Journey to $9,000 – January to December 2008

Ok here’s post number two in the ‘Journey to $9,000’ series! At long last. These babies take a long time to put together, let me tell you! 2008 was the year I left London and a somewhat decent admin job (not inspiring at all, but cushy, decently paid and with a whole lot of vacation days) and hit the road with the hope that I’d never have to be an employee again against my will. So far, so good!

So… here’s how that year looked:

Earnings

Total Earnings — $20,624

I earned a total of $20,624 in 2008 which is about $1,700 per month. Buckets of money, as far as I was concerned at the time. All I wanted to do was travel around Asia and not have to worry about my trip ending because of running out of money. I was careful with my spending, but $1,700 per month is plenty for Southeast Asia and I had a great time that year. I didn’t save any money since I took some ridiculous and expensive flights, but I had been given a taste of what it was like to be able to earn from anywhere and I was anxious to keep improving things.

• Adsense — $4,021 – In January of 2008 I cleared the $400 mark with Adsense for the first time. January seems to always be a great month for Adsense but then things settled off a bit for the rest of the year around $300-ish which I was happy with but it was frustrating not seeing any increases during the year and especially discouraging when I didn’t even earn $200 in December 2008.
• Affiliate Sales — $11,510 – This is where my affiliate revenue from World Nomads was at its highest. It earned me about $10,100 which, yes, means that my other affiliate programs were pretty much sucking. I wasn’t really trying anything revolutionary here… mostly just attempting to sell travel insurance using affiliates on Clix Galore and Trade Doubler.
• Article Writing $22 – I wrote an article over at Location Independent. Those guys shot up out of nowhere, it seems, and it was great not only to follow along with their success, but also to contribute a wee bit too. No idea where the article is these day sor what it was about. I vaguely remember
• Advertising — $5,071 – Linkworth and Text Link Ads earned about $1,500 and looking for people who wanted to buy links on the Digital Point forum still made up a large amount of my advertising revenue. I did a deal for GBP400 with a campervan rental company in London which was probably my first ‘real’ deal aimed at actually reaching my audience, rather than just getting links to rank their site higher in Google. I think one or two advertisers found me which was bizarre to me but also exciting. Pricing was always scary because I didn’t want to lose these new potential advertisers.

Earnings Updates

For some reason my monthly earning updates posted to my site are a bit different than what’s on my earnings spreadsheet. I have no idea why this is and am not really all that interested in figuring it out right now. The main issue is May being off by about $600. Other than that glaring and mysterious error, things are mostly correct.

• January – $1,900
• February & March – $1,424 & $1,192
• April – $2,568
• May – $2,500
• June – $1,970
• July – $2,280
• August – $1,388
• September – $1,860
• October – $1,735
• November -$1,355
• December – $885

Travels in 2008

[WPMAP;2;330;640]

The blue markers on the map are the places I’ve written related posts about and the grey spots are the ones without posts. I was going to list the posts I’ve written under each marker in a handy dandy list, but that would be way too much work. So if you want to read related travel posts, either visit my regular big map, or go to the category section in my sidebar and browse through the list. Black lines are flights, red lines are overland, blue is boat trips. Yep, I fly a lot.

The Philippines was the start of my big adventure and I was there for five weeks (I love that place… way better than Thailand, people!) The Philippines was a lot of travelling and a lot of waiting around for my Bangladesh visa. I ended up spending more time in Manila that I would have liked (although I had a lot of fun there and met some really interesting people to hang out with) which meant some time to settle in and do some work on the awesome rooftop terrace at Friendly’s Hostel.

I really love The Philippines… there’s so much to do there and it doesn’t seem to have the same well-trodden tourist trail like you’ll find in Thailand. It’s one of my favourite countries and it’s surprising to me that it doesn’t make it on more people’s Southeast Asia itineraries. But maybe that’s a good thing!

