Canadians who just show up in Thailand are usually given a 30 day tourist visa without any hassles, or so I’m told. But given how I’m heading there for two months, I require a visa that is valid for a longer than normal duration. Generally people in my scenario can simply do a visa run, where basically you exit the country and return a short while later. In Buenos Aires most people would simply head over to Uruguay for the day and obtain a new 90 day visa upon return. But truthfully, I didn’t really want to have to worry about that while in Thailand, so I decided to get it all done beforehand. ...

I have less than a month to go before I return everything to my storage locker and hit the open skies again. Last time I departed I headed south and ended up in Argentina. This time I’m flying west and hitting a little island off the coast of Thailand called Ko Samui One of the aspects discussed in the book Vagabonding that seemed was relavant to me this summer was the concept of reintegration. The author claims in the book that after an extended trip it becomes difficult to find a way to fit yourself back into your old life. That was definitely the case for me this time around, and lately I’ve ...

I wrote a post recently about my travel metrics from the last six months. One of the observations I made was that I had spent roughly $500 a month on average for airfare. Given that I gave my apartment up in British Columbia prior to leaving, airfare is one of my only extra expenses I have when I travel. Taken together with a $90 a month storage locker and roughly $50 a month in travel insurance, that’s a rough cost of $650 a month that is in excess of what I would normally spend back in North America. If you do the math, a person will realize that they can actually make money traveling the world, ...

I’ve been going through some old photos recently, and was reminded of a trip I took a few years ago to Japan. I spent nine days there and thought I would give a little overview of the trip and would I ultimately thought of Tokyo Travel From Vancouver At the time the flight to Tokyo was the longest I had ever experienced. From Vancouver it’s approximately a ten hour flight over the Pacific Ocean. I remember how weird it was looking out of the plane on the way back and realizing I was over Vancouver Island – prior to that trip, I had always flown in the other direction, which meant a return a flight ...

I’ve been working on revamping this website for about six weeks now. I’ve actually never really had a proper logo or header on any of my personal sites, and used to simply creatively use a few fonts to achieve some kind of clickable header. It was a bit ghetto, but it worked. Given that I enjoy travelling and writing about my experiences, I decided over a month ago that I needed to make this site a bit more professional and also focus the content a bit better. If you’ve been following along, you’ve noticed incremental updates over the past few weeks. The logo was commissioned about six months ...

I’ve been a pretty loyal user of Apple’s Macbook Pro line for the last few years. I purchased my first one after Northern Voice in 2007, mostly because the laptop that I recently had Vista installed on failed to work for me during a presentation. Since then I’ve probably been through three or four of them, often upgrading every year or so to keep up with technology. The first few were the 15″ model, and the last Macbook Pro I purchased was a 13″ model. Macbook Air While the Macbook Pro is a great computer, the Macbook Air has always intrigued me. Most of my uber techie friends have one, and I’ve ...

I’ve been striving hard to reduce the amount of online “noise” in my life lately. Without setting any quantitative goals, I’ve been working relentlessly on removing distractions and trying to minimize interruptions. Normally when I wake up I have around 50 messages waiting for me in my inbox. Many of them are automated – comment notifications from WordPress, Google+ messages, Facebook, etc, but they are still things I need to deal with, even if it’s just to identify that they belong in the trash. Every email I receive and have to deal with probably notches my background stress level up slightly ...

If there is one person in particular who has inspired my travels to date, it would be Scott Hadfield. Scott discovered he had the ability to work remotely years ago, and left to go explore the world while still working for a North American company. He would show up in Vancouver from time to time, but mostly he was working remotely in Buenos Aires or South Africa. I was recently planning a trip to New Zealand for the fall when Scott and his wife Samantha informed me they were going to be having a three month party in Thailand. A party? Without me? Not gonna happen. So I bought a flight and will ...

One of the hardest parts about traveling with technology is lugging all of your gear around with you. Once you arrive at a destination and rent an apartment, you can store some items and only carry along a few things at a time. But when you’re in the process of traveling to or from a destination, you have to have all your items on your person for a period of time. I’m actually using the MEC Pangea 40 litre backpack as my main travel bag. For small trips I only bring the backpack with me, but for my major travel between destinations that I plan to live at for more than a week, I store everything ...

Given that I’m about to head out on my second round of travel this year, I thought it might be fun to tally a few metric from my travels so far. First, some quantitative metrics: Flight Segments: 15 Flight Distance: 51,908 (kilometers) Total Flight Costs: $4,240 Total Cost / 100 km: $8.17 Countries Visited: Six Next, some qualitative ones from this segment: Favourite Experience: Visiting a penguin rookery in Ushuaia, Argentina Favourite Restaurant: Lupita, Las Cañitas, Buenos Aires, La Cabrera is a close second Best Photography: Iguazu Falls, on the border of Brazil and Argentina Notable Drinking ...

