I’ve written a few articles here and there in the past for small amounts of money and I’ve enjoyed it. I’m not interested in taking on a lot of paid writing projects, but I think having one or two on the go will be great for a few reasons.

• Money - Extra money is never a bad thing… that’s all I can really say about that.
• Diversifying my income streams - Most of my earnings are split between one affiliate program, ever diminishing Adsense earnings and paid links and I’d like to branch out a little bit more, even if just for a small amount each month.
• Publicity - By writing on other blogs associated with the working and travelling niche, I can work towards establishing myself as a bit of an expert in the area which might come in handy at some point.
• Backlinks - Getting inbound, one-way links from an established, popular blog will help my own blog with PR and search engines. At least that’s what they’re supposed to do.
• Sky is the limit - If a popular blog continues to do well I can write articles, forget about them and ride the wave of their success by reaching new readers and having very strong backlinks.
• Gets me into a routine - Normally I wouldn’t be too interested in being accountable for producing a set number of articles per month but I think a little bit of structure can be a good thing and I’m willing to give it a try.
• Force me to focus on my niche - Writing articles on living a location independent lifestyle will mean that I’ll have to know a lot about it. I think there are a lot of things I can write already but I would look most forward to doing some research and expanding my knowledge in this area.

I know loads of people who would dream about being able to make a living through their writing. I’m not one of them. I like writing but it’s not something I would want to spend day after day doing and certainly not under the pressure of having to make a living from it but I think throwing a few writing projects in here and there will be a big benefit to this blog and to my business overall.

Today saw a group of about 10 volunteers, half locals and half international, heading out to a mud-encrusted neighbourhood to deliver sets of tools to 50 families. Oxfam is behind this programme and the idea is that each set of tools (a wheelbarrow, 2 shovels, a rake, three pairs of boots, some gloves, a bucket and a pick) will be shared with five families who are nearby so that 250 total families in the community can work together in cleaning up the mess.

We had to wait a couple of hours for the truck with the tools to arrive and, in the meantime, the Oxfam group got the local kids singing songs about hand sanitation. It’s amazing how quick a child will learn a song about hygiene when there are balloons involved as prizes. The children in this neighbourhood are all really fun and smiley but the reality of the situation hits home after witnessing them fight over empty cardboard boxes that the rubber boots came in. People here have so little that even a box is considered worthy of a brawl.

It’s sort of a desperate situation in Haiti and the local volunteers will tell you so. They are the first to say that Haiti is ‘very bad’. Every Saturday we have a meeting for the local guys to voice their concerns, to keep them updated on news about the jobs sites and to award a volunteer of the week. I’m blown away each meeting at how well spoken, thoughtful and bright these young guys are. I’m told that, at first, their volunteering started as a ‘what can I get out of it’ sort of thing. In my first week of being here though, I’ve seen as much dedication and hard work from the locals as the international volunteers, if not more. They really love their role in helping out their own community and are able to see the benefit of volunteering beyond just what it’ll do for them.

I can’t really say enough about the locals we have working beside us and it is sad to think that there might not be much opportunity for them in Haiti, despite their intelligence, leadership skills and work ethic. Haiti is just a screwed up kind of place but I really hope that Hands On will be a stepping stone for some of them. One of the guys, Samson, recently got hired on by Oxfam as a Spanish to Creole translator and this is a perfect example of that. There is an opportunity tomorrow for them to volunteer with the UN and another chance soon to work with Save the Children. I really hope that they can use these sorts of hooks ups to their benefit and turn them into paying jobs.

So, as you can probably tell, I am once again blown away by my Hands On experience. If this sounds like your sort of thing, check them out and keep an eye out for volunteer opportunities in the future. I will post some photos soon!

The three ways to get content that I’m considering are to pay writers for their work, to offer a permanent link on each contributed article to a site of the writer’s choice, or to put the writer’s Adsense code on each page they write for me. In an effort to find some people to write for me and to get some feedback on what you think the best method would be, I’ve made a little list the with pros and cons.

Pay Writers

This would see me paying US$15 per article or area guide of around 1000 words. I’m not sure what the going rate is so don’t know if this price is too high or too low.

Pros

• Me - Once I pay the writer I will own the content and can do whatever I want with it.
• Writer - The writer sees cash up front so gets rewarded immediately for their work.

Cons

• Me - I need a lot of content and will only be able to afford to get a couple of sites done with the money I have.
• Writer - The amount paid isn’t huge and once the article is sold they won’t have any chance of earning more money from it.

