#Travel

I’m not really a stuff guy. I try to keep purchases minimal and to high quality stuff that lasts.

Why might my gear be interesting? I’ve been travelling as a digital nomad now for over a year, living without a real residence and often leveraging hotels and visa stays to bounce between various countries here in SE Asia (Singapore, Bali, Thailand, and now Hong Kong).

Riffing off my one-bag travel post from a few years back and it’s post-covid update , a number of things had changed, including my assumptions about how I would be travelling as a nomad, so felt an update was due.

With COVID restrictions lifting, I’ve been traveling a lot since October. That, plus a recent post by Dutel inspired me to take a look how my setup has changed. Compare and contrast with my Travel Happy, Travel Light post from back in 2018. I was also interested to see how much actually has changed after 18 months sidelined and as I look towards being more remote work-wise.

First off: I travel with just one carry-on bag for virtually all travel. This is the way. If you are someone that simply cannot get on a plane without your checked 30kg of luggage, this post is probably not for you.

My only real superpower is travelling well. I’ve crosscrossed and lived all over the world now, and a big part of the secret sauce has been a single, carry-on bag approach to travel. This is my setup.

« Pour voyager heureux, voyagez léger »
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
(To travel happily, travel light)

Why travel light? It lowers the cost of moving, both in terms of inertia and money as well as the pain and slowness of modern travel to allow you to seize more travel opps and enjoy yourself more. I travel 25-50% of the time, and abuse my vacation time every year, so I’ve worked hard getting down to a pretty bulletproof setup (for me. YMMV) and people keep telling me to share and asking gear questions. This setup has allowed me to travel virtually indefinitely for months at a time (I think the max is about 3 months steady travel) and covers almost all my business and vacation use cases with a single carry-on backpack (the exception being trips requiring special gear like snowboarding etc., but see below). As with all things, YMMV, but my fervent hope is you can take away some ideas to make your own travelling better and enjoy your experiences more.

In the vein of Dancing Matt , 5000 miles of hitchhiking the US and 930 people in 162 seconds. Dedicated to the people everywhere who will help out a “stranger.” Lurv.

Kinda great. And making me jonez for some airplane tickets (since I recognized more than a few of the backgrounds they were in from my own wanders).

3 guys, 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano, 2 cameras and almost a terabyte of footage

You can check out there other two, Learn and Eat on their vimeo page, but I think I like Move best.

Been holding down the fort in Oz this month and next with moving to the new place (you know, need nesting funds) and move to the freelancing and contract gig but still plotting some epic travel for this year and next. Not that I necessarily need the inspiration, but kinda loving this interactive world map with various historical and fictional travels with great little blurbs to explain them. Crack for my travel addiction. Check it for your fix.

Five oceans. Five dives. One planet.

More men have walked on the surface of the moon than have explored the depths of our oceans. Virgin Oceanic is a project to measure the boundaries of the last frontier of our little blue planet here, the very bottom of the seas. The idea is to take a submersible to the deepest part in each of the world’s five oceans. Amazing.

Have to admit my admiration for Sir Richard Branson simply continues to grow. Much like Steve Jobs, I think he’s the CEO all of us want to be when we grow up.

Fantastic Do lecture from “Vagabonding”’s Rolf Potts, traveller extraordinaire, on taking some lessons from approaching travel to how you should live your real life. Definitely worth your time to watch the whole thing.

Best quote: “Life does not reward you with free time, you need to create it.”

OMG, I cannot tell you how much I love seeing this article. There is hope for me yet that just isn’t me being optimistic about being half as cool as my grandparents in later life. Cause if anyone thinks I want my life to be much, much different from the progress I’ve made up to know is going to be sorely disappointed.

Seeing Old Age as a Never-Ending Adventure

And this is, in fact, dedicated to my super cool Nan and GrandDad, whatever “Monkey Island” they may be on at this moment, as they confound their children trying to locate them. ;-)

Amazing time lapse of someone’s trip from Denver to Singapore via Chicago and Tokyo, all compressed down to 5 minutes. Incredible little piece of work.