Thailand – 5 Months of Self-Discovery & Serendipitous Adventures
Chiang Mai: Sept 26, 2017 – March 1, 2018 Including trips to Chiang Dao, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and Chiang Rai A place once unfamiliar was now home. We arrived in Chiang Mai 12 months earlier, wide-eyed and unsure. We returned a year later – excited, relaxed, and eager. Excited to see old friends, visit our favorite cafes and restaurants, and eager to relax after spending the last 7 months in 11 different countries on 3 other continents. One year earlier, we spent our first 30 minutes passing through a city we’d never seen in a country we had never visited. […]
USA – The Intermission: Divided We Stand, Yet We Shall Not Fall
Chicago: July 5-10, 2017 California: July 10-21, 2017 | Sept 17-24, 2017 Since we began our nomadic travel adventures, our annual trips home have become like an intermission – a pause in our new life abroad, a reflection on our past life, and a look ahead to future possibilities. It’s much like a washer to a bolt. It fastens our experiences together and tightens (or sometimes loosens) the bonds we’ve left behind at home. Our initial return in July 2017 was also our first time back on American soil in the New America. The America that fell into the hands […]
Medellín – Our Summertime Oasis in the Valley of Eternal Spring
Medellín, Colombia: July 22 – Sept 16, 2017 The power of possibilities can sometimes be a debilitating force. In life we often feel limited in our possibilities. Part of our challenge is to push beyond our physical and social limits to discover new things about ourselves and the world. As location independent travelers, we have the freedom to travel to almost anywhere on the globe and still maintain income and quality of life. Yet to be comfortable, we create limits to our travels. Traveling lightly (with just a backpack and carry-on) requires us to seek out places in warm climates. […]
Portugal – A Place of Possibilities and Promise
Portugal – Porto & Lisbon: June 24 – July 5, 2017 It’s just past 4pm on Saturday, June 24 and I look down about 3,000 feet towards the city of Porto, Portugal. It’s my 10th country in 5 months and the last country we will visit during our 3-month stay in Europe in Spring 2017. The sky is clear and bright, and the city looks picturesque, like out of a movie. Descending towards the airport from the south, we seemingly navigate along the Duoro River. It’s a river famous for its economic importance in this historic wine region. This bird’s […]
Wiping Away the Fog with Friends and Food in Italy
Italy – Bologna, Vicenza, Marostica, & Bassano del Grappa: June 16 – 24, 2017 As the sun rose on the morning of June 16th, time was setting on our 2-month stay in Valencia. We made one final pass through the apartment and placed our keys on the table of our Airbnb apartment, and then closed the door on this defining chapter of our year-plus nomadic experience. Our experience in Valencia was unlike any other long-term stay and we were ready to regain something we missed dearly during that time – warm friends and good conversation. The sunrise that Friday signified […]
10 Days Down the Danube – Exploring 3 European Capitals
Vienna, Brno, Bratislava, and Budapest: May 6 – May 16, 2017 For as long as humans have been hunters/gatherers, food has always been the centerpiece of comforting and celebratory moments. A few weeks before we became nomadic back in March 2016, my wife and I sat down for one of our usual Friday dinners at the home of our dear friends, Marc and Christianne in Sunnyvale, CA. In between sips of some of our favorite Northern California wine, I posed a question to Joanne, Christianne’s mom – “if you had to pick between visiting Prague or Budapest, which would you […]
Springtime in Spain – The Second Time Around
Valencia, Spain: April 6 – June 16, 2017 When I was in college dreaming about what I’d like to do when I “grew up”, one fantasy that I had was being able to have a residence in Chicago (my hometown), Tempe, Arizona (my college town), and San Francisco (my dream town). Now, 17 years later, as we entered our second year of life abroad, I reflected on how that dream shifted from three cities in the US to spending 3 months in Europe, 2 months in Canada, and 7 months in South East Asia (5 months in Thailand and a […]
The Senses Succumb to the Sounds of Vietnam
Vietnam – Saigon & Hanoi: March 11 – April 5, 2017 We decided to spend the final month of our first year of nomadic travel in arguably what should have been the one place in South East Asia that we could have spent most of our time – Vietnam. Given that my wife is native-born Vietnamese we have fairly generous 5-year multi-entry visas. Yet for a variety of reasons, Vietnam was the final destination (rather than a natural home base) for our time in the region. For starters, while the visas give us great access to the country, the current […]
Leaving the Land of Smiles for a Month in Malaysia
Malaysia – Kuala Lumpur & Ipoh: February 8 – March 11, 2017 After just over four months of settling down in Chiang Mai, Thailand (our South East Asia home base for the Fall and early Winter months), it was time for us to escape the coming burning season and explore life in neighboring countries. The day we departed the “Land of Smiles” my eyes watered as I reflected on the friendships developed and just the overall comfort and stability of life for us in Thailand. The impending distance from familiar faces and places, as well as the personality and ambience […]
Penang – An Embodiment of Creative Disruption
George Town, Penang: January 7-10, 2017 Much like the street art and street (“hawker”) food that seem to serve as the first definition of modern day Penang, the city is one that is best experienced through the senses. Though the city is still trying to create an identity for itself after it was stripped of such comfort during WWII, it is using vibrant, creative solutions to tell its history, share its beauty and humor, and redevelop itself as Malaysia’s thriving second city. Penang (more specifically, George Town, the state’s capital city) was on our short list for options as a […]