I hopped around the country quite a bit since flights there are pretty cheap. The highlights were probably my time spent dancing around banging on drums at the Ati-Atihan festival in Kalibo. Plus my trip way down south to the island of Camiguin was really great as well. I stayed at a fantastic place called ‘Enigmata’ which was a hostel type thing built in trees. Super artsy and I met some really nice people there. Oh ya… and diving with whale sharks in Donsel is probably most amazing thing I’ve ever done in my life. The first whale shark I saw headed straight for me and dove just beneath me which is something I’ll never forget. Plus, I guess, I was just happy to be on the road and to have the freedom to change my plans on a whim. It was really great to feel so free and it felt amazing to have no real plans and no destination.

My Bangladesh visa came through a couple of hours before my flight was due to leave so I headed off to volunteer building houses mostly. It was my first experience doing disaster relief work and I was instantly hooked but I’ll talk more about volunteering in a separate section below. As for Bangladesh… that is one crazy country! It’s a friendly mix of chaos, hilarity, stunning scenery, lively streets and very curious but lovely people. Once you get used to the endless staring by Bangladeshi men, it gets easier. They stare at guys and girls equally and will often unashamedly surround you so that they become a circle of staring men, just looking. So many stares! But people are very friendly and extremely generous with their time, food and help in any situation. It was a really great opportunity to get a chance to live for seven weeks in such a rural part of the country and I really felt welcomed into the community which was an amazing experience.

After having such a wonderful time in crazy Bangladesh, Malaysia seemed pretty tame and dull. True, I probably wasn’t really in the mood for solo travel after having just left some amazing new friends. Plus I only really hit the major tourist spots (which were beautiful) but didn’t really make much of an effort to really dig under the surface of the country. After almost two months in Bangladesh, though, I was definitely happy to see Kuala Lumpur’s shopping malls!

After Malaysia I had to make a short stop in Hong Kong to get a Chinese visa, died of the humidity, and experience some of the worst hostels ever. I hated Hong Kong my first time there but the second time I discovered the awesome art galleries and some great cafes so I was converted.

I spent the summer in Beijing attempting to do a lot of work. I stayed in a hostel for the first couple of weeks but it was my goal to find an apartment so that my friends could stay during the Olympics. I ended up meeting a dude at a bar with an extra room in his place to I went to check it out the next day. Sounds dodgy and he wasn’t the greatest roommate ever, but it was a nice place in a decent location and it did the trick. A couple of friends I’d met in The Philippines were in Beijing at the same time and are artsy type people so I went tagged along with them to some cultural type events. I also made an effort to go to some couch surfing meet ups which were generally pretty fun. But mostly I was trying to get a lot of work done and was pretty quiet on the socialising front.

I had to go back to Hong Kong to get another visa (for some reason visa rules changed during the Olympics which made my life semi-miserable) and then another visa after that which meant travelling around that area of China for a month before stopping back into Hong Kong for a visa renewal so I could head back p to Beijing for the Olympics. But, while it was annoying that the trip was sort of forced on me because of the visa situation, this month-long trip around the southern part of China was great. I think it’s my favourite country to travel in and it was an awesome trip, taking in some of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. I’d love to go back to China one of these days and explore some other parts of the country.

I stumbled into a town called Dazhai (which is actually very well known for its beautiful rice terraces) during some sort of festival where everyone was dressed in traditional clothing and bands of men were roaming around playing horns. Pigs were being slaughtered, people were dancing around, and I still, to this day, am not totally sure what the actual occasion was. Combined with hiking the surrounding rice terraces, this experience was one of my favourites.

My favourite thing about travelling there was really have no idea what the hell was going on. Ever. Train stations were crazy, I was never 100% sure I was on the right bus, or even in the right town! But the people I met there were amazing and there’s something really great about putting your faith in others and just going with the flow. It was also the first time I couch surfed and I did it in a city called Kaili which really isn’t on anyone’s itinerary. I went there specifically to give couch surfing a try in a random place and I was shown an amazing time! I went to a crazy nightclub, spent a day down by a river BBQing and attempting to learn how to play mah-jong, helped with my host’s English teaching classes, and was taken out to dinner by the whole family. That short stint in that random city is one of my fondest memories of China.

