Nomad Diaries
Hey friends 👋
Today’s exactly a year since we hit the road to become full-time digital nomads. To mark the occasion, here is some of the best wisdom we’ve learned on the road.
You don’t need that much stuff. We started with 7 bags. Now we have a backpack each…and they’re still too big.
Ensure what you pack brings you joy and it’s not just a “meh” item. Care about each of the pieces as then you don’t feel like you’re missing out on a full wardrobe.
Live minimally but allow yourself a few luxuries (eg, speaker, perfume, electric toothbrush, HDMI cable for hooking laptops up to TVs for ultimate telly nights).
Use travel insurance that goes where you go. SafetyWing covers us globally, adapts to our changing routes, and offers round-the-clock support (they’re also awesome people!) You can get insured with SafetyWing here.
Geo-arbitrage doesn’t just have to mean living like kings and queens, it can also mean working less so you can live more.
99.999999999999% of people are kind.
The way you pack your bag is important. Think about what you’re going to need first (especially if you’re transiting; you don’t want to have to dig deep to find your jumper when the plane’s cold).
Always reject currency conversions at foreign ATMs. This allows your bank to make the conversion, which is cheaper.
Always pay in local currency when you’re paying for things over the counter (POS). Otherwise the merchant will make the conversion instead of your bank and you’ll pay more in fees.
Slow is more important than clear when speaking to people in a language that’s not native to them.
Problems can become beautiful if you wait a while.
Do not commit to long-term accommodation or neighbourhoods until you’ve explored for 2-3 days first.
Travel blogs are full of contradictions, so read plenty of them to get a more accurate picture.
Read a blog or listen to a podcast by a local person. Many of our best recommendations come this way.
Books are nice but they’re too heavy. Get a Kindle.
Have only a backpack so you can check-in and exit airports without having to deal with luggage.
Find out just how difficult treks and other outdoor activities really are before committing, otherwise you’ll end up pulling out before the end and enduring 22-hour journeys home through dark, inhospitable jungle 🤦♀️🤦♂️
Save cash by buying sun cream from pound stores. Even cheap brands have to meet certain SPF standards that make them perfectly safe and effective.
Book cheaper flights by clearing your cookies and cache and using a VPN (Virtual Private Network) set to India or Thailand when booking.
Schedule regular alone time if you’re in a couple or group so you get to enjoy being with yourself and better appreciate the time you spend together.
Create a project that connects you with locals to give you purpose, structure your time, and enrich your experience (eg, co-author a guidebook, brew mezcal, clean litter from a beach, eat soup – whatever).
Earnings are not the same as cash flow. Consider getting a line of credit.
Get a travel points credit card and earn free flights. Set weekly reminders to settle your balance so you don’t lose your points by missing payments.
Tie up loose bag straps with rubber bands or hair ties so they don’t get caught and damage your bag.
If you’re coming from a place where food quality is generally high (like London), lower your expectations about food quality on the road. You’ll be less disappointed and more content.
Exercising in hot weather is hard, both getting going and keeping going.
Altitude adaptation ain’t no joke. It took us a week in Mexico City (2,250m above sea level) to catch our breath and avoid nausea.
Write about your travel experiences so you can figure out what you really are thinking (if you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking), and so you’ve got something special to look back on in years to come.
The less stuff we have, the less stuff we want.
Being working travellers (for context, we’ve now lived in Spain, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, the USA, Indonesia, and Thailand) costs less than our settled UK life.
Since we’ve chosen to work two days a week (instead of five), we’re poorer financially yet richer in time, energy, experiences, health, and gratitude.
Nothing builds resilience like the unexpected events that happen while travelling.
When there’s only two of you on the road, you’ve fewer places to hide when you fall out, so it forces you to make up quicker and be humbler and more resourceful about doing so.
None of the stories people back home or in the media told us about “the dangers of foreign travel” have been true.
Being apart from people can actually make your relationship with them better because you make an effort to speak to them more regularly and more deeply than you did when you were back home.
Create a persona that encapsulates your travel principles and goals, then try to see things and make decisions through that lens. Eg, If your persona is that of the “explorer,” then you’ll approach challenges and opportunities very differently than would an “artist” or a “foodie” or a “social butterfly” or an “eco-warrior” or “a romantic.”