Put a Link of the Writer’s Choice on Each Article

This would see me adding a link at the top of each article to a site (or even a page within a site) of the writer’s choice. The link would be at the top of the page under the article’s title and would be limited to one.

Pros

• Me - Doesn’t cost me anything so I can add as many articles as I can get written.
• Me - Takes two seconds to add a link to a page so not a lot of extra work needed by me.
• Writer - The writer can get traffic and link juice from my site for as long as the article is there.
• Writer - The site will benefit from being link to from many of my other, already established sites which would make a link from it a good thing to have.

Cons

• Me - I would have no real ownership of the content since it will only belong to my site as long as the link is there.
• Me - My site will lose link juice and possibly PR because of outbound links to other sites.
• Writer - They have no control over SEO or what else I put onto the site so they have to trust that I will look after the site.
• Writer - They probably won’t see the benefits of the link for many months.

Put the Writers Adsense Code on Each Page They Write

Add three of the writer’s Adsense units to each article they write.

Pros

• Me - Doesn’t cost me anything so I can add as many articles as I can get written.
• Writer - I know a bit about SEO so the writer will benefit from this and their articles should do pretty well in the SERPs.
• Writer - Once the article is written it can be forgotten about and still keep on earning.

Cons

• Me - Adsense is a large part of the revenue model for these sites so losing out on Adsense units isn’t ideal.
• Me - No really ownership of the content since it will only belong to my site as long as the Adsense units are there.
• Me - Adding Adsense code to each article would be a bit more time consuming than the other options.
• Me - If the writer doesn’t already have Adsense I would have to explain it to them and getting their code may be difficult.
• Me - Have t otrust that the writer won’t click on their own ads which might get my sites into trouble (not sure on this though).
• Writer - New sites will not see substantial traffic for some time so the Adsense units could take awhile to produce.
• Writer - The writer would need to set up an Adsense account if they haven’t already got one.

I would be really interested in hearing which of these options would appeal to you most. Or if you have other ideas or suggestions on how to compensate writers that would be great too. Do any of these options appeal to you? Can you think of any other pros and cons for each for both parties?

Finally… are there any people out there in internetland who would like to contribute articles or area guides for sites similar to my moving to London site? I have a list of 45 cities, mainly international (the only US cities I’m looking for would be LA and New York) so if you’ve lived in a major city worldwide and know your stuff, I’d love to hear from you!

It’s really amazing here. I’ve been a couple days and so far am loving it just as much as Bangladesh. It looks like Hands On have created some great relationships within the local community. There’s even a group of local volunteers which is something I didn’t see at all in Bangladesh. The guys I’ve met are eager and work bloody hard for no money which is something most people in Haiti can’t comprehend.

The work here is ridiculously difficult. It’s mostly grunt work shoveling mud from inside people’s homes. I think it washed in there as the city flooded and in some homes it fills the entire room to the ceiling. I haven’t experienced that yet but I’m not looking forward to it considering how hard it is to shovel a mere foot of mud.

As always, I’m hoping to get a lot of work done while I’m here. Because the work is so physical though I anticipate being completely knackered at the end of each day and watning nothing more than my bed. Unfortunately, my bed at the moment consists of a piece of plywood and a sleeping pad that’s only about a centemetre thick. Which means that I probably won’t be getting much sleep which means that I’ll probably spend most of my time here in a zombified state. Not something that’s ideal for getting a lot of work done.

Ok I’m off to source some beer from Cooler Man. We have a day off tomorrow so I might have three beers! Wild and crazy!

Earnings breakdown:

• Google Adsense - $275 - Adsense is sucking hard at the moment having fallen from over $400 per month in May. My visitor numbers and clicks are higher than ever but the payout per click seems to be getting worse, especially on my living in London site.
  
• Affiliate Sales - $938 - One of my other affiliate programs has finally started producing and I’m hoping it keeps up so I dont have to continue to count on the one major earner. I get paid in mainly in Aussie dollars and the British pound so the high value of the US dollar at the moment is hurting me in this department.
• Linkworth & Text Link Ads - $102 - Linkworth is holding strong at $23 for another month but TLA have dropped to by about $60 from last month. I’ve kicked TLA off of two of my sites so this number will drop even further next month.
• Private Link Sales - $420 - I had a good month with link sales. A couple of biggies renewed and I added a monthly subscription payment with Paypal for $30 to go with the $30 I already have coming in. I love subscription payments… money rolls in each month and I don’t need to do a thing to chase payments. I’d love to get more of these and might eventually stop offering yearly deals with the hopes that more people will pay monthly.