In August my friends arrived and we spent the next three weeks existing on 50 cent Heinekin and Oreo cookies (the food choice at the Olympic venues was terrible… in China! I know!), watching some great events, enjoying the city and partying. A lot. I think this was the most fun I’ve ever had. It was awesome. China really did an amazing job putting on an epic event and the atmosphere was really fantastic. I really love the Olympics… for every famous and unapproachable athlete, there are way more who are just so excited to be there and who will be out partying after years of hard training, some with their medals around their necks. Everyone is just so excited and happy and the vibe during the Games there was unreal. Amazing events, amazing city, amazing people… amazing. Seriously.

We headed to Thailand after for what was suppose to be a relaxing week but it turned out that it was even more partying with the same friends. So much for recovery! I like Thailand but I don’t love it. I headed up to Chiang Mai for a look around. That’s a city which seems really popular with working nomad types at the moment and I can see why. It’s a nice place, great food, cheap, decent internet, and lots to explore outside of the city. I went up to Pai and did a trek with my friends which was finally a bit of relaxation.

Myanmar was a welcome escape and after a bit of hassle getting my visa, I arrived ready for a month checking the place out. I hated the food so existed on apples and crackers while spending my first two weeks there travelling by train to the north of the country before taking several boats all the way back down to where I started. One massive commute! I never want to do it again but it was a pretty amazing trip.

Then the last two weeks of my trip didn’t happen because I had become infatuated with disaster volunteering and changed my flight to get back to Thailand and onto Haiti asap. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t really love Myanmar… it just meant I was super eager to do some more disaster volunteering. Plus getting online there was a little tough so I was ready to go but I’d head back to Myanmar in a heartbeat! Such a cool country.

I stopped off at home for a couple of weeks which was a surprise trip back home after only a 8 months. I had expected to be away for a lot longer but, as I was on my wait back to North America on my way to Haiti, I figured I’d stop in and say hello. It happened to coincide with Halloween, my favourite holiday which isn’t done in quite the same way anywhere as it is in Canada and the US. So I reverted to my fall-back ‘I don’t know what else to be’ costume of a crazed and bloody surgeon and enjoyed some drinks with my family and friends at their local bar.

Then it was Haiti for the rest of the year which has to be one of the most intense places I’ve ever been (along with Bangladesh). Gonavies is a city north of Port-au-Prince, the capital, and is known as the hotbed of discontent. Historically it’s where many major movements and protests in the country have began. So I don’t know if the people there are extra fired-up or what, but the place has an energy about it that I fell in love with. Crazy, sometimes scary, always lots of intense fun. I met a lot of Haitian friends during my five months there that I keep in touch with today plus some of my best friends now were made during my time volunteering here. Haiti will always be a special place for me.

Related Posts

• Wrapping Up My Year of Travels
• Dancing and Drumming at Ati-Atihan
• This is Why I Love Travelling
• Covert Christian Couch Surfing
• I Survived the 2008 Beijing Olympics
• The Slow Boat to Mandalay
• Camping in the Wilds of Haiti

Volunteering

This was the year that my ongoing love affair with disaster relief volunteering started. I can safely say that my experiences in Bangladesh and Haiti with All Hands Volunteers (the

n called ‘Hands On’) has changed my life. Well, maybe not changed my life… it’s not like I was someone who was totally opposed to this sort of thing and then saw the light, or anything. But it has has a hugely positive impact on me and I continue to go out of my way (hence all of the ridiculous flights I take) to work with them as much as possible.

My first experience with them was in Bangladesh… a pretty random country without a lot of information or infrastructure for backpacker types. So I was heading there with zero idea of what I was getting myself in for. Both the volunteering organisation and the country were enigmas to me and I really felt like I was making a leap of faith. But this was a risk totally worth taking and I was blown away not only with Bangladesh as a place to visit, but also by the way All Hands was organised and run and by the people I met during my time there. It was love at first shovel.