Trainline.com tickets are cheaper in incognito mode. And sometimes they're more expensive 🤷
Don't order deliveries in the final week of a stay in case they arrive after you've left.
If you’re travelling with a partner, try your best to get a key each from the host, otherwise, life can be tricky.
Paying extra for seats at the front of the plane is worth it if you're meeting someone on arrival or want to get out of the airport quickly. It matters less if you’re having a layover.
When booking as a pair, book plane seats either side of a middle seat. Chances are, nobody will buy that middle seat and you’ll be able to sit together across 3 chairs instead of 2. If someone does end up sitting between you, they’ll agree to swap and let you sit together, so it’s a no-lose situation.
On average, in a month, we go through 12 toilet rolls (unless they have bum guns), 5 laundry tabs, and 3 bin bags.
Generally, eat food that's local (or at least in-country) to keep costs down, experience the local culture, and guarantee a decent taste (Eg, Don’t expect, say, a British afternoon tea to be made well in an Asian restaurant).
We enjoy squeaky-clean, never itchy, never sore ass cracks in countries with bidet showers (ie, bum guns). TMI…but true.
Make note of cafes you can work from without distraction (ie, free of noise and discomfort). If you know you’re having a workday with important online meetings, don’t go to untried places.
Noise-cancelling headphones or playing white noise is a big asset in the pursuit of concentration and deep work.
A laptop stand will save your neck and back.
If you need to know which plug adapter to bring but you’re unable to Google it or ask someone, the clue is to think about which country colonised the place.
We have been no less productive working remotely. In fact, we’ve probably been more productive because we haven’t had to commute, nor get distracted by office chit-chat. And there's a lower risk of burnout because our life outside of work has become richer and more balanced (caveat: this is also in part because we work fewer days than we used to).
One of our assumptions on our way to the Americas (where time differences put us way behind our boss in Asia) was that we’d easily be able to work from 5am till 1pm and then spend the rest of the day at the beach. But the reality is not as rosy. We tended to wake up for those 5am meetings feeling groggy as hell, and then fall asleep again till later in the morning. Also, no matter how beautiful or relaxed a place was, we still felt spent at the end of a workday, and this tended to affect our ability to enjoy the remainder of the day.
When you’re living a settled life in one place, it’s too easy for work to become the only thing that defines you. But on the road, you realise you can generate meaning from many sources outside of work.
Creativity is a fickle mistress. Putting pressure on your creativity to provide for you financially can drive it away. Instead, removing that financial pressure means you’re able to creatively work without stress, which is a massive gift you can give yourself, and makes your experience on the road even better.
Our routines (ie, the time we wake up, when and where we work, when and where we eat, when and where we exercise) have had to change quite drastically in every place we’ve stayed.
Instead of worrying about building wealth while we’re young, it’s been liberating to realise we can build wealth in time by investing some of our money every week. There’s less pressure to do it all now, which helps us relax and enjoy the moment more.
The movement towards unconventional education and parenting is much larger, more active, and more accessible than we thought. There are communities all over the world experimenting and reinventing educational models, which we’ve learned by speaking to parents we’ve met on the road who are engaging in this discourse.
Travel improves libido.
The places we’ve travelled have always been in conversation with the concept of home. And because we’re thinking about the concept of home from such a distant vantage point, it’s made us think about designing that ideal home more deeply and more often. We’ve talked about building a B&B, or having an open house with travellers passing through as a way to continue living vicariously through them, and the impact that would have on our children being around interesting people from different parts of the world. We doubt we would’ve had such rich conversations about home had we not left.
If you’re setting out to become a nomad, then savour the last time you buy a nice candle or a cushion, because you’re not going to be buying homeware again for a while.
We didn’t realise how much value we got from “pet fixes” from friends and family pets. On the road, we find ourselves seeking out animals a lot.
Experiencing the three “Ns” in every place (novelty, normalisation, and nostalgia) takes you on an invigorating rollercoaster of emotions that makes you feel truly alive!
A month is an ideal length of time to get under the skin of a place and make some friends whilst keeping things fresh.
With each new place you visit, you don’t so much “build yourself up” as “become more adaptable.” This is because each place makes you start again from scratch. You’re always going back to the start, but you get better at going back.
