January was an improvement with earnings coming in at $1347. For the third or fourth month in a row I haven’t done much work so I’m obviously pretty happy that the money continues to roll on in. I am completely aware that I have to get back into work mode but I didn’t manage to get anything done in Kuala Lumpur and won’t be able to do much until the end of February when I leave Indonesia for London.

Oh ya! I bought a ticket to London for March 1st. The plan is to head there to attempt to get a visa for Pakistan and, if that doesn’t work out, I will probably head to Haiti. The Pakistan plan is good for working online and I’m hoping it works out. The Haiti plan isn’t so good for web work but it’s too tempting not to go. Either way I will have something interesting to keep me busy for a few months.

Earnings Breakdown:

• Google Adsense - $319 - Yay! Adsense is back over $300 after a scary month in December. January started as a slow month which was a bit of a worry, especially since in past years January has usually seen my Adsense earnings jump up a lot. It’s not at $500 where I want it, but it’s moving in the right direction.
• Affiliate Sales - $498 - My main affiliate program is still sucking but others are stepping up finally. I’ve set up some programs on my moving to London site which are a perfect fit and the early results are promising. I have a couple more products from the same company to add so hopefully that will be what bumps me up to above $500 consistently.
• Advertising - $530 - It was a month mostly of renewals and I also did a few new deals for monthly payments. I have stopped pursuing direct advertising but I’m still always open to it so it’s nice that people are still coming to me occasionally.

January was good and February will probably be more of the same until I get off my arse and get some serious amounts of work done. The good part is I have the sites built, I just need to dedicate a lot of time to building links and attempting to get them into Google.

But that’s for March… in the meantime it’s more of the same in Sumatra, Indonesia. We’ve moved onto building houses and I get to play with a circular saw which is fun and it’s nice to be building houses instead of destroying them.

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I am in a travel dilemma at the moment and am not sure what to do with my life over the next three or four months. It had all be settled: work in Sumatra until the end of the project on February 27th and then go to South Africa.

But things have changed drastically in the past few weeks and I’m not sure what I want to do anymore. The earthquake in Haiti has got me looking at flights to go there, a visit from a friend who is living in Islamabad has me trying to find a way to get a visa for Pakistan and an extension on the volunteering project in Sumatra has be wanting to stay until the end.

Haiti

Everyone will know by now that Haiti has been screwed by an earthquake. I left Haiti less than a year ago and, to be honest, the thought of going back there so soon fills me with dread. But the thought of being able to lend a hand outweighs that and I am finding myself looking for flights to Miami and on to Port-au-Prince when I should be doing work. I don’t have any useful skills for right now and I’m not about to head over there on my own only to become a burden. Hands On have an assessment team there and I am waiting to see if they plan to launch a project. I have been told that it’s unlikely that they won’t work in Haiti, it’s just a matter of when. In the meantime I am thinking a lot about the country and spending a lot of time looking at airfares that I can’t afford.

Islamabad

A friend of mine is working in Islamabad and I am intrigued by the place. It sounds like he has a great group of friends and he is really loving living there. He has even found a place for me to stay with a friend of his for US$350 a month. It comes with wifi, a cook, a cleaner and even a guard. I love doing relief work but I am going to need to work on my websites sooner rather than later as things seem to be sliding a bit lately. I can’t think of a better place for a bit of location independent living than Islamabad! Ok, I can… but I am suddenly extremely curious about the city. I have wanted to go to Pakistan for awhile and what better time to do it that when I already have a good friend living there? Of course there are the security concerns and all that stuff but lets just ignore those for now. The main problem I’m having is getting a tourist visa and I might have to fly back to the UK to get one. This might seem crazy but I have family and friends I haven’t seen in awhile and also need to sort out some tax things so it wouldn’t be a complete waste of time trip - just an expensive one.

Sumatra

I have been in Sumatra for about three months now and have loved it. The work we’ve done so far has been very physical and mundane but necessary. We’re removing unsafe homes from the owner’s foundations by dropping them safely to the ground and the salvaging any useful materials like tin, wood, bricks and even river rock. The work is hard and not the most exciting thing in the world and after three months it is getting a bit old, even though I know its important. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel and we’ve started building things instead of just wrecking things. Yay! We’ve begun building homes and they’re fun and have a great design and I am learning some new skills. The project has been extended until April 9th and I would like to see the project through to the end. Plus this is the only option that I can really afford.

