South by Southeast: New directions in Southeast Asia

What is it about Southeast Asia that so captivates our attention? For many Westerners, Southeast Asia has attained an identity of exoticism and escape, enchanting travelers as a destination “off the map” of global tourism. It’s a myth readily fed by popular culture. From Graham Greene’s The Quiet American to Alex Garland’s The Beach we’re painted a picture of a magical world, unsullied by the realities of real life – and we’ve taken the bait, hook, line and sinker.

Southeast Asia, we’re told, is where we’ll go to forge new identities. We’ll quit our jobs back home, find a bungalow on the beach in Thailand, and live out our days drinking 25-cent beers, sunning ourselves under a palm tree. Our problems back home? Distant memory. For anyone struggling with the vagaries of career and post-collegiate life, it’s a powerful fantasy, bandied about during late-night drinking sessions or anytime life becomes “too much of a drag.”

But what’s it really like to travel through Southeast Asia, circa 2009? Does our fantasy match the reality? Though plenty is left to explore, the romanticized destination of deserted beaches and bumpy bus rides is experiencing a dramatic shift, further connecting itself to global tourism and the world economy. Luxury boutiques dot the streets of “communist” Vietnam. Thousands of travelers show up for Full Moon Parties on the beaches of Koh Pha Ngan. Even Lonely Planet’s hugely popular Southeast Asia on a Shoestring, the defacto “bible” for independent travelers, is nearly 25 years old and 14 Editions in print. How does the region today look after this huge influx of new money and visitors?

It was these very questions that had me thinking. Was there still adventure to be found in Southeast Asia? And how did it match with the visions of escape and personal reinvention I had in my mind? Encouraged by books like Rolf Potts’ Vagabonding, I left behind my full-time job in New York and created a plan. I would spend the next few months traveling through the region. After a stopover in Seoul, I head to Bangkok and then on to wherever luck will have me. Not only is it a chance to reinvent the direction of my own life, it’s also an opportunity to observe the rapidly changing direction of this fascinating destination.

Over the next few months, I encourage you to join me as I investigate Southeast Asia with a fresh eye. We’ll return to familiar stops on the “Southeast Asia tourist trail” to survey the terrain, and introduce you to places you never knew existed. We’ll also be taking a closer look at the art of long term travel, and some of the rewards and challenges encountered along the way. We hope through our mistakes and successes you’ll have a chance to truly understand what traveling through Southeast Asia is all about. Ready to go? Let’s chart a course, South by Southeast…

You can read future posts from Gadling’s travels “South by Southeast” through Asia: HERE.

Life Nomadic: How Much Does it Cost to Be a Nomad?

One of the big barriers between most people and becoming a nomad is money. It sounds expensive. Most questions I get about it have to do with affording the trips.

Here’s the big secret: being a nomad is not expensive. In fact, without knowing how much money you spend monthly, I can confidently say that you can probably comfortably become a nomad and spend less.

I don’t have exact numbers, but I’d say that Todd and I each average spending under $3000 per month. That includes everything including lodging, airfare, food, entertainment, and small gear purchases along the way.

There’s a big difference between “cheaply” and traveling “cheaply and well”. I have little interest in eating ramen in a hostel or taking buses across the country.

That’s backpacking. Nothing wrong with that, but being a nomad is different.

The key is not treat it like a vacation. Many people spend money outrageously “because I’m on vacation”. Life Nomadic is a lifestyle that’s intended to be sustainable.

One big advantage the nomad has is that he has no expenses back home. The tourist is paying nightly for a hotel, but he’s also paying rent, electricity, and cable back home.

That’s like trying to pay for two lives at once.
A basic hotel in Tokyo will cost at least $150 per night. That’s not a great hotel, and it’s definitely not in a great location. $1050 for 7 days.

Renting a large room with a fridge, two beds, and a couch cost Todd and I $1000 for a month in the most desirable neighborhood of Tokyo. That’s cheaper than it would have cost us for a mediocre hotel for a week.

It’s almost always cheaper to rent an apartment for a month than to get a hotel, but you can also just choose cheap destinations. Thailand is full of great hotels for $20/night, either in downtown Bangkok or on the beach on an island. In Panama City you can get a solid (but not exceptional) hotel for around $30 a night.

If you really have a limited budget, go to any of the countless cheap-but-awesome destinations. You’d be shocked at how cheap great places in Southeast Asia are.

The savings you create by living in such cheap locales can easily pay for the plane tickets you need to get there.

If you really have NO money, go to Ko Phi Phi in Thailand. You can hand out flyers for the big reggae club for four hours a night and make enough cash to pay for all of your food and hotel forever. And that little island is paradise, believe me.

Every country you visit will have a whole tourism industry centered around creating an America-like experience for you at a premium price.