With my living expenses covered for the next couple of months, creditcards paid off and plane tickets all paid for I’m hoping to get my savings back up to a healthy level to take the edge off a bit. Apparently there is a wifi connection at our place in Haiti. I’m told that it only works when the wind isn’t blowing (!) so I’ll hopefully be able to get some work done there as well. My earnings have been hovering around $1500 to $2000 for a while now and I really want to kick things up to the next level. No idea of what the best way to go about this is but I think adding a few more city guide sites can only help.

Wow… that post was way shorter than I intended it to be.

I do business in four currencies and from time to time need to transfer my money from Paypal to my bank account or pay creditcard bills in other currencies. Unfortunately for me, I know nothing about fluctuations in foreign exchange and don’t really pay much attention to exchange rates so it’s always a crap shoot. I really have no interest in forex beyond attempting to not get ripped off too much when I exchange money.

My mum works in a bank and keeps coming home with updates of how well or how poorly the Canadian dollar is doing against the US dollar. Things have been up and down over the past few weeks and I’m not sure if I should swap my US money over to Canadian while the going is good or what. Because the US dollar has been so crap for so long I had been reluctant to change it. Now that it’s on the rebound I’m wondering if I should swap it over now or wait longer in case it gets even stronger against the Canadian dollar.

I really hate this part of being in this business. I guess operating in several currencies is a good thing but it’s also annoying to see small chunks of money being lost and gained based only on exchange rates. For me, it’s just an extra thing I need to pay attention to that I have zero actual interest in and it’s frustrating.

Do any of you pay much attention to exchange rates? If you’re planning a trip to you try to buy foreign money when the rate is good for you or do you just do like me, pay no attention to it and hope for the best when the exchange has to be made? I really should become more knowledgeable about this whol area but the whole idea of keeping on top of exchange rates just annoys me.

I’ve registered a load of ‘Stuck In’ domain names and plan to create lots of city sites similar to these. I find they’re good earners with Adsense and I think there is a lot of potential for direct link sales with local businesses once the sites gain PR and a bit of traffic. Plus they’re the type of sites that can be built and forgotten about and that suits me just fine.

I had been a bit cautious about posting my intentions to my blog in case people try to snap up ‘Stuck In’ domains for other cities but I think I’m happy with the places I’ve nabbed and they’ll keep me busy for a long time to come. I like the idea of having a bunch of these sites all connected together as a network but that will be a lot of work for one person to accomplish.

As I started to feel overwhelmed at the thought of building copious amounts of city guide websites without much knowledge of most places, I started to wonder whether there might be other ways to go about it and came up with a few ideas…

• Form partnerships with people who know the city well - With such a mammoth task ahead I thought about bringing other people on board in one way or another. I toyed with the idea of having other people run the sites and splitting revenue somehow. Or even letting them keep all the revenue while paying me some sort of flat monthly fee for hosting, the domain name and links might work. Both of these options would probably be complicated to set up and being in a partnership of sorts might be more of a headache that it’s worth.
• Sell the sites and domains outright - I thought of building a site for each city with a Google area guide map and a price guide ready to go and then selling the whole thing, domain included. The buyer would have a working site and would onlly have to plug in some content. I see this option as a fast way to create a network of quality sites with each site owner being an expert on their chosen city so that the whole network grows and strengthens together. Having people on board who know their cities well and want to grow their sites and make some money would, I think, be much better than me having to pay for content and cobble together articles based on internet research. Plus it would be fast cash in my pocket but at the expense of potential future earnings.
• Keep control of the sites and pay writers to produce content - This is what I’ve done so far with my sites and it seems to be working. I write as much as I can based on my own knowledge and experience and then find other people to fill in the gaps. For my London site I was able to produce most of the content myself but for the Sydney site I will have to pay for most of it. Finding writers hasn’t been a problem but it is expensive and probably isn’t realistic with 50 sites to do. Contacting expats or bloggers who run city sites to write for me in exchange for permanent links on their articles might also be an option.

I really think I’ve got my plate full with this idea and am open to suggestions on what to do. I had been inclined to build all of the sites on my own but it is very slow going and I’m not sure it will be possible. I have what I think is a good site layout, target market and concept but I’m not sure I can realistically build all of these sites without seriously compromising the quality.