Can anyone offer any advice? The only plan that makes any sense is staying in Sumatra but that’s third on what I want to do. I think the leader is heading to Pakistan but the visa issue is a problem. Haiti is a crazy plan and until Hands On decide what they will do there, I don’t want to make any moves. But I don’t want to wait around for too long, either. I have some tough choices to make.

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It’s been a week since an earthquake hit Haiti, not far from the country’s capital city, Port-au-Prince. The internet stopped working here the day of the quake so I’m getting all of my information at once right now and it’s been pretty overwhelming: up to 200,000 feared dead, bodies being loaded into mass graves by front-loader trucks, the city of Port-au-Prince flattened and an estimated 500,000 people left homeless, desperate people looting orphanages, aid not getting through and on and on.

I left Haiti in March 2009 after spending five months in Gonaives, one of the most screwed up places I have ever been. Thankfully the city was unharmed by the quake and my friends there are all ok. Many have had family and friends of their own die in the earthquake and it makes me wonder how much misery the people of one country can take.

It’s not all completely bleak though and it seems like there has has been a huge outpouring of support. I’ve heard bits about Twitter donation campaigns raising millions, star-studded telethons in Canada and the US, massive media coverage of the quake, stories of survival, rumours of debt cancellation, and a huge aid effort attempting to get underway.

I’ve been through Port-au-Prince a few times on my way down to Gonaives and each time I stayed at St. Joseph’s, an orphanage for boys who have been abandoned by their families or rescued from slavery (mind-bogglingly, it still exists in Haiti). Seeing photos of the building - a beautiful place filled with artwork, plants, musical instruments and life - without the top four floors and reading about Bill Nathan’s close call is sad and sobering.

A few friends of mine are there already, some are on their way with medical teams and more here in Indonesia are looking for ways to get there as soon as possible. This disaster relief crowd I hang around with these days are an eager bunch. I want to help but I think for now it will be a cash only effort.

If you’re in a position to give, cash is what is needed so pick your favourite charity and please do what you can.

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I just read an interesting post over at Untemplater by John from Jetset Citizen that got the cogs in my head turning for a post here on my site. John was questioning whether achieving the whole four hour work week, nomadic lifestyle is as easy as some people make it seem.

This is a topic that has been done to death online but he had a different angle to it. What really caught my attention was this part:

There are many successful long term travelers and lifestyle designers out there, so it definitely is not all hype. However, some of those success stories leave out details about how they got where they are.

And this part:

Most people hide those stories of essential assistance. It is important to acknowledge that we seldom do it alone.

His post got me thinking about my own path to where I am today and how many advantages I have had along the way that might not seem hugely obvious.

My parents aren’t rich and I don’t have a trust fund, but they are very supportive of my travels which, to me, is worth far more. Knowing that my parents will have my back if I ever get into financial or some other trouble abroad is huge. This became apparent to me years ago after a conversation with a friend of mine who has no family left except her sister. She loved the idea of world travel but she felt that, because she had no family to back her up, she had to create her own backup plan by becoming successful and putting money in the bank now and travelling later when she could better afford it. Knowing that I have a supportive family is something that makes taking risks and doing what I do a lot easier.

I didn’t have a computer at a young age, but I did do most of the early development of my very first website as a hobby while I was in university. This meant that spending hours learning HTML and tinkering with images and code were fun for me, rather than a chore. At this early stage I didn’t think that making money online was possible. My motivations were to learn HTML and to create a site that would help people travel around Europe and I wasn’t hung up on how many Adsense clicks I had gotten that day or how many followers I had on my RSS feed. I think establishing a website early on has been ridiculously important to my success, at least in the early stages.

Once my longer-term travels began, I arrived in the UK in 2002 with about $300 Australian dollars to my name. But I was able to go there knowing that I could stay with my aunt and uncle in Scotland for as long as I wanted. Having family or friends in a country you are hoping to move to is huge for helping you save money on rent, find a job, and to establish a group of friends. Six weeks later I went down to London where I had no family or friends but spending that time in Scotland allowed me to save a bit more money and even land a job in London before I moved down there which were both essential for starting out in such an expensive city.

My supportive parents, the early start I had building websites and my family connections in the UK are three things that have really helped me get to this point of being able to work online from anywhere. It has been a lot of work and a long road to get to this point, but I have had help along the way that has probably had more of an impact than I might have previously thought.

