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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