Would anyone have any suggestions on how to even go about a pertnership type system? Do you think buying this type of completed site would appeal to anyone? Or what about trying to find people to write for me in exchange for permanent links on their articles… do you think people would go for that?

What would you do if you were in this situation? Any ideas or suggestions would be great!

Before this litter revelation I had been a bit confused by Twitter in a similar way I had been baffled by blogs before I started one. With blogs, I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to read about the mundane, day to day exploits of other people. With Twitter I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to read about the mundane, hour to hour exploits of other people.

I now see both as great tools for communicating and connecting with other people. Twitter is much newer to me so I’m still not sure how to use it to my advantage. It seems like it’s possible to connect with people on Twitter that you probably would never have been able to get in touch with in other ways. Plus you never know who’s reading and opportunities might drop into your lap as a result of your Twitter use.

So I’m jumping on the bandwagon and will updating my Twitter feed thing as much as I can. With a trip to Haiti in the near future, I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to keep the updates at least a little bit interesting so feel free to follow along on Twitter.

Pros

• Nicest people ever - I’ve never met people as nice as the ones I met in Myanmar. Except for the gross man that kept falling asleep on my shoulder on the bus and then wanted my phone number, I didn’t meet a single person I didn’t like.
• Lots of quiet time - There weren’t a lot of other travellers around when I was there and it’s not exactly a place known for crazy nightlife so if there is work you can get done offline then you will certainly have the time to do it.
• Very cheap to live - Myanmar is one of the cheapest places I’ve been to. You can survive on $10 per day if you don’t need to take long (and expensive) train and boat rides. I didn’t manage to pull that off but a friend of mine did, so I know it’s possible.

Cons

• Need to watch what you say - Government spies really are everywhere, according to the people I managed to sneak in conversations with. People are willing and eager to talk to you about all sorts of things but you have to be careful, mainly for their sake, about who might be listening. It sounds paranoid but it seems to be the reality in Myanmar.
• Very few decent internet cafes - There are a few internet cafes scattered around Yangon and Mandalay but I only managed to find one that wasn’t painfully slow that was able to sneak past the tight government controls and even this one was closed every few days because of server issues.
• Internet is monitored - Apparently the government here has ways of reading individual emails, and they do. It’s very creepy. I couldn’t even get proxy servers to work here (not that I know a lot about it though) so it seems like the government have more control than in China.
• No wifi anywhere - I didn’t come across a single wifi connection which wasn’t surprising given the lack of decent internet cafes. I wasn’t really expecting to find any though.
• Terrible food - I really didn’t like the food in Myanmar and was sustaining myself on a diet of apples. Oily curries, fish dishes and a cold soupy type dish were common and I didn’t like any of them. But I’m super picky so it could have just been me.
• People littering - I don’t know if students in Myanmar don’t get a lesson on the environment or what but everyone, young and old, chucks garbage around like crazy. Out of train windows, off the side of boats… plastic bottles, plastic bags… everything. It’s kind of sad to see.
• Difficult to get around - You have to fly into and out of Myanmar which is annoying to start with. Once you get there, travel on the ground is very slow and delays of multiple hours (I sat on a train for 10 extra hours!) are common. There are common tourist routes and buying tickets is easy but getting from place to place is slow going so give youself lots of time.

I ended up cutting my month long trip to Myanmar short by a couple of weeks and managed to miss out on all of the major sights so I will be back for sure at some point. You probably won’t get any work done online but, hey, we all need a vacation from it now and then and Myanmar is a great place to come to escape the net.

Pros

• Cheap to live there - Sure, Beijing, Shanghai and other major cities are probably more expensive than they used to be and they’ll certainly be more expensive than small towns, but it’s still possible to live very cheaply in the big cities. The small towns are even better value for money and if you stick to villages you can live ridiculously cheaply.
• Friendly people - I have heard people say mixed things about their experiences with Chinese people but in my case I had nothing but a great time with them both at the Olympics and in my travels.
• Free wifi is common - Wifi is free in Starbucks and many cafes and restaurants in Beijing and I would assume other large cities as well. I was amazed at how common it was for places to have wifi and I don’t think I came across a single place that charged for it. Plus, guesthouses and hostels that don’t have wifi will often let you use their connected computer for free.
• Tasty food - I loved the food in China despite the occasional mystery meat or serving of 99% fat and bone. There’s a lot to sample and in Beijing there are lots of options if you want Western food. The street food in China that I sampled was always cheap, usually delicious and rarely resulted in emergency trips to the loo.
• Interesting business opportunities - I got the impression that China is a few years behind most of the rest of the world when it comes to the internet. People are still scared to use their creditcards online so, according to a local friend of mine, there aren’t many Chinese language ecommerce sites. I see this as an opportunity to be able to get in early with Chinese language sites if you have the necessery skills because I think its only a matter of time before online shopping becomes as huge in China as it is in the rest of the world.