How about you? Are you a lone ranger in your quest to earn online and live from anywhere or can you look back to some key things that have helped or hindered you?

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Happy New Year everyone! I’ve been inspired by the year-in-review type post over at Thrilling Heroics and I’ve decided to throw out one of my own.

I had a great time in 2009 but, looking back, it sort of doesn’t seem like I did much. I spent the first few months of the year finishing up a volunteering project in Haiti and then went straight down to Nicaragua where I spent two months on a feeble attempt at studying Spanish and another two months working on a farm on the side of a volcano. I also spent a couple of months at home in Canada and two months in Sumatra. Besides a couple of weeks in Australia and three weeks in New York City, all of my travels have been done in big chunks with little movement from place to place and even less time spent doing the backpacker thing. As a result it feels like 2009 was a bit of a light travel year but it still somehow managed to be the most rewarding so far.

2009 Travels

• Haiti (January to April)
• Australia (2 weeks in February/March)
• USA (a short visit to Miami, and a stint in NYC)
• Nicaragua (April to August)
• Canada (home for two months, house boating and a couple of trips to Toronto)
• Indonesia (November and December)
• Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur for a week)

Highlights

• Having some crazy experiences and meeting lots of great people while volunteering in Haiti.
• Catching up with a friend I haven’t seen for nine years in Miami.
• Heading to a wedding in Perth, Australia and having a reunion with about 20 Aussie friends from my years in London.
• Hanging out on the side of a volcano in a hammock in a treehouse - my new favourite spot in the world.
• Learning all sorts of new skills and meeting some interesting people while working on a farm on Ometepe, Nicaragua.
• Watching the evil Red Sox at the awesome Fenway Park.
• Spending a couple of weeks living in my friend’s apartment in New York City and a weekend with my mum over Halloween.
• Hanging out with my parent’s on a houseboat for a week (and crashing it twice).
• Heading to Sumatra, volunteering, catching up with old friends, meeting new friends and really enjoying the area.
• Spending New Year’s Eve on Lake Manangau in Sumatra, Indonesia with a bunch of my favourite people from volunteering in Indonesia.

Things I Learned in 2009

I learned that I love to wield a machete. Working on a farm for two months in Nicaragua meant that I got to do all sorts of cool things and hacking trees to bits with machetes has to rank up there as one of my favourite things to do. Machetes = best tool ever. It’s not just the machetes I love about life on a farm… I love the simplicity, the hard work, being outdoors, eating food grown beside your tent, the fresh air, and being around the local workers. There are lots of opportunities to do farm work worldwide in exchange for food and accommodation and it’s something that I will be actively searching out in my future travels.

I also learned that I’m not really that into travel for the sake of travel anymore. I still love to be on the road visiting new places but the actual destination doesn’t hold as much excitement for me as it once did. These days I get much more excited about travel with some sort of purpose in mind: visiting a friend, going to a festival or sporting event, volunteering, doing a work exchange, couch surfing, learning a language or some skill or even renting an apartment and attempting to do as the locals do. Hostel life and the backpacker scene is something that I’m growing less and less fond of as I get older which is surprising to me since I used to love it so much.

I have also come to the conclusion that I’m not the best at budgeting. When I have money in my bank account and some money coming in each month, I will always choose fun and worry about the financial consequences later. Evidence of this being my ridiculous two week trip from Haiti to Perth, Australia for a wedding. Ridiculous, yes, but also totally worth it. Same goes for the crazy amount of money I have already spent on World Cup tickets and will no doubt spend when I actually get there. But again, I seem to have no problem spending now and worrying later. I would always rather spend the money to do something great because I can always *gasp* get a job to top up my funds or stay somewhere really cheap as the internet money rolls in and tops me back up.

The other thing I’ve come to realise that doesn’t go well at all with my lack of budgeting is that I am not as committed to working online as I once was or maybe as I should be. I really do love the work but I also love being in remote places that don’t usually have an internet connection. This doesn’t go very well with the whole working online thing and I’m often only able to do work in short stints between trips. I’m not sure if this is something I can continue to do, but I will push it for as long as I can.

2010 Travel Plans

My new year’s resolution for 2009 was to keep advance travel planning to a minimum and I did a pretty good job keeping it. I didn’t really book any flights too far in advance and sort of rolled with the punches for the whole year. I really love not being totally sure what the next month or even the next week will hold so I’m going to attempt to stick with the same resolution for 2010. But I do still have a few rough travel non-plans to think about in the new year:

• Stay in Sumatra with HODR until the project ends in February then do a bit of travelling around Indonesia.