I arrived a couple of months into the project so the debris removal stage of the cyclone cleanup had been done and they’d moved on to building houses out of very crappy local wood and corrugated iron sheeting. Teams were sent out each day to work on various houses and they’d report back at the end of the day. I joined a team and was working straight away. From there, All Hands were able to team up with an other organisation (maybe Save the Children, but I forget) and we moved onto building five playgrounds in various rural communities. I’d have to say that the week I spent living in a cyclone shelter in the middle of nowhere has to be about as far off of the map I’ve ever been. It was a great experience all round and I was anxious to continue working with All Hands as much as possible during my travels.

About 8 months after their work in Bangladesh ended, a bunch of storms struck Gonaives, Haiti at the same time around October or November 2008 (I forget). As I mentioned I was in Myanmar at the time and cut my trip there and my time in Asia short to fly across the globe to volunteer once again with All Hands who had set up a project there. My family were uneasy about the idea of Haiti but, one thing I’ve learned during my travels, is that the media makes everywhere seem a lot scarier and more dangerous than it actually is so I took this experience with me as I decided to ignore everyone and go to Haiti. Probably one of the best decisions of my life!

Haiti is a tough place to be as you’re surrounded by misery, dirt, chaos, yelling people, poverty and everything else that’s tough to deal with as a Westerner used to life’s perks. The five months I spent in Gonaives was incredibly physically and mentally challenging but rewarding in so many ways, as well. I met some good Haitian friends during that time, lots of other volunteers remain close friends, we did some really great work (mostly shoveling mud from people’s homes and building wells) and at the end of each day, we were all physically exhausted. But I think all of us also got a lot of energy back from our environment and each other and plenty of time was spent each night drinking and dancing. It was a really amazing experience and I even ditched my expensive flight down to Buenos Aires to stay in Haiti instead. And I’ve still never made it down to South America!

All up, volunteering with All Hands in 2008 was a highlight of the year for me and 2009 would be more of the same… but that’s in the next post.

Related Posts

• Bringing Playgrounds to Rural Bangladesh
• Running with Wheelbarrows

Work in 2008

My year of travels in 2008 was something that was pretty straightforward. I’d travelled solo before, wasn’t too scared of not meeting people, and looking really forward to the freedom of no plans. But what made me a little more uneasy was not being so sure how well I’d be able to get work done while I was travelling. Would I be able to get online in many of the places I was going? Would I be able to spend a lot of time working or would I instead be lured in by parties and fun stuff? I had no idea if my earnings would increase like I needed them to, or whether it would all crash and burn.

The Philippines proved harder than I expected to get online. Friendly’s Hostel in Manila was fantastic but, outside of the capital, I didn’t have much luck and focused on doing as much work as possible offline.

In Bangladesh I had a little internet USB thing but the internet connection was terribly slow and I didn’t accomplish much in this time. The power would often go off which meant that insects would dive-bomb my laptop screen which made it impossible to work without having to fight off bugs. I did manage to get online in the most crazy place ever though when myself and six other volunteers relocated to the countryside to build a playground. We were living in a cyclone shelter in an area with no power and I remember using the remaining battery power of my crappy laptop and my USB modem to look something up as I was surrounded by darkness and as the call to prayer wailed in the distance. It was pretty surreal.

In Beijing I ended up getting a lot of work done, partly due to not knowing that many people in the city and not having many other things to fill my time at night, and mostly because I was really motivated for some odd reason. My motivation goes in waves and, at this point, I was really eager to get my living in Beijing site up and running. The extra internet security/firewalls/spying/whatever there was frustrating as certain sites wouldn’t open and everything was really slow, but I still managed to get a lot done.