Cons

• Slow internet connections - Internet use in China is monitored and this means that connections are slow. They’re pretty reliable and I never had problems with them disconnecting but they certainly weren’t fast.
• Blocked websites - The Great Firewall of China made sure that certain sites were off limits. While I was there I had problems viewing Blogger, You Tube and even Feedburner for some bizarre reason. I got around it when I needed to with proxy sites but it’s annoying and even slower than normal when you have to do this.
• Pollution - I didn’t notice it as much when I was travelling in Southern China but in Beijing it’s impossible not to be affected by the pollution. If I spent the day walking around Beijing I would always wake up the next morning with a sore throat. On the worst days, apartment buildings next to my own would be shrouded in smog and seeing a blue sky was a very rare thing.
• Difficult to get around the country - The transportation in China is good with cheap airlines and extensive train and bus networks but DAMN… its just so big. So getting anywhere can be costly and time consuming. I felt a bit stranded in Beijing and it didn’t help having to make visa runs all the way to Hong Kong.
• Visa issues - Speaking of visas… things seem to be business as usual these days now that the Olympics are over but things went haywire during the months leading up to the Games. Its sort of disconcerting knowing that the government can decide one day to make visa changes that could make your life miserable or even force you out of the country completely.
• Language barrier - Chinese is a hard language to learn and, in most cases, I got by just fine with a bit or miming and arm flailing. But because of the language barrier, accomplishing simple tasks can become very time consuming and frustrating. More people spoke English than I expected though and, if all else fails, there are always language students who would be happy to help you out in exchange for some conversation time.

There seem to be a lot of cons on this list but don’t let that scare you off because I loved my time in China. I would head back to Yangshuo to work in a second, although when I was there in July it was a bit too humid for me. I still havel lots of other places to explore and I have no doubt that I’ll be back there again at some point for several months or longer.

TLA aren’t really even contributing much to my monthly earnings these days anyways. They started at about $140 and each month that’s dropped a little at a time. Well this month has seen a huge drop and I’m only likely to earn $60 if I’m lucky. It’s not really the number of links that is dropping, it’s the price paid per link. This probably has a lot to do with my spiraling PR.

So I’ve started to question whether $60 a month is worth having to accept the possible negative things associated with Text Link Ads. We know Google isn’t a fan of link sales and TLA make it pretty easy for the big G to see that you’re selling links. I haven’t been effected in the search engine results at all. My London site and working holiday sites both rank at number one for their search terms which makes things even more confusing.

My London site gets a lot of traffic, it ranks well in the SERPS, ithas loads of original content and I know that it deserves a PR of above zero so I’m going to take Text Links Ads off of that site starting in November and see if there’s any jump in the site’s PR. If there is you can bet I’ll be giving Text Link Ads the heave-ho on all my sites.

I’ll let you know what happens. Come on PR!

I certainly didn’t put those links there. Does anyone have any idea how this could have happened? The only thing I can think of is that I’ve been hacked somehow or that Text Links Ads are doing it. I was given the option ages ago to allow TLA to put links into my old blog posts but I turned them down. I think it’s sneaky and misleads my readers into thinking I’m recommending something I’m not so I told them to stuff that idea.

Ok I’ve just checked… yep. It’s Text Link Ads. Despite me for sure telling them I didn’t want to be a part of this program (I even wrote a post about it) they seem to have added me to it without letting me know. It seems to be easy money and I have $33 lined up as payment which is tempting because the rest of my TLA sites are struggling at the moment. But come on! What’s up with them adding me and not telling me? It’s kind of creepy too that they have the power to go into my blog and change my links. I don’t even think I’ve added any code to my Nerdy Nomad site. How are they pulling this off?

Is anyone else a part of this program? What do you think about letting them pimp out keywords to various sites you probably wouldn’t normally have anything to do with? I’m about to write them a strongly worded email and will let you know what happens.