• Visit a friend in Islamabad and either attempt to get a job or just rent a room somewhere and work on my websites.

• Head to South Africa in June to meet up with some Aussie friends for the World Cup (this is the only plan that is locked in).

• Find a gig working on a farm in exchange for accommodation in South Africa (or maybe also do it in Bali before I leave Indonesia).

• Couchsurf as much as possible around Southern Africa while looking for volunteering opportunities in the area.

• Follow HODR to their next project, wherever it is and whenever it will be.

• Travel around Africa (probably mostly the East Coast for now) while gathering information for my new Africa website.

Work Related Goals for 2010

I’m not really a hugely ambitious type so I don’t have a huge list of lofty goals to achieve in 2010. But I do have a couple of things that should keep me pretty busy for the next little while.

• Volunteering Ebook - As I wrote about in a previous post, I want to raise $10,000 and I think writing an ebook and giving it away for a suggested donation is the best way to go about it. I have been working away at it but I still have a long way to go, not to mention the work that will be involved in getting the word out. It’s turning out to be a pretty big project and I want to have this thing finished and released sooner rather than later.
• Wanderstruck - This project will be huge and I might have bitten off a bit more than I can chew on this one. My goal is to create a website for independent travel across Africa. I have a vision and I am starting to get the site the way I want it but filling it with content will be a mission involving my own travels and finding other travellers to write for the site. The only place in Africa I’ve been to as of right now is Egypt which makes this whole project idea even more ridiculous. But I am going to throw myself at this site and see what happens. Getting this to work will require a big commitment from me so I hope I’m ready to give it once I get to Africa.

What will 2010 look like for you? Has 2009 been everything you had hoped it would? I’m pretty happy with life and really excited for the future. It looks like 2010 will be a busy travel year for me and a busy year in general and I’m looking forward to it!

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I will keep this short because I’m on the world’s most frustrating net connection at the moment and I need to get offline soon so I don’t go insane. December was a pretty bad month for earnings coming in at $1111. I didn’t do much web work last month but in past months I was still able to earn a decent amount despite being a slacker. It is starting to look like I will need to put some serious graft in soon to stop things from slipping further. I’m still not spending much money though so at least I have that.

Earnings Breakdown:

• Google Adsense - $227 - This is scary. Adsense has been the one steady thing with me being able to count on over $300 a month. But things are looking better in January already so I’m hoping December was a blip.
• Affiliate Sales - $300 - My main affiliate program sucked more than ever but some others have picked up a bit of the slack. Still, earnings in this area seem to be dropping and dropping. I have a plan but I don’t have the time to work on it until I get back to Kuala Lumpur in early February.
• Advertising - $584 - This month started out pretty bad in this area as well but things picked up due to some late deals.

I’m actually surprised I cleared a grand this month as things were looking terrible up until last week. I’m not spending much money at the moment but that will all change once I hit South Africa during the World Cup so these low-earning months are a bit of a concern. But I can hardly expect to make money without working for it so I have only myself to blame. I’m happy to earn less and spend less for now but once I leave Sumatra in March-ish, I will need to have another plan. But I’ll worry about it then.

Happy New Year everyone!

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Yesterday was my second Christmas Day spent abroad while working with Hands On and it topped the one in Haiti. Of course, last year in Haiti I spent most of Christmas day in transit trying to escape the country for the beaches of the Dominican Republic, but even that torturous journey on the back of a pickup truck with 20 people had a charming side.

This year’s holiday festivities were certainly a lot more relaxing but also a lot more covert. The community here is pretty sensitive about religion and some people are worried our goal in the community is to convert people to Christianity. In an effort not to stir up trouble, we’ve been banned from uttering the word ‘Christmas’ and have instead chosen to wish friends a Merry Holidaymas, Happy Day or even, my favourite, Happy C-word Day which just makes me laugh.

There’s a great gang of people here at the moment and on Xmas Eve we had a BBQ, sneakily drank beer, and turned the backyard tent into a dance party on complete with strobe lighting provided by our blinking headlamps. Xmas morning was mostly spent nursing a hangover with me surfacing from time to time to fetch the contents of my stocking or collect my secret Santa gift before retreating back to bed but I had no complaints. In the afternoon we all pitched in to create a not-so-traditional meal of pot roast, veggies, spaghetti with mushroom sauce and BBQ chicken topped off nicely with pastries and apple crumble. Xmas evening was spent nursing a food coma while listening to people sing along to the guitar and joining in with some out of tune contributions from time to time.

