wordmonkey's travels on Nomad List

Near people All people

—

21 Sep '16

3mo

6 Dec '16

6 Dec '16
21 Sep '16

Japan

9 Aug '16

1mo

20 Sep '16

20 Sep '16
9 Aug '16

Beirut

30°C

Lebanon

20 Jul '16

27 Jul '16

27 Jul '16
20 Jul '16

Jamaica

🗯 Forum topics

👍

358

👎

How is the internet in West/Central Africa?

by @wordmonkey | 4yr 4 years ago | 6 comments

So… common sense says that the best places to work are those with good, fast, stable WiFi connections. At the same time, the thing I like best about my location independence is the ability to spend long stretches of time in places I wouldn’t normally get to spend much time in. So I’m determined to make West and Central Africa happen in 2017, specifically Benin, Togo, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Rwanda and Congo-Brazzaville. (And a month off in the DRC, but the latter will just be an offline holiday.)

If anyone has any experience with the reliability of the Internet in the region and the availability of data SIM cards in any of the countries I’ve mentioned, I’d be super grateful about insights, tipps and heads-ups, AirBnB recommendations, et cetera. I know it’s not going to be a fast, luxurious, spotless connection for most of the time, and that’s fine, I just need it to be mostly reliable, speed is secondary.

Thanks

👍

358

👎

👍

245

👎

Best places to live in Madagascar

in Madagascar by @wordmonkey | 4yr 4 years ago | 2 comments

I’ve been toying with the thought of spending a month or three in Madagascar next year, but the capital doesn’t seem excessively appealing. Any recommendations for nice places to stay? (Ideally reasonably large – large enough to be represented on AirBnB, at least --, but pleasant.)

(If anyone else is planning to head that way sometime after February 2017, get in touch too! )

👍

245

👎

👍

300

👎

Has anyone tried Spotahome?

by @wordmonkey | 4yr 4 years ago | 0 comments

Heya,

I’m looking into renting a flat in Istanbul for the somewhat longer term (between half a year and a whole year) from next spring, and I’ve come across spotahome.com, which seems to have quite a range of promising properties available in a number of cities, including Istanbul. The concept appears to be similar to Airbnb, with the exception that the site staff act as agents between you and the landlord to set up the initial arrangement; afterwards, everything is handled directly with the owner of the property. It also appears a bit more geared towards longer-term rentals compared to Airbnb. Has anyone used this site before? (I’ve run a search with only one result, so I assume the page is either fairly new or not very successful…)

Cheers
Sylvie

👍

300

👎

🗯 Forum replies

👍

102k

👎

Introduce yourself — who are you, where are you and what do you do?

by @coffeeshopceo | 2mo 1 month ago | 672 comments

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!

👍

102k

👎

👍

678

👎

How do you find a travel partner?

by @shefali | 4yr 3 years ago | 11 comments

I am nomad from past 1 year and i always find very difficult to find travel buddy. Local people i meet have jobs and are free on weekends only. How you guys find travel buddy or how you meet local people?

👍

678

👎

👍

119

👎

Share your itinerary — where are you headed next?

by @karene | 2yr 2 years ago | 125 comments

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

👍

119

👎

👍

225

👎

How do you avoid getting charged large fees by your bank when withdrawing overseas?

by @creative_nomad_ | 3yr 3 years ago | 14 comments

Hi All,

My question is about banking when it comes to being overseas/working etc. How do you avoid getting charged large fees by your bank when withdrawing overseas?

I’m originally from Australia and do my banking still in Australia. I live in the UK and most recently was living in Vietnam where I found I had to withdrawl money just to get charged very large amounts from my Aussie bank.

How do you get around this? What can you recommend.

Thanks

👍

225

👎

👍

👎

Can you name some destinations where hardly anyone smokes?

by @ani_goes_tweet | 3yr 3 years ago | 24 comments

I’m dying to spend some time in a beautiful place (especially a place with mountains and a good climate) where it’s possible to enjoy the outdoor cafe culture without breathing in lots of secondhand smoke! There must be some places that are kinder to non-smokers than others.

Any suggestions?

(Bhutan is no good… its daily tourist visa is way out of my reach!)

👍

👎

👍

👎

Any digital agency owners living the nomad lifestyle?

by @nicolas | 3yr 3 years ago | 9 comments

I’d like to get into conversations with other agency owners with employees, or even create a mastermind group and share experiences around questions like:

how you manage teams remotely
how you keep them motivated without daily face-to-face discussions
how you find and work with customers remotely
whether your goal is growth and exit or just lifestyle entrepreneurship
etc.

Anyone interested? Thanks!

👍

👎

👍

249

👎

Data sims for Jamaica and Bahamas?

in Jamaica by @joncottonuk | 4yr 3 years ago | 8 comments

Hi all

Looking to spend a couple of weeks in Jamaica and the Bahamas - Can anyone recommend the best value data sims for either or both countries. Not bothered about calls as will be using Skype.

Thanks - Jon

👍

249

👎

👍

229

👎

Any nomads up for skiing and a co-living experiment in Canada?

in Canada by @vladepap | 4yr 4 years ago | 31 comments

Hi guys,
I’ve been traveling for awhile now and lately I’ve been dreaming of heading back to Canada for the 2016/17 winter season (Dec-Mar?). Namely of spending a ski season in Nelson, BC, a mountain town I lived in a few years ago.

