This post is a sibling to the post “I have become more experienced”.
I will show you how to walk the physical path differently from a new perspective.
Before that, I will write about the everyday issues that arise during the traveling lifestyle.
This information may come in handy.
Especially if you happen to be a digital nomad.
Decisions, decisions!
When it comes to the digital nomad lifestyle, the word “freedom” is the one that comes up most often in the reflections I receive.
This kind of life has truly brought me freedom.
But freedom – like everything else – is not just black and white.
While writing this sentence, I realized that the expression I often use carries exactly the same meaning. I usually say that everything has a price.
This topic has been discussed several times with fellow travelers – with whom we share our time, energy, and the experience of being on the road for a shorter or longer period of time.
After a while, most people feel tired. I can’t speak for myself (yet) because I don’t feel it (yet).
These conversations are primarily not about physical fatigue, but rather a kind of mental exhaustion. And it appears especially in those who have been on the road for a long time (many months, many years).
On this road, there are a lot of decisions to be made. That in itself is perhaps not more burdensome than usual, since even in so-called “traditional” life situations, we make a lot of daily, medium- and short-term decisions.
What makes the decisions of those on the road have a different weight, in my opinion, is that here essential issues have to be resolved on a daily basis.
Where will I sleep today?
Where will I sleep tomorrow? If I want to go, I have to pack, move, agree on the next place to stay, unpack, and only then can I pack. If I don’t want to go, I have to extend my current accommodation.
So a person has no permanent home. There is no such thing as not having to decide on the question, because the origin is missing. I definitely have to decide where to go next.
If I miss the answer even once, whether I will extend my stay in a given place or move on, the end will be that I will be evicted from that place and have to sleep on the street.
And the question of where I will sleep today is not only about deciding on accommodation. Often, you have to make a decision about where to go next. Then, most of us have to decide which country to go to when we travel, because visas only allow a limited stay everywhere.
Accommodation, city, country.
Either one can be constant during the journey, but then the journey slows down or stops. In this sense, looking at the process of travel, a constant amount of work to be done is the price of the existence of free will and free decision-making.
Where and what do I eat?
In the places I’ve seen so far, the question has never been whether there’s anything to eat or drink. It’s not always guaranteed that the quality of the food is always good, or whether what I want to eat at that moment is available. It’s more of an interesting question of what price they offer it for. In many cases, you can draw a very nice map of which street the tourists go to. Up there, the prices are higher, and from there, the prices are local.
But for example, the quality of the place is not guaranteed either. Here too, there are average quality restaurants, but more often there are below average ones. I don’t write this as a judgment or with bad intentions. But I’ve had an experience where, when I got to the back of a nicely decorated, average-looking restaurant that opened onto the street, the stench greeted me. I decided then and there that if they could serve fried rice, I’d eat there, but I’d feel like I was sitting in a toilet the whole time.
I don’t know how I felt in the end. I was glad there was no fried rice, so I didn’t eat there. Or maybe I was sad that I missed out on that experience.
On this trip, there are rarely any kitchens. Even more rarely, there are refrigerators. So we are quite often left with questions like where is the nearest shop? What is available there? Where is the nearest restaurant with a good price? If I buy something, where do I put it in my room?
The last question might make you smile. But in reality, it’s not always fun, or it takes a lot of imagination to make it fun. For example, if the area is full of insects, it doesn’t matter whether they have access to the food hidden in my bag or not. In Pai, the rat that visited my room gnawed at two of my soaps. In the jungle, everything that was edible had to be put in a big box, even though we slept 32 meters above the ground.
I don’t think I need to write about the lack of a refrigerator as a source of problems.
And when I wrote that it’s also a question of what’s available in the store, I wasn’t talking about being picky. But I was talking about the fact that the offer of the stores is very limited. A 7-11, for example, is considered a good store here too. But there are hardly any fruits and vegetables. What is there is expensive. There are a lot of preserved and fast food, chips and sweets available, but there is not really any fresh food.
Then there are the rows of street shops. Lots of small garages, with the same offer. Sugary drinks, preserved foods, beer, cigarettes. Everything you need for everyday fast life.
For these reasons, research work is usually preceded by finding a place that sells fruit, for example.
So perhaps it’s understandable why I say that the question of where and what to eat also requires continuous decision-making.
What should I do with my time?
The question may sound strange, but in this environment – at least for me – it is a very serious question.
Excellent company of people. Entertainment opportunities. Beautiful nature around the settlements. Dozens of organized activities in the more frequented places. The possibility of finding your own way everywhere. Exciting streets, new shops. Daytime hustle and bustle, or discovering the nightlife.
Constant movement creates constant temptation.
If I am only in each place for 1-2 weeks, then there are so many attractions around me that I have to spent every(!) time f mine to see everything.
Then I can go to the next place for 1-2 weeks, and there is still a lot waiting for me there.
But I work as a digital nomad. So my time is severely limited.
Most people on the road I have met travel on a small or even smaller budget. I include myself. So my financial possibilities must also be taken into account in every decision.
Nevertheless, I also have to decide – almost – on a daily basis what my next program is. It almost doesn’t matter here that instead of working tomorrow I go on a boat trip and instead of tomorrow I work on Saturday.
But I still have to make the decision, and I do it quickly and often. Moreover, the majority of decisions are cancellations, because I have to decide which of the many options I won’t use.
There is no reason to regret!
Before anyone starts regretting! The conclusion of this “many decisions, many energies” cycle of thought is not how difficult my fate is, how much a person on the road suffers.
I just wanted to show that as a person on the road, I have to work for my freedom.
Everything has a price.