Avoid that. Live like the locals.

Take the train, walk, or buy a bike like the locals. Don’t take overpriced cabs. Buy food from the grocery store and cook for yourself in your rented apartment. Ask around and see which beach the locals go to. It’s usually much better than the one that tourists are whisked off to.

Spend time in nature. It’s usually free or cheap and some environments you’ll see are unlike anything back home. Even something as simple as the deserts of the Middle East are breathtaking to a foreigner.

If you’re going to be somewhere for a month, don’t feel like every day needs to be filled with sightseeing and adventure. Spend four days a week practicing your language, working, and walking around town like you would back home. Then on the weekends go white water rafting through the rain forest instead of seeing the latest disappointing movie.

Above all, don’t let money stop you from living the dream. Being a nomad can be as expensive or as cheap as you want it to be, and the sheer adventure of doing something almost guarantees that the money you spend on a monthly basis will be well worth it.

Life Nomadic: Welcome to Life Nomadic

The border agent was very suspicious of me.

“Where’s your luggage?”

“I don’t have any.”

“Do you have a return ticket?”

“No, but I have a ticket to Panama for next week.”

“Where do you live?”

This never goes over well.

“Well, nowhere, really…”

And it’s true. The closest thing I have to a home is a 21 foot RV that I park on the street and live in when I’m in Austin, Texas for a few months every year.

Last year my friend Todd and I made the decision to become modern day nomads and make the wonders of the world the backdrop for our every day lives.

We sold everything we owned other than two small backpacks crammed with cutting edge gear, and chased our whims around the world.

We ran with the bulls in Spain, sat under the cherry blossom trees in Tokyo, explored the catacombs of Paris, rode 4x4s across the dunes of Qatar, marched in the Carnaval parades of Panama, and a whole lot more.

This year we have a lot more planned, along with plenty of time to fill with whatever last minute adventure catches our attention.

And even better, we’re blogging about it exclusively for Gadling. Our goal this year is to show you what it’s like to be a modern day nomad, how to do it, and also how to use some hardcore nomad strategies to make regular travel even better.

We have three main principles that we follow, which you will hear a lot more about:

  1. Versatility

    We aim to be as versatile as possible. We pack extremely light, but with enough gear to cover any likely contingency. My small 28 liter pack has enough gear to keep me warm in 10 degree Toronto (where I write this from) and cool in 90 degree Panama (where I head this week).

    Our incomes are unbound from any location and we’ve developed good work habits to put in a full effort from anywhere in the world.

    We have no obligations back home to pull us back or encumber us while we’re gone.

    On top of all that, we eat healthy foods and exercise so that we can hike a few miles through the mountains just as easily as we can flop down on a hammock on the beach.

  2. Technology

    We use the latest technology available to fuel our worldwide adventures. Not just electronics, although we’re packed to the gills with those, but cutting edge clothing technology (more exciting than it sounds…) and even camping gadgets.

    Beyond what we carry, we use technology to keep in touch with family and friends all around the world as well as to generate enough income to fund our nomadic lifestyles.

  3. Deep Experience

    Our backgrounds and available time pose some restrictions, but we try to live like natives rather than trample the country like tourists.

    We try to learn the language of anywhere we stay for at least a month, rent apartments rather than hotels, and spend our time exploring the city rather than hopping from one Carlos and Charlie’s to the next.

    Whenever we’re able to make friends with locals we get a much richer experience, and we follow their recommendations on where to visit.

Whether you’re a fellow nomad, someone who plans to go nomadic eventually, a hardcore traveler, or even just an occasional traveler who wants to get more from his trips, I hope that we’ll be able to provide you with inspiration as well as practical tips.

There are a couple things I’d like from you:

  1. Your questions. Every week I will write an “Ask a Nomad” column. E-mail me directly at tynan DOT gadling AT weblogsinc DOT com and you may find your question answered right here.
  2. Your feedback. We’re nomads because it makes our lives better, but we write to try to make your life better. If you let me know which articles you like and which you don’t like, I can do a better job covering topics you’re interested in. Again, my e-mail is tynan DOT gadling AT weblogsinc DOT com.
  3. Subscribe. You can subscribe to the Gadling feed here, or to Life-Nomadic-only posts here.

