@patrick

tl;dr: introduce yourself in this thread.

We must all get sick of the same backpacker travel questions when we meet new friends, I know I do.

You know the ones - where are you from, where’ve you been, where are you going, what do you do, how long have you been doing it - etc.

The novelty of answering these questions wears off after maybe a week, but they’re nonetheless insightful and no matter how much we hate them, we find ourselves asking others.

So let’s bring the dreaded backpacker questionnaire to NomadForum and introduce ourselves shall we?

**

• what’s your name?
• where are you from?
• how long have you been away from home?
• what do you do?
• where are you currently?
• where are you going?
• what has been memorable for you so far?
• will you go home anytime soon?
• what have you learnt during your time as a nomad?
• [insert your own question here]

**

No need to answer them all if you don’t want to
But the more you share… The merrier!

There’s been a lot of discussion on this recently.

Nomads usually stay in hostels, hotels and short-term apartments. But it’s all not very optimal.

I’ve heard people suggest getting funding and building a network of houses you can stay at for a subscription price (e.g. Bruno Haid is working on that).

I don’t want do physical stuff, so I’m thinking of building a platform around making housing better for nomads.

What are the housing problems nomads face? And how can we solve them with products/services?

The last few years I’ve spent mostly in Asia (Thailand/Indonesia) and Europe (Spain/Italy), but I run a company in the US and need to coordinate with 10 US based employees and business partners. The time zone issues between EU/US and SEA/US are exhausting even if I love the locales.

I’d really like to try romping around the Americas for a while, but I’ve never been south of Baja California and really can’t find much positive having been said about remotely working from CA/SA as a DN.

I know some hippy, surfer, artist, musician, yoga teacher types calling various locals home, but no one making a living online… more than a few people have told me it’s fabulous down there until you go to Thailand/Bali and then you wonder why all those ExPats are suffering in CA/SA. Of course you only really know when you go yourself.

I’d love to see nomadlist.io get filled out with more details on Central and South American cities. It seems really sparse coverage at the moment, but maybe that’s simply because it’s not good and no one stays there for long.

Just interested to see a quick rundown of everyone’s next stop. Where will you be going next and when?

Does anyone have recommendations to handle physical mail? In the USA, I’ve noticed various services over the years where you get a physical address that you can change your address to, they receive your mail, scan stuff and send you PDF’s.

Has anyone used these types of services? Impressions?

Hey guys!

I’m new around here and thought I’d ask a question I’ve been wondering for a while now. I’m set to sample the nomadic lifestyle soon and I’m currently trying to define what my skillset is, and what I’m going to do long term.

I’m sure many of you have been through this, but it’s difficult knowing what you’re good at! I’m not a developer and I know there must be so many of you that aren’t working in technical roles. So I was just curious, for those of you that aren’t developers (or even those of you that are with an additional side-hussle) what do you do to earn money on the road?

I’ve found that listening to certain types of music actually improve my productivity when I work on my website. When I’m trading though I require absolute silence.

This is one of my favourite mix:

Do you also listen to music while working?

Hi,

as I’m looking into buying a new laptop/tablet, I’m wondering what everybody is using here for work and why?

Mentioning your profession or business, location, travel activities or anything related to this will be appreciated.

Thanks,
Robert

Nomad List has passed 200,000 monthly users this month, after being launched just a few months ago.

Since the launch I’ve worked hard to make the site better. But apart from improving the list itself, I’ve expanded by organizing meetups for nomads everywhere, launching a chat group, a forum w/ AMA with remote startups, a job board with remote jobs , and a blog with interviews with famous nomads.

I have a few more plans written down, but I’m mostly interested in your ideas where I should steer this ship, and also any feedback on what I’ve been doing right, and more interestingly: wrong.

Anyone here has an opinion on having children, while living a nomadic life?