What an interesting paradox this has become. I achieve freedom by constantly working for it. LOL.
Random destination selection
There are certainly many ways to determine our own direction.
Several of these seem very exciting to me and I would definitely like to try them in the future.
One is the bottle spinning method. All you need is an intersection, a flat surface and an empty bottle. The bottle that is spun will definitely stop at some point and show you the direction.
As an IT professional, I can also imagine using a random number generator to determine the direction, another shot to determine the distance within, say, 700 km, and then asking the AI to tell me where to go with these two parameters.
I don’t think I was surprised. When I wrote the previous lines, I immediately performed this experiment.
Northwest, 583 km. Within moments, it turned out that using this method, my next destination would be Mosha Town (Moshazhen), China.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. It’s really about 583 km as the crow flies. But it’s 1,100 km by road. There are even closer settlements in China, so I probably won’t be playing this game right away.
I have two weeks to decide.
Then there’s another method – one that resonates very strongly with me.
I simply give my phone to a stranger on the street. I ask them to mark a point on the open map. And I go and live where they point. Of course, I adjust the map zoom according to how much money I have in my wallet. LOL.
I love synchronicities like the ones that happen when I’m writing this post.
I was looking through my AI music playlist to see what song I should listen to next. I stumbled upon Madonna’s hit La Isla Bonita. I also know exactly because I heard it when entering and leaving Cat Ba National Park. This beautiful song found me in a special mood at that time.
So I started it.
I have known this song for almost 40 years. It enchanted me even when I didn’t understand a word of what Madonna was singing about. I have understood it for many years now.
Listening to the lyrics, of course these lines started echoing in my head:
Last night I dreamt of San Pedro
Just like I’d never gone, I knew the song
A young girl with eyes like the desert
It all seems like yesterday, not far away
Tropical the island breeze
All of nature wild and free
This is where I long to be
La isla bonita
These lines flooded my soul with waves of pleasure.
These waves had their time now. I am a week away from my beautiful island. And almost 40 years away from that young guy who didn’t understand, just felt this song.
Today – in these moments – I understand and feel it. After 40 years, this song has found its rightful place in me, where its rightful place has always been.
La Isla Bonita.
I have arrived.
This could be one of the ways I choose a direction. A song. An old feeling that is being reshaped by my current life and life experiences.
As I quietly observe myself now, the songs come one after another: Paradise City, Wherever I May Roam, Northwest Passage, Far Beyond The Sun, A Passage to Bangkok…
I love synchronicities like the ones that happen when I write this post. Or have I already mentioned that?
I haven’t even written a word about what I was planning to write this post about.
I wanted to get back to the original topic, but I started listening to Rush’s song: A Passage to Bangkok. And I saw in the description that “”A Passage to Bangkok” is the second song on Rush’s album 2112, released in 1976.”
I had a hunch and asked the AI: On what dates was this album released in different parts of the world?
The answer is: “March 10, 1976 – several fan and archival sources consider this to be the Canadian release date.”
Three days before I was born.
How do I do it?
Returning to the present and leaving the random choice to the mercy of the future for now, I will tell you how I have chosen so far. And what opportunities I am counting on now, in the search for a new destination.
I wrote about choosing Thailand and Koh Samui at the time. Asia called me. Within that, Thailand seemed like an exciting starting point. I wanted to give it time to decide that it should really be Thailand, but I quickly felt that this was an intuitive choice, so it was not worth thinking too much about whether it should be the first or not.
And Koh Samui appeared as a destination by selecting from the names of the better-known settlements those that are on the coast or on an island. In the end, for practical reasons – quickly – I decided where my new journey would begin.
From there, Indonesia, Thailand again, Laos, Vietnam followed based on recommendations and practical choices.
When it was clear after Wat Pa Tam Wua that Laos would be next, I started moving within the country in a way that would get me closer to the border. I had already covered a fairly easy-to-follow route from west to east within Laos.
Here, in Vietnam, I started the kind of journey where I started to put less and less emphasis on where I was going, because any place would be suitable.
But up until now, all my decisions had started with determining the next place. From then on, the only question was how to travel. In most cases, I didn’t have much choice. Train, bus, sometimes plane were the possible options. But typically only one option was always available.
However, this often means time-consuming movement in this part of the world. 20+ hour bus trips are neither comfortable – and I have to admit – nor fun.
On the advice of a friend, I thought about another method for choosing a destination.
It’s clear that I’m currently a slow traveler. My goal is not to list a dozen or two towns on my map. I do not intend to see every available attraction that is available around me.
My focus is more on feeling good where I am. It is not a problem if the list of attractions is exhausted after a visit or two. In fact, it is not a problem if there is nothing to see at all.
I have emphasized several times that the place is unimportant. The journey is endless, time does not burden me.
So I really have the freedom to go where I want, or even to places that I do not even know exist.
This, in turn, creates an opportunity to reverse the order of my search.
From now on, I will use the method of seeing where I can travel cheaply from where I currently live – or from near it. So, first, I will look for the cheapest trip. And that will determine the destination.
It is as simple as that.
This way I can keep track of certain directions, and that’s more than enough.
For example, right now my only direction is to be in Singapore in mid-August.
Until then, I’ll travel freely and easily from city to city, and to at least one other country.
Honestly, I can’t wait to spend the next few days figuring out where I’m going from this wonderful place I’m in.
In the next post, I’ll introduce this place, and maybe I’ll be able to mention where I’m going and how I found this place.
Buy me a coffee?
If you enjoyed this story, you can buy me a coffee. You don’t have to – but it means a lot and I always turn it into a new adventure.
Buy a coffee for Steve
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