When I went on my little month long trip around the south just before the Olympics, I had no expectations of working but I brought my computer anyways as there is a lot of down time when you travel. At least for me, there is. I ended up travelling a bit with a Chinese girl who was really fascinated by what I was doing. She asked all kinds of questions and really seemed to be soaking up as much information as possible. Based on some conversations we had (I obviously have no idea what Chinese-language websites are out there), I could see that there was a lot of opportunity to do what I was doing, but for the Chinese market. So she was all motivated and that motivated me and we spent a bit of time camped out in our accommodation in Fenghuang (a really amazing city popular with Chinese tourists) working a lot. I really enjoyed this because we did things during the day and would head out for meals etc but then we were both content to get to work at night. It’s nice to have some company around while you’re working, even if it’s on different things.

When my friends arrived in late July for the Olympics, that was the beginning of the end both for my motivated working stint and my liver. For the next month both in China and Thailand it was just party party party and I got nothing done. Myanmar was a write-off as well as I ventured to some serious off the map type places that didn’t have any power, let along internet. I managed to cram a lot of work in during my short trip home between Asia and Haiti. I usually manage to get my visiting out of the way pretty early and spend most of my time at home hanging out with my parents and doing work which means I can usually get caught up on a lot of things.

In Haiti I was working unbelievably hard during the day shoveling and wheelbarrowing mud around (seriously… I’ve never worked that hard before or since) and then working on my sites into the wee hours. I’m not sure where I get the energy from! But I was loving being there and I guess just all charged up and happy to work. Plus I seemed to have a lot of ideas flowing during that period. Shoveling and wheelbarrowing mud all day isn’t the most mentally challenging task in the world, so your mind wanders and you think about a lot of things… I guessfor me that was web stuff and I was always eager to get to work on my new ideas at the end of the day.

Related Posts

• Mobile Working in Bangladesh Summary
• Mobile Working in Malaysia Summary
• Mobile Working in Thailand Summary
• Mobile Working in China Summary
• Mobile Working in Myanmar Summary
• Friendly’s Guesthouse, Manila, Philippines
• Online in a Bangladeshi Village
• Workspaces So Far
• Hello from Haiti on a Really Fast Wireless Connection

Balancing Work and Travel

I feel like the advice I give to people who want to know more about the actual mechanics of working on the road is to get as much of the actual site design stuff done before you go because, if you’re learning new things as you go like I was, it can take a lot of concentration and lead to a lot of frustration. I feel like it’s much better to work really hard on your site before you go and then all you have to focus on while you’re travelling (if you’re running a travel blog… which I never really have so maybe don’t listen to me!) is write. Writing is fun. Figuring out why your website won’t do that thing you want it to do and hacking into the code and pulling out your hair is not fun.

But I only half took my own advice. True, I worked hard to get my moving to London and working holidays websites completed (mostly) but then I had that not-so-awful problem of constantly having new ideas and wanting to keep building sites. But balancing work and travel has always been fairly easy for me because the periods where I’m not able to get online tend to be the times where I get my ideas for new sites or things to try. I always have a notebook with me and it’s during these offline times that I fill it with lists of ideas, little sketches of how my new sites will look, logo ideas etc etc. I suppose it’s still considered work and not travel, but there’s a lot of downtime when you’re travelling around and I’ll just whip out my notebook during these times and get a lot done without being online.

Then, when I’m able to get back online, I crack open the notebook full of little lists, notes and drawings and I get to work. This is easy when I can find a great place to work, but touch when there are lots of distractions around. I learned that I’m very good and holing myself up for days or even weeks at a time and putting some serious hard work in. I’m as good at that as I am at forgetting all about working and just enjoying my travels and life. Sounds like a good balance to me!

Projects and Ideas

Having registered the awesome domain name Wanderstruck.com, I was determined to use it for something. I think I spent more time reading stuff online back in 2008 and I was noticing a lot of new travel blogs popping up. I was really enjoying the kind of interaction I was getting on Nerdy Nomad but I’ve always felt that this blog is more of an ‘earn money online’ type blog than a travel blog. So I wanted to make Wanderstruck my personal travel blog with a lot of travel tips and guides thrown in. I had a clear vision in my head, but, as always, my ambitions and penchant for tweaking every little design feature slowed me down and frustrated me. Plus, I’ve never really felt all that compelled to write about my travels. I’ve always felt guilty for not posting more and then stressed and I’d end up posting things I wasn’t really that proud of. So Wanderstruck as a travel guide died, but not before I spent an assload of time working on it. Even now this domain is still the bane of my existence as I struggle to find something to do with it… it’s currently meant to be an Africa travel guide but I haven’t worked on it in ages.