Pros

• Cheap - If you make an effort you can stay in Thailand for very cheap. Of course if you party all the time (which is tempting in some places) or do a lot of travelling then costs will add up but overall, Thailand is great value for money.
• Easy access to other parts of Asia - Thailand is as central as a place can be when you look at a map of Asia and it’s well connected. You can bus or train it to Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia and budget airlines like Air Asia make going a bit further really cheap and easy.
• Friendly people - In my experience I wouldn’t put Thais in the same category as Filipinos or people from Myanmar for friendliness but they come pretty close. It’s not known as ‘the land of smiles’ for nothing.
• Awesome food - I can’t resist Thai food. I love it. In Thailand, funnily enough, there’s loads of cheap and delicious Thai food to be had.
• Lots to see and do - Thailand seems to have something for everyone from diving to beaches to jungles to elephants to hill tribes etc etc. There always seems to be something fun to distract you if working gets to be too much.
• Cheap internet cafes - There are plenty of internet cafes with great connections that only charge 20 to 30 baht per hour. That’s about 60 to 90 cents and that’s super cheap. So if you like to work in internet cafes then you’ll be able to do it cheaply.

Cons

• Wifi rarely free - I expected Thailand to be well hooked up for wifi and was amazed to find that it was more common in China! When I did find it in hostels or cafes, there was almost always a charge to use it. A hotel I stayed at charged 600 (that’s about $17!) baht per day, Starbucks was 150 per hour, and most cafes were at least 50 baht per hour and often more… even if you bought food and drinks.
• Unreliable wifi - Thailand was the only country I consistently had problems with my wifi connections. If it wasn’t cutting out all the time it wasn’t connecting at all, despite the computer saying that the signal was strong. None of the staff ever seemed to know what was going on and it meant having to move from cafe to cafe in search of a working signal. A couple times in Chang Mai the entire block was having connections issues.
• Very touristy - I’m not a tourist hater type person so I don’t care much if a place I’m in is crowded with expats and travellers but if this bothers you then you might want to think twice about coming to Thailand. The tourist industry here is super developed and main destinations are crawling with backpackers so if you want to escape the crowds you’ll have to do some hunting to find the off the beaten path type places.

I was surprised at how crap wifi in Thailand was both from the having to pay for it angle and the unreliability aspect. Maybe I just never found the good places? I don’t know. If I could get a list of guesthouses and cafes with fast and free net connections then I would be back to check them out because I really did enjoy my time in Thailand.

Besides Beijing and Bangaldesh, I didn’t spend longer than a week in any one place which is kind of surprising given my love of lazing around and taking things slow. I came across a couple of places I could have seen myself staying a long time in but it just never worked out that way. So here is my shockingly small list of places in Asia I could definitely live in for much longer than a week.

Yangshuo, China

This place is a total tourist town but it’s beautiful and has a lot going for it including a large population of expats, lots of bars and restaurants, plenty of countryside to expore, and good internet connections (for China). It’s also relatively (again, for China) close to hong Kong for making any visa runs. Plus if the internet earnings start to take a dive or if I wanted to save a bit more money, there are lots of opportunities here for English teaching. You can even volunteer to chat with students for a couple hours four nights and week in exchange for food and accommodation if you want to cut your costs.

Pai, Thailand

This is aother touristy place but I loved it. Like Yangshuo, there is a lot to keep you busy in the areas around town and some really good live music at the bars. There are loads of restaurants and bars around town and a few expats around too. Lots of the Thai people in Pai seemed to be from somewhere else and they’re pretty friendly so if you make an effort it would robaby be possible to end u with a nice group of Thai friends. Especially if you play an instrument or like reggae. Most of the restaurants and hotels have wifi (sometimes free, sometimes not) that is pretty fast and there seemed to be a few signs offering up houses for rent but Im not sure of the prices. Chang Mai is about 3 hours by bus and Myanmar and Laos are nearby too for any visa runs. I got loads of work down here sitting on the balcony of my bamboo hut watching the river flow by.

Manila, Philippines

This one is probably a bit of a shock for most people but I had a great time in Manila. But it was less about the city and more about the people I met there and where I was staying. I made friends with the guy who runs Friendly’s Guesthouse and had a group of people to hang out with at night (and play poker). Manila is a great example of how the place you are might not matter as much as the people who are there with you. I could have stayed there for a lot longer than I did. Fast net connection, great working area on the hostel’s roof top, nice people to keep me company and have a beer with and, though the city isnt really known for being that nice a place, I started to warm to it in the end.