Prior to leaving on my first travel adventure, there were a few key people that helped inspire me to leave my North American life behind. One such person is a good Vancouver friend of mine, Robert Scales. Here’s Robert’s latest BIO: PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer with a passion for management, teaching, underwater photography, and digital media. I’m currently working in Bali, I am the General Manager and a Master Scuba Diver Trainer at Dive Concepts. I’m a former digital media executive. As founder & CEO of Raincity Studios, I spent the last decade working with emerging media and web technologies. ...

I’m scheduling this post for when I’m out tomorrow for a while, so it’s possible the US may find some common ground on the current US debt negotiations. I don’t it though. Right now things aren’t looking very good for the United States, and the time is almost out where a solution can be reached and implemented before the debt ceiling expires. Negotiations continue to stall, and both sides seem unwilling to deal with some of the harder issues, like coming up with a long term financial strategy that will reduce the deficit and the debt. I actually thought there was only about a 10% chance that the ...

I recently returned from a one week impromptu trip to Oahu, Hawaii, and wanted to share my final thoughts. The flight time from Vancouver was around six hours, so it was still a relatively short jaunt. Not as short as flying to the west coast of Mexico mind you, but about the same amount of time as flying to Cancun or the Dominican Republic. The Island During the Lost Legends tour we drove over the entire island in the course of a day. I’d say it takes less than an hour to criss cross the island in any direction, so Oahu is fairly tiny. The eastern side is called the Windward side of the island, ...

I don’t like to fly. In fact, I would say that I pretty much hate it. First, airports involve delays. You generally have to wait in line to check-in or check bags. Then you have to wait to go through security. Then you have to wait in the waiting area to board you plane. Then you board, and have to wait inside. Ideally your plane will leave on time, but often it doesn’t, and you’re stuck waiting on the plane. Next, you’re cramped into a small space, usually sitting next to one or two other people who probably don’t really want to be on a plane either. If you’re lucky, they smell nice. If you’re ...

Like most people in North America over the previous six or so years, I was a pretty big fan of the TV Show, Lost. While the ending caused a lot of controversy, I watched the show pretty religiously over the last few years, and still even occasionally fire up an episode or so on my iPad. One of the reasons I was drawn to Oahu, Hawaii, was because I was a fan of the beautiful geography that was featured in Lost. In case you weren’t aware, almost 100% of the show was filmed here. Hawaiian Escapades Tour I did a quick Google search for Lost tours on Oahu, and found a few different operators that offered ...

This is the first post in an ongoing series where I’ll be featuring a few of the travellers I’ve encountered on the road or whose web sites I’ve frequented during my travels. First up is Alexandra Kovacova, also known as the CrazySexyFunTraveler. I’ve chatted with Alex a few times on Twitter about travel, and asked her a few questions which she graciously answered for this post: First, what’s your name and where are you originally from? My name is Alexandra Kov·Ëov· and I was born in a small Slovak town Snina. People at home call me Saöka, but abroad I’m known just as Alex. Where are you now, ...

Alaska Airlines recent announced that they were starting service from Bellingham International Airport to Honolulu, Hawaii. Last week I managed to find a cheap $400 return flight on that same route, so I decided to book it and finally get around to seeing Hawaii. I’ve looked at going to Hawaii before, but the costs have always been rather high when compared to Mexico. Hawaii is an American state, so not only does it have American prices which are in line with the rest of North America, but it also has a hefty surcharge for being somewhere warm and beautiful. That said, at $400 return my flight ...

When many people think of traveling, their thoughts often gravitate towards all inclusive trips, usually containing a beach, a buffet, and a week escape from the daily grind. In North America especially, those pre-packaged vacations are generally the only options for people to take, since their vacations are often only a week or two long in duration. But world travel isn’t just about the places you go; it’s also about the physical and personal journeys that it takes to get there and the growth that often occurs along the way. It involves mishaps, missteps, and a natural learning process that ...

We live in interesting times. The United States is only a few weeks away from what potentially could be one of the largest defaults in world history. Given how the Republicans do not want to increase taxes and that the Democrats do not want to decrease spending, the only machinery that can prevent this default is currently seized up. Obama was so upset the other day during negotiations that he just up and left. Moodys once again threatened to lower the outlook on US treasuries. Given that the US is on the verge of a default, they are a little late to the game, but even so it’s also a rather historic ...

Inside my suitcase upstairs is a huge manilla envelope that has the majority of receipts in it for my trip to South America. Since some of them represent expenses that I can write-off on the business side, it was important to keep them for Revenue Canada in the odd event of an audit down the road. Unfortunately for me though, it meant that I had to collect all my receipts while traveling around the world. It’s one thing when you have an apartment in Canada and everything can be sorted into file folders once a week or so, but when you’re traveling with a backpack and trying not to accumulate anything ...