Also, this was the year I registered a whole bunch of ‘Stuck in …’ domain names, similar to my site Stuck in London. My intention was to pay writers to contribute content to those sites and build them up so that I would eventually cover about 50 different cities (I think that’s around how many domains I’d registered). I spent a lot of time setting all of the domains up but never really got the content part off the ground. Oh well! I’ve since let most of those domains go. Of all of those city guides, my living in New York, living in Sydney and living in Beijing sites are the only ones, besides the London one, that ever got off the ground.

I also registered the domain http://www.london-2012-olympics.com partly as an attempt to capitalise on my knowledge of both London and the Olympics and also as an experiment in SEO. I wanted to see if I could rank the site for what would be a very competitive search term. It was a way of seeing if I could compete for more popular and lucrative keywords and I did well. I had the site ranking on the first page of Google fairly quickly and it stayed there, as well. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very ambitious about monetising the site and, while it did attract some advertisers, it hasn’t really earned all that much. Plus, a couple of years after setting the site up, I got a scary letter from a lawyer for the Olympics about using their trademarked words and changed the domain to ‘ogamesguide.com’. So, while it was an encouraging foray into SEO and earned a bit of money, I never really put as much effort into that site as I should have so I don’t think it reached anywhere close to its potential. Even with the Olympics fast approaching, I’m not really all that interested in the site. Oh well!

Related Posts

• Sneak Preview to a Site in Shambles
• Starting a Network of Simple City Sites for Backpackers
• Attempting to Rank Early for a Competitive Search Term

Things I Was Trying

In June I did a little experiment to see what sort of impact commenting on other people’s blogs would have on the popularity of my own blog and then another experiment in July to see what sort of impact not commenting at all would have. I wasn’t interested in income, just on RSS subscribers, traffic and comments. The end result was confusing. Just saw a jump up in everything with all of my extra comments, but so did July with no comments. So who knows. But one thing I think I’ve never really gotten involved in as much as I should is the blogging community. There are lots of great blogs out there that I very rarely read and almost never interact with either through comments, Twitter or Facebook. I keep meaning to get more involved but I guess just get caught up in work and life. My RSS feed has been stuck around the 1,600 people mark for what seems like years! So I guess I know what to do to give it a little boost.

It was also at this point that I think I decided to stop using Text Link Ads to sell links on my sites. I know Google had not been too happy with the existence of these link selling outfits and I think I was afraid of feeling their wrath if I were to remain a part of the network. Plus I wasn’t earning enough to justify the risk, so I scrapped them.

In relation to the city sites I was trying to build up, I was also experimenting (or at least, asking questions) with how to generate the content. This was probably the first time I had been willing to put some serious (for me) investment into my business not only with all of the domains, but also with a commitment to finding and paying writers so I was trying to figure out the best way to do this. Some ideas were paying them outright for their contributions (I think I’d suggested a fairly paltry $15 per article), having some sort of revenue sharing system, or having a straight partnership with no payment until the sites earned a revenue. I feel like, had I gotten some of these off the ground with eager and hard working partners, it might have worked well for both of us. But I got caught up with other things and never got this off the ground.

Related Posts

• Big Bag List of My Current Sites and Future Projects
• How Much Does Commenting Help a Blog – The Results
• How Does NOT Commenting Hurt a Blog
• Thinking About Giving Text Link Ads the Heave-Ho
• How to Go About Getting Content for Lots of Sites

Mistakes and Moments of Genius

I was probably far too obsessed with checking my Google Analytics stats at this stage. There’s something really fun about having a site that actually gets a decent amount of traffic and investigating who’s visiting you, from where, how they find you, which pages they like etc etc. But, while all of this is a good time-filler and entertaining for nerd types like me, it doesn’t really accomplish much unless you know how to use Analytics to your advantage. Which I don’t and never have. Analytics for me is just random entertainment. I realise there are a zillion things it can be used for to improve my business but I’ve just never bothered to learn it that well. So, while I really don’t spend any time looking at stats these days, back then I did and it was probably a huge waste of my time. Just like checking my Adsense earnings 20 times in a day. Pointless and my time could have been better used on other things.