Volunteering is a great way to spend the holidays and I’m always impressed with how many people rock up for a week over Xmas and New Year’s to help out. In Haiti a big gang of people descended on us in late December and in Indonesia it has been the same but with people generally staying for three or four weeks. We’ve even had a family of four choose to spend their holidays working with us, coming all the way from Alaska. It’s a great atmosphere and I’m still loving it. We’ve had a recent influx of Indonesian volunteers too which is really inspiring as well.

Hands On started on this day five years ago after the Tsunami and, while this is a sad anniversary, it also makes me happy to think about how many people took action to do something positive in the face of devastation. I’m surrounded by some pretty amazing people here and I feel lucky to have gotten the chance to spend another Xmas with Hands On getting dirty and sweaty.

Happy belated C-Word Day everyone!

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I’m sitting here in the fancy, new Air Asia airport in Kuala Lumpur waiting for my flight to Padang soaking up the last bit of relatively luxurious living before heading back into the steamy jungle. KL is a great city to decompress in as it has all of those comforts you crave when you’ve been living in rural Aisa for awhile: hamburgers, Western toilets (with toilet paper!), frappuccinos, free wifi, air conditioning, steak, ice cubes, ice cream, and a private room all to myself to sleep for as long as I want to.

I’m usually able to cope well for long periods of time without these things but, this time, I could hardly wait to get to Malaysia and descend upon the Starbucks. I had been sick for my last week in Indonesia and I also went off the food and was sustaining myself on peanut butter and jam sandwiches. The thought of eating another mouthful of rice made me gag and I successfully avoided it all week here in KL, instead feeding my face with Western crap that probably didn’t do too much to help make me get healthy, but it certainly made me feel better!

After a week of indulging on goodies, hanging out in shopping malls for the air conditioning and wifi, and hibernating, my batteries are charged and I’m ready to clobber some buildings with a sledge hammer back in Indonesia. I really needed this break, possibly more than on any other project I’ve done with Hands On, but I can only take so much luxury before I start to long for dorm living, 7:30am starts, long, hot work days and humid nights. I would still be happy if I never saw rice again but I’ve come prepared with a stockpile of tuna fish, pasta, tomato sauce and other goodies that will give me a break once or twice a week from the routine having the same thing to eat almost every day.

Even when I’m backpacking around I can’t usually go for much longer than a month of constantly moving or being in a really rural location. Little breaks from my travels, either on the beach, in a major city, or just unpacking somewhere for a week and doing nothing, go a long way towards keeping me sane on the road.

But I’m ready to get back and am looking forward to shoveling me some rubble and getting sweaty. I’m hoping this week of luxury hasn’t made me soft!

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I posted last week about wanting to raise $10,000 for a good cause and was bombarded with lots of encouraging comments with idea for the type of ebook I could offer. I’ve decided to follow the advice of several people and write an ebook on international volunteering. It makes sense since all of the revenues from the book will be donated to Hands On, an organisation that does disaster relief work all over the world with the help of volunteers. Plus it’s an area I have some experience in, am passionate about and the idea that I could help motivate people to volunteer is a pretty exciting one.

I’ve spent the past couple of days writing ideas down and I think I have a pretty good base for the book and I’m kind of excited at how well it’s going so far. Here are a few of the points I’m planning on including:

• Finding volunteering opportunities
• Finding an organisation that is right for you
• What to look for in a volunteering organisation
• Vacation volunteering/voluntourism
• Should you pay to volunteer?
• Living conditions and what to expect
• Paperwork and visas for volunteering
• Benefits of volunteering
• List of trustworthy free and cheap volunteering organisations
• Outline of the types of volunteering (disaster, construction, social, children, teaching, professional, farming etc.)
• Volunteering membership websites
• Volunteering scams to look out for
• List of resources on volunteering
• Interviews about people’s volunteering experiences

As I flesh out these ideas, I was wondering if any of you have anything else you would hope to read about. I’m completely open to ideas! I would also love to hear suggestions for trustworthy organisations… these sorts of things are best found by word of mouth and, while I have a good start to a list, I would like to come up with at least 50 suggestions. Plus I would love to chat with people about positive or even not so positive volunteering experiences as well as any initial fears about volunteering and what the reality was once you got there. If you’re willing to let me pepper you with a few questions, leave a comment or drop me an email.