Nelson, BC is known for the most amazing powder. The small resort at Whitewater is very accessible (about 20 minutes outside of town) and in close proximity to slack and backcountry skiing. Nelson is also located near the Powder Highway and is accessible to a lot of other well known powder spots.

Have you ever dreamed of being a “ski bum” for a season? Of skiing in the morning and working in the afternoon? Of attempting a co living experiment with other working, professional type nomads who share your passion and lifestyle?

What I know about co living I have learned from research around co working and it seems like the next logical step (to me). Have you heard of 20Mission in San Francisco? Or one of the other co living proposals in this forum? The experiment part is to see who would commit and what amazing projects and ideas might come out of such a space. In my experience, when I travel, there is something missing out of the places I stay. Either I get lonely or distracted by holiday makers and other travellers. I sometimes struggle to find a work space where I feel productive as well as engaged and would like to explore this as a solution. Work AND ski everyday? Be creative and productive where I live? Sounds pretty close to living the dream to me.

Some extras about Nelson:
Think white winter. Silence, snow covered trees and streets. Fireplace.
There are hot springs close by.
This is no ordinary small town, there’s a very diverse population.
This town is an organic, clean living mecca, or the opposite if that’s what you seek.
There are many opportunities to engage in the community, be it volunteering, participating in clubs or groups.

Thinking about it, I would put down three requirements;
Desire to ski
Working nomad
Long(ish) term stay (eg: a month?)

The idea is to rent a house with a group of committed individuals and see what happens. Will a type of community be fostered and emerge? How can we co-create it?

If I have piqued your interested and you want to join me, learn more or keep in touch, let me know. This post is meant to give me an idea of whether there is any interest in this idea.

👍

229

👎

👍

👎

What would you pay for coworking + living space in Calcutta, India?

in India by @dave_chakrabarti | 4yr 4 years ago | 5 comments

I’m building a longer-term base in Calcutta, India, and was wondering what digital nomads would think of renting a room here, or what they’d consider a fair rent.

Quick overview:

Newly renovated, ground floor, in a nice residential neighborhood (Salt Lake), a ten minute walk to the City Center mall. Restaurants, pharmacies, public transportation, etc are all within a five minute walk.

Jacuzzi tub in the bathroom, fancy shower stall, nice patio with hammocks and bean bags. AC in the study and bedrooms.

The study has high speed internet access with redundant internet lines (the main line is an actual physical DSL connection, not cellular, extremely reliable, goes down for a few hours maybe once every three years), extra network storage if you need to backup or dump large files, and there are a couple of raspberry pis around if you’re a techie and want to make something while you’re bored.

New paint, new tiles, new electrical wiring, granite bookshelves; the entire apartment was rebuilt (everything from the floor tiles up) this month.

The downside, of course, is that Calcutta is very far off the digital nomad path Assuming anyone’s interested in seeing this side of the country, what would a reasonable rent be for someone sharing the apartment with me in a private bedroom? I suspect I could make the place work at $250/month.

What else would you like included or available as an option? Food (I’d normally recommend against this; food in Calcutta is cheap and amazing), tours, travel in this part of India, other stuff I haven’t thought of yet?

Thanks! All ideas welcome. I’ve been toying with the idea of making this a space more friendly to digital nomads since I started the renovation, so I figured it’s time to start vetting the idea.

👍

👎

👍

104

👎

Living and working in two very different time zones

by @rwill007 | 4yr 4 years ago | 4 comments

If you are living and working out of Thailand (UTC+07:00) but work with people in the New York EST (UTC-05:00) Time Zone, how do you deal / handle the time difference and still be able to enjoy or make the most of the experience without turning into a tired night owl zombie?

Better yet, what do you find to be the benefits / drawbacks of having to work on such a schedule? (specially in Thailand)

Any advice from those who have done it for a long time? (2+ months)

Thanks,
Will

👍

104

👎

👍

387

👎

Does fulltime RV living count as being a digital nomad?

by @juliet | 4yr 4 years ago | 7 comments

I’m thinking about living fulltime in an RV mostly in the US and North America. Is this still part of the digital nomad community? Is there anyone who has tried this? Pros? Cons? Thanks!

👍

387

👎

👍

379

👎

What's the best time to take birth control pills while traveling?

by @robetus | 4yr 4 years ago | 7 comments

I’m traveling with my girlfriend and she takes birth control pills, one pill every day. Can any of the digital nomadic women on here give her any tips on what time to take it to best suite global travel inside many timezones?

👍

379

👎

👍

👎

Let's fix dating for digital nomads!

by @levelsio | 4yr 4 years ago | 22 comments

Let’s say you’re in Thailand (or any other remote place) and you want to find a significant other (SO). It’s hard because most dating apps are good for local hook ups, or for locals dating locals. If you are a somewhat perpetual traveler, it’s hard to find anyone taking on a long-term relationship with you. You’ll date somebody, you’ll move to the next place, and they won’t be able to come with you because they have their ties to a place. Usually.

I wanted to see if I could get all the people on Nomad List together, and experiment if we could figure out how to fix dating for travelers. So I build this mini app that looks similar to most dating apps. It has swiping left (dislike), swiping right (like) and you can in-app chat with the people you meet. Also no installs as it’s just a website!

It’s called…Ninder

It also ties into Nomad Trips, so it’ll show your current location and in the future will match you based on previous and future trips! And even propose dates when you have cross over