Mind-boggling futuristic mobile homes

Talk about mobile homes and all I think of is a caravan, and my newly discovered Mini-Motel. So when I came across this illustrative list of futuristic mobile homes, I was left slightly flabbergasted. You have:

  • The “M-ch”: A micro-compact home which is a little cube of a house you can take anywhere (but you would need a crane!). Suitable for 2 people, it’s enough to sleep, work and cook in. Oh and slightly more expensive than a tent (Euro 34,000+).
  • The SkiHaus: Built for exhausted skiers on high peaks, if you can organize for a helicopter with the snap of your fingers, you might want to look at the SkiHaus. It’s a lightweight, all-aluminum structure that weighs only 315 kg.
  • A Peak Lab: A cabin that can be hung outside a cliff.
  • The Point Lookout: A beach-hut on a tripod.
  • The M-Igloo: An mobile igloo style bedroom.
  • The Orb: A holiday park home for the younger “style conscious” generation. Apparently these houses even float!
  • The Lifepod: A green housing unit you can take anywhere as long as you have hauling power.
  • The Walking House (see image): Definitely my favorite, yes it gets up and walks! However this one is still a prototype – but not for long, I hope!

And there are even more types of these things that include SUV’s and shipping containers turned into homes and hotels. Have a look at the full list here.

How I became a modern day nomad, and how you can too

I no longer have a simple answer to the question, “Where do you live?”, so I usually launch into an explanation of exactly what I’m doing. I almost always get the same response.

“Wow. I wish I could do that.”

But here’s the thing: almost anyone can do what I’m doing. Despite being a much more interesting lifestyle, it’s not particularly difficult or expensive.

This is the story of how I became a modern day nomad, and how you may become one too if the idea appeals to you.

I quit my job a year ago. It was a great job by any metric, but something about sitting inside on a computer on sunny spring days seemed wrong. What was I doing with my life?

A couple months later I was free. I wrote a book about my knowledge and experiences gained from living with the most famous pickup artists in the world, and I began selling it.

I still had to work, but my work was totally mobile. My book was sold online only. I could write from anywhere, take care of customers from anywhere, and make phone calls from anywhere.

This led to questions like, “Why am I living in Austin?”, which led to questions like, “Why am I living in the U.S.?”, which led to questions like, “Why pick just one place to live in?”

And so the idea was hatched. I’d pick six different countries to live in, and would move every two months.It wouldn’t be vacation, though. I’d work just like usual, except instead of taking a break to see a movie I’d take a break to walk on the Panama Canal.

And I didn’t want to backpack either. Staying in a dorm room in some dirty hostel didn’t hold much appeal. I wanted to live like a local and really experience the country and the culture.

My good friend Todd listened as I explained the plan.

“Count me in.”

We wrote a dream list of all the countries we’d like to visit in the first year. Narrowing the list down was difficult, but we cut it down to six main destinations as well as a few small side trips.

Panama, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Qatar, France, Australia, New Zealand.

Deciding to do the trip was the hardest part. Once you pick a date to leave and decide that you’ll do it no matter what, the rest falls in place.

We sold everything. I had an RV, a condo, a car, as well as tons of computers, clothes, and other junk like that. Even if we didn’t have existing online businesses, our fire sales would have bought us enough time to start our businesses on the road.

With just a few hours to go, we were both down to just one small 28L Backpack each. Over the prior few months we had researched the very best gear to buy, and our bags were full of our findings. In those tiny backpacks we stuffed everything we’d need to live and work comfortably for the rest of the year.

Leaving people behind is difficult too, of course. I left a girlfriend, and Todd and I both said goodbye to a lot of friends and family. Internet makes that a lot better, though. Making calls with our VOIP Enabled phones is the same as using them as cell phones, and AIM and e-mail keep us in touch too. Some of our friends even come out and visit us on the road.

We anticipated that life would be totally different once we left, and that it would be a lot harder. This hasn’t been true at all. Once you adjust to a new country after a day or two, it’s business as usual.

There are a lot of differences, but the basics are the same. People are friendly and helpful everywhere. Good food can be found everywhere. Supermarkets are all basically the same.

It isn’t very expensive either. We bought our plane tickets through Airtreks, which averaged less than $500 per month. In Panama we had a two bedroom apartment with a large balcony overlooking the harbor. In Tokyo we have a large room with two beds in a big house in Shibuya, one of the best areas downtown. Both accommodations cost us only $550 per month each.

Because anything purchased has to be lugged to the next destination, we don’t buy anything other than food, which might be another $500 a month each. For just over $1000 a month we have the luxury of living all over the world, learning and experiencing more every month than we used to in a year.

There are no significant hidden costs or hassles. Living as a nomad is just as manageable as living in a single location, but a lot more fun and exciting.

Even if you don’t want to start your own internet business, there is a lot of work that can be done by contract. To start, check out eLance, or rentacoder.com. Between those two sites you can get paid to write, edit, create web pages, research, or program. If you can’t do any of those things now, you could surely teach yourself within a few months using free resources online and a little practice.

Thanks to technology, becoming a nomad is in reach of most people. If you’re interested enough to read this far, it’s probably something you could do too.

What’s stopping you?