Me and my GF have been living on the road for 2 years now. Our businesses are mostly established and we are considering having kids within the next 2 years. The questions that come to my mind:

• Can you optimize raising children like a web startup (picking a good location, school, doing a bit of home schooling, choosing languages, etc)
• Is anyone doing this right now? What are your experiences?
• Where are good places to live with children? I guess we would rent a house with garden and hire a local nanny/household helper.
• Do you think it’s an advantage for kids to grow up internationally with both parents being around more than usually?

Let me know what you think. I know Graham Brown is doing it with his Japanese wife. Sadly he doesn’t write too much about family matters. Then there is also a family blog, I only recently discovered, but didn’t get a chance to read yet.

Have to set up a skype call and always wonder which is the best tool to check the time difference?
I have been on a site where the interface was nicely designed on a world map. Anyone know which one that is?

There is a constant flood of new apps for perpetual travellers and digital nomads. However over the years, only a handful have become apps that I habitually use and actually benefit my lifestyle.

Which apps are most essential to your daily lifestyle as a digital nomad?

• Toshl - Personal Finance App for iOS and Android

“Men lie, women lie, numbers don’t”. My spending easily gets out of hand. Being able to track and monitor everything I spend helps me realise when I need to reel it in. Living / travelling in a foreign country where we’re alien to the local currency makes it easy to treat cash like Monopoly money.

Over two years I have become seriously anal about using Toshl. I log every single 1baht expenditure.

With Toshl, you input each expenditure (in local currency) and the app will show your total spend each day in a home/familiar currency. I display my expenditure in USD because I earn in dollars.

I would recommend Toshl to every traveller as it enables uniform logging of your expenses and helps easily monitor a budget when you’re spending in multiple foreign currencies. It does take a good month of daily use to develop the habit of using Toshl, but do try!

• Beanhunter - Locate the best nearby coffee shops

Hello my name is Adam and I’m a shameless caffeine addict.

When you rock up in a new city, you need somewhere to work from that serves good java. Beanhunter users rate and review local coffee shops. When you open the app in a new city, it’ll geolocate you and provide a list of local rated cafés. This app has served me well on all my trips, but it isn’t very popular outside of big SEA cities yet - it’s mainly an Ozzy / American thing.

It’s worth downloading even if you’re not a raging coffee fiend. Beanhunter is free to use. If you only use it once every blue moon, finding a highly rated local cafe hidden in a back alley is 100x better than sitting in yet another Starbucks.

• Slack - Team communication, chat

I’m sure you’re all familiar with Slack. if you’re not it’s the same platform that NomadChat runs on.

Slack is a relatively new addition to my iDevices. I originally had Skype, which I quickly uninstalled as it was buggy, slow and delayed message sending and receiving.

Slack on the other hand goes balls deep at providing a rock solid chat platform. It works seamlessly across all devices.

We also use Zapier to integrate Basecamp and Helpscout into Slack. Even when staff aren’t chatting we can see one another’s key tasks being completed.

Slack can be used 100% free, too. If you’re still using Skype, stop. Seriously.

• Converter+ - Quickly convert metrics, particularly currency

Converter+ has been in my pocket since I left home. The app quickly and easily allows you to convert length, weight, volume, currency and more.

I use it primarily for currency. The currency rates update each time you open the app (internet required) and you can select your favourite currencies to be displayed each time. If I enter something in baht, it’ll show me the conversion in GBP, USD, PHP, and a bunch of others.

Here’s a quick screenshot.

• Other worthy mentions:

• Basecamp - not the easiest to use on iPhone, but when you simply need to jot down a to-do on an open project it’s ok
• AirAsia App - At least in and around Thailand AirAsia have a big presence. I’ve never booked a ticket via the app but I do quickly search for flights.
• Paypal - Occasionally the need to see recent sales pops up (often CS related). Other than the occasional convenience I’ve no need for the app personally.
• Vivino - Unrelated to travel but… Vivino is a wine community app (similar to Beanhunter). Wine in SEA, particularly Thailand, is overpriced and often not very good. When you’re out with friends or on a date, snap a picture of the wine list with the Vivino app and Vivino will point out which wines are best. You look like a boss ordering a great bottle at a good price.