It’s seems like just a small thing, but it’s something that I credit for vastly increasing my earnings over the years – quoting prices in British pounds instead of US dollars. True, in 2008 when I started travelling and the pound was worth double the US$, it had much more of an impact, but I still feel like people are as willing to pay GBP100 for a link as they are US$100. I have nothing to back this theory up except that I never have anyone try to change the currency of my price quotes and rarely have too many price wars. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to try! If you’re doing business with US sites n the States then it probably doesn’t make sense, but as someone who runs many UK-based sites, it works for me.

Related Posts

• Doing Business By the Pound

Surprise Increases/Decreases in Earnings

I guess one major surprise was how little I was making at the end of 2008. In 2007 I went from earning $600 in January to $1,600 in December and things seemed to be on the rise at the end of that year. Plus that was during a year where I really didn’t have a lot of time to dedicate to my sites. I was putting in a lot of hours after work, but I certainly wasn’t working on them full time. Whereas, given that I’d be travelling in 2008, I figured that would mean a lot of new content creation and time to work on my websites and, therefore, an increase in earnings. But as the end of 2008 approached, I was actually earning less and things were on a downward trend, too. This was a scary shock for me as I’d expected things to at least stay the same or increase. Sure,I had a few good months, but for the most part, I was pretty stuck in the same place, earnings-wise… and I certainly wasn’t saving any money!

Related Posts

• Money Update After Six Months on the Road

Useful Tools & Websites

I think this is the year I discovered Twitter and, while I don’t use it to anywhere close to its potential, I’ve still found it very handy in many situations. Particularly in finding suggestions for places to stay, help with small website type problems, and for meeting up with people who happen to be in cities I’m travelling through. I think I’ve somehow accumulated 2,000+ followers on Twitter which makes it a really great place to start when I need help with something.

Maintaining Relationships with Family and Friends at Home

Having lived away from Canada since 2001 with a stint in Ireland for a summer and some travels in between, I was pretty used to living away from home at this point. So I’m not the type of person who has to call my parents every week or text friends or anything like that. The friends in Canada who I still keep in touch with are my closest friends from primary and high school so there isn’t a feeling of having to always be in touch. It’s one of those situations where you get back home, go for a coffee and it’s as if you haven’t left. So, in short, I’m crap at staying in touch and am a bad person to ask.

But even if I did want to constantly be in touch with friends and family at home, it wouldn’t have been a problem. True, wifi wasn’t available everywhere I went, but internet cafes pretty much were. Bangladesh didn’t appear to have any sort of payphone systems set up, but mobile phones were cheap and I could get online anytime with my USB modem, anyways. Internet cafes are everywhere and while they can be frustrating sometimes (in The Philippines they were always dark and filled with screaming boys playing video games, for example), you could usually manage to send off an email or two.

Myanmar was the only place where communication was a problem. I was way off the ‘grid’ for most of my trip there and the internet cafe near my hotel in Mandalay usually didn’t have either a connection or power. So that was tough. But, otherwise, I had very few problems and I don’t think my friends or family thought I was dead too many times due to a lack of communication.

Overall Thoughts on 2008

2008 was an amazingly exciting time for me. Not only was I travelling without a time limit or too many plans for the first time in awhile, I was doing it with a bit of magic money coming into my account each month. I discovered disaster volunteering, I made some amazing new friends, saw some of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, and did some amazing things. I experimented a bit with my online business but was still uneasy about its potential as a way to earn a living permanently. But I was eager to keep working and full of ideas.