is to minimize unnecessary overhead and and maximize time spent on things we care about.

Which is why SE Asia in general, or Chiang Mai in particular, is digital-nomad central. Old news to the veterans, but for everyone else, here’s one example of a place with virtually no penalty for being there.Continue reading >>

Crowdfunded Documentary fights Human Trafficking

On 16th July 2011, sixteen-year-old M was kidnapped from Vietnam. She is believed to have been sold as a wife or prostitute in China, a victim of human trafficking.

Editor’s Note: this is a guest post presented in conjunction with John of JetSetCitizen. To support the project please visit the ‘The Human, Earth Project’ crowdfunding page for more information.

A story of human trafficking

The experience of traveling through S.E. Asia at a leisurely pace, feasting on tasty street food, exploring temples at sunrise, and exchanging philosophies with other like-minded spirits that you meet on the road, remains a lifelong dream for many. Each year, hundreds of thousands of daring individuals pack their bags and hit the road.

But few are exposed to the dirty secrets usually hidden from unsuspecting tourists. The kind of heart-wrenching inequalities you only witness if you stick around longer than the ‘just passing through’ 3-day trip, many tourists get to experience.

Continue reading >>

What Living on $20 a Day Looks Like

One of the biggest surprises about long-term travel is just how cheap it can be.

In my second year of college I’ll never forget the price-sheet my dad brought back from Utila, Honduras. To this very day you can still get a room on the water for $5 a night and a meal for $2.

Before leaving home I’d heard things like this but it’s hard to believe until you see it first-hand:Continue reading >>

Location-Independence: Musings from My 3rd Year on the Road

What if home was everywhere?

After more than two years on the road it finally sunk in: location-independence is not an aberration. Moving around the world at will is a perfectly valid and (extremely) advantageous lifestyle choice, but ultimately just another way to navigate through life.

It has, however, warped my notion of reality over the last 6 months. Continue reading >>

22 Things I’ve Learned as a Digital Nomad

Digital Nomad: individuals that leverage digital technologies to perform their work duties and more generally conduct their lifestyle in a nomadic manner….

Over 2 years have passed since I quit my job.

Despite the image of me sipping Mai-tais on the beach somewhere (which can happen), there’s a big discrepancy between what my friends think I’m doing and what I’m actually doing. I write this overlooking the stunning crystal-blue water of the bay in Kuta, Lombok, but there’s a difference between me and every other traveler here:

I’ve been working on my laptop for 5 straight hours.Continue reading >>

What to Pack for a trip Around the World

UPDATE: There is a newer pack list! Check out A Digital Nomad Pack List After 5 Years on the Road. It might also be interesting to compare how things have changed since 2013..

Exactly what does it take to live anywhere?

Last week I hopped on a 19-hour flight back to Indonesia with little more than a daypack, my laptop bag, and some surfing gear. It may not seem like much, but it’s everything I need to live, work, and travel for an indefinite period of time.

I already wish I’d brought less.
Continue reading >>

Defining Success in Life: the Dreamline Exercise

Without concrete goals you’ll never develop concrete plans to achieve them.

Above: One of my all-time dream destinations, Rapa Nui (Easter Island).

Last week Dan and Ian revisited a favorite topic: the Dreamline exercise. Despite having read the 4-hour Workweek at least 5 times, it was listening to the LBP#91 (Are you A Hustler or an Entrepreneur?) back in March that finally inspired me to sit down and go through the motions. (I wrote most of this post then, but this recent podcast inspired me to finish it).

Dreamlining can profoundly change your life. You just have to sit down and do the work.

Like a chess master, you want to see the end-game.

A chess master knows exactly what the end-game is and they’ve already thought through the next 20 moves to get there. When variables change they make small course adjustments, but ultimately check-mate is inevitable, if not in this game then in the next.

What’s surprising about my own life is how often I’ve been operating without a plan. A lot of us drift through life with general goals, like ‘get in better shape’ or ‘travel more’, but without more substance behind them these are just day-dreams.

One of the most effective ways I’ve found to define success in a concrete and action-oriented way is the Dreamlining exercise from the 4-hour Workweek.
Continue reading >>

How I saved $15,000 in 15 months on a $29k Salary

You don’t have to make a ton of money to save for long-term travel.

“Don’t wait around. Don’t get old and make excuses. Save a couple thousand dollars… get a world atlas. Start looking at every page and tell yourself that you can go there…Are there sacrifices to be made? Of course? Is it worth it? Absolutely. The only way you’ll find out is to get on the plane and go.”
-Jason Gaspero in Vagabonding

One of the biggest mistakes would-be travelers make is assuming that long-term travel requires a great deal of money, and that you’ll never be able to save enough to afford it. This is the ‘deferred life-plan’ concept in a nutshell:  I won’t have enough money to travel until later in life when I retire, or maybe when I win the lottery, or sell a company for $10 million.

This is a bogus framework. You don’t need a lot of money to travel, and as a result you can save enough very quickly.

It’s just a matter of priorities.Continue reading >>

How I Broke my Body and Then Fixed It

 April 23, 2013 – San Francisco, CA

“YEAAAHHHH BOOOOYYYYY!”

My concentration broke long enough to see Kelly Starrett, owner of San Francisco CrossFit, grinning at me from across the room. He seemed pleased.

I was crouched in a deep squat, arms locked out, precariously balancing a weighted barbell overhead—not the best position to lose focus. I tried not to laugh, ground my feet into the ground, and stood up.

Upon arrival two days earlier I couldn’t perform a single air squat without hurting my right knee. I thought explosive movements like the ground-to-overhead Olympic lift I’d just performed would blow my joints apart.

Suddenly it seemed easy.

Three weeks later I would squat 205 lbs. like it was my job. Six weeks later I would press most of my bodyweight overhead and suddenly gain the ability to do free-standing handstand pushups—something I’d never done in my life, nagging shoulder injuries be damned.

After years spent as a broken mess I’d finally figured out why my body was broken and how to fix it. I also learned how to regain and exploit every last ounce of athletic potential I still have in the tank.

It turns out the answers had been right in front of me all along.Continue reading >>