I’ve spoken to the people at HODR, the organisation I will be donating the money to, and they’re on board and have committed to taking charge of the book’s distribution since I will be stranded in middle of nowhere in Sumatra for the next two months. Google donate some money each month to them to use in an Adwords campaign and they suggested setting one up aimed at creating interest in the ebook which would be great. I’m not sure how that would work but it would be interesting to try it out. Either way, having the use of their resources is a big bonus and if they are willing to send a plug out on their giant mailing list, that would be huge.

I guess the last thing for now is to ask about pricing. Do you think asking people to donate what they feel its worth is the way to go? Or should I set a $5, $10, or more minimum donation? I like the idea of asking people to donate a bit, and send the message on but I think that’s something I would aim more at friends and family. I think getting some bloggers on board and asking for a mention on their blogs will be key so if anyone is willing to allow me to do a guest post or even just give the book a mention, I would love to hear from you. Or maybe I will just start spamming you all once the book is out!

Thanks again for the support I’ve gotten so far on this! I’m pretty pumped now about the idea and I’m having fun writing it and looking forward to hearing some more of your suggestions.

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This is my third time volunteering with Hands On on their disaster relief projects and one thing has become clear to me in this time: I’m not interested in being a leader. I’ve successfully sidestepped any responsibility or leadership roles since Bangladesh back in January 2008. As you become a regular volunteer though, you inevitably get on the radar of the people who run the show and sticking to the grunt work I love so much and avoiding leading projects becomes harder and harder.

But when I was asked last week to co-lead a team on a satellite project, I couldn’t scam my way out of it. I accepted and spent last week living in a temporary village made up of people displaced by landslides. Their entire village has been wiped out and a whole bunch of displaced people are waiting for construction to finish on their new homes in wooden longhouses. They’re expected to be there for up to two years and Hands On were brought in by an Indonesian NGO called People in Need to help set up a guttering system to catch the rain so that people here will have water. A Czech NGO are also going to be setting up latrines and we will be participating in that program too once it gets going.

The community was great. We had plenty of helpers, many who seemed to be over 100, and most who could saw like… well, something that saws really well. Our team had six volunteers from HODR and we were helped by three guys from People in Need who let us do our own thing and figure things out as we went. We’re expecting to play a big role in the rain water program so being able to work things out on our own and figure out the best way to do things will help down the road when we’re doing it all ourselves.

Our team was great, the work was slow but fun and the only thing I can think of complaining about is the lack of toilets and having to slog it down a slippery hill in the pouring rain anytime the moment took me. Did I mention I have been having a dodgy tummy lately? I will let you work out for yourselves how much of an ordeal the toilet situation was for me but, thinking about it now, the whole thing was pretty funny.

The other thing to complain about is the massive amounts of durian located in this part of the world. The things were dropping from the trees. Motorbike were loaded up with them and parked on the paths. The market stalls in town seemed to sell nothing but this terrible excuse for food. The locals offered us a durian about 10 times per day and some of them found their way into our room on occasion. They are foul, horrible things. They don’t smell as bad as I expected them to but the insides look like fetuses, the outside is spiky and painful and the taste and texture is gag-inducing after only a small bite. But eating durian was something I had on my list and I’m happy to check it off and never, ever let that evil fruit darken my doorstep again.

Escaping the durian was easier said that done, though. After spending two days working on the rain catchment systems we waited on the third day for the latrine project people to show up. They were supposed to show up the previous day but didn’t and now, they had stood us up again. They eventually arrived at 1pm on Thursday but they had no materials and weren’t ready for us to get some work done. We had been calling home for a pickup for the two hour journey back to our base since 10am but the phone networks were inconveniently down for four hours that day. So we sat around on day three avoiding offers of durian, peeing in the woods, chatting, and admiring our new rain gutters. After about 10 minutes of that we were bored and were desperate to leave but we were stranded.

By about 6pm we were on our way home having had a great first two days, a frustrating third day and in need of showers and a good meal. Overall it was a great experience and I’m looking forward to heading back from time to time over the coming months. I’m still not too into the whole leadership thing but somebody needs to take these roles on and it’s about time I step up for once.

Down with durian!

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