One great way to connect with local people is to support their local sports team and go to the games.
Digital nomads and other working travellers are the lucky winners of globalisation.
When you’re travelling with a partner or friend, enjoying the place becomes difficult if your work schedules don’t align.
We didn’t need any savings to become nomads.
An effective way to enamour yourself with a local person, or de-escalate a tense situation, is to show them a photo of your family, and ask to see theirs.
Our relationship improves when we make an effort to dress up and go on “date nights.” When you’re travelling with your partner, you may assume you’re dating every night, but that’s an illusion, and it’s even more important to be intentional about appreciating each other.
A good way to practise better self-care is to ask yourself how you’d support someone else in the same scenario.
The question of how we’re spending free alone time is top of mind when we’re on the road. We’re more intentional about how we spend our alone time.
When you’re in places where being outside alone as a woman might not be safe, you have to be intentional about how you go. There may be some extra planning needed, like walking a route you’ve been before or asking someone to accompany you.
One of the biggest but most interesting challenges on the road has been choosing where to go next. Where do you go when you can go anywhere?!
We’ve met fellow working travellers who became so because they were forced to by war.
There's a specific type of coffee shop aesthetic that is so enticing that it seems to be spreading all over the world irrespective of the distance or culture. Finding one of these cafes is both comforting (because you’ve been searching high and low for a latte with oat milk) and disappointing (because you can see the homogenisation of cultures).
We don't like to work in the same room as each other.
We’ve found ourselves avoiding co-lives and nomad hotspots because we feel afraid of not being accepted.
One of our goals was to read a book in each place written by a local author, but unfortunately we haven’t found enough time to finish any of them yet.
Our happiness seems proportional to our proximity to water (sea, river or lake, as long as it’s swimmable).
Don’t set goals that are too lofty. Focus on what you can do today and let the longer-term outcomes take care of themselves. Eg, instead of aiming to write a book, just write 500 words a day. After 365 days, we’ve written 200,000 words (that’s roughly equal to three novels!).
One week before you leave a place, plan everything else you want to do and schedule it in. You’ll achieve so much more and finish with a blast!
When a stranger talks to you, go all in and really talk to them back.
Before meeting a person or group, think of interesting questions you can ask them to generate good conversation. Eg, “What surprises you most about X?” or “What can people learn here that they can’t learn anywhere else?”
For better or worse, WhatsApp makes it seem like your friends are just as close as they were before you left.
Despite some of our early worries to the contrary, nobody has judged us or made us feel guilty about travelling full–time. In fact, everyone’s been supportive.
Intermittent fasting or eating one meal-a-day (OMADing) goes hand-in-hand with nomadism because it saves you time and money, loses you flab, gives you more energy, makes food taste better, and makes you more intentional about choosing something healthy from the menu.
Good is better than perfect, and done is better than good.
You can build strength in any part of your body without the need of weights or equipment.
Spherical ice cubes clink less than square ones.
Just accept that you will get food poisoning.
Always book “flexi” flight tickets so you can adapt to inevitable changes (or new desires) in your travel schedule.
To inject even more excitement into your travels, always plan a “trip within a trip.”
If you sweat easily, wear a sweatband on your wrist.
Airports are an integral part of the travel experience. Get there early and enjoy your time there.
Slow-mading is better than nomading.
The most important wealth is time wealth.
Pavements to walk on are more important than we thought.
Try to alternate intense creative work months with gentler creative work months.
The first floor in Asia is the ground floor in Europe.
When choosing a street food stall, find one with a queue of locals (and especially one with children eating at it, as it means it’s been tried and tested by adults).
[Add your wisdom here…]
That’s all for now folks! May these insights add a touch of wanderlust to your own journey.
Until next time,
– Harrison & Corina
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Ben: When you have sex with a woman, be gentle and listen to her. Treat her with respect and dignity even if you don't love her.
Bo: I know.
Ben: Always tell the truth. Always take the high road.
Bo: I know.
Ben: Live each day like it could be your last. Drink it in. Be adventurous, be bold, but savor it. It goes fast.
Bo: I know.
Ben: Don't die.
Bo: I won't.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3553976/?ref_=ttqu_ov_i