Commonplaces from Life Nomadic by Tynan
Posted on February 13th, 2017
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Last annotated on February 12, 2017
"Be indifferent to where you live." Miyamoto MusashiRead more at location 56 • Delete this highlight
"Two roads diverge in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." Robert Frost "If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much." Jim RohnRead more at location 140 • Delete this highlight
It takes effort to get off the beaten path. Modern life is set up to keep you on it.Read more at location 150 • Delete this highlight
you’ll reconnect with the sense of discovery and exploration that you had when you were a child.Read more at location 159 • Delete this highlight
Freedom is a condition of mind, and the best way to secure it is to breed it. Elbert HubbardRead more at location 234 • Delete this highlight
There’s no way to become a minimalist without just jumping in head first. And there’s just no way to become a nomad without being a minimalist. If you have stuff lingering back home then you have roots and you will never feel the true freedom of being a nomad. It’s a leap of faith that you’ll have to take. Remember that all success and most happiness comes from pushing your comfort zone and taking risks.Read more at location 347 • Delete this highlight
journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it." John Steinbeck "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." Dwight D. EisenhowerRead more at location 426 • Delete this highlight
The IRS allows a huge tax exemption on the first $87,600 (as of 2009) of your income if you are out of the United States for 330 days out of the year. If you plan ahead meticulously, you can make sure that you qualify for this exemption.Read more at location 441 • Delete this highlight
weather2travel.com has an excellent site for checking historical averages for anywhere in the world.Read more at location 502 • Delete this highlight
Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. Henry David Thoreau He who would travel happily must travel light Antoine de saint ExuperyRead more at location 576 • Delete this highlight
No one travels for a long period of time and wishes they had brought more.Read more at location 667 • Delete this highlight
Become your actions and your principles. Stop trying to create a façade of who you are through buying things. Buying things is easy, and everyone knows it. It can garner wonder or excitement, but never respect. Think about people you look up to. Is it because of what they have, or who they are?Read more at location 686 • Delete this highlight
Synthetic materials like polyester are better in most ways, and worse in a couple. They dry fast, wick sweat away, and don’t freeze you if it’s cold. But they don’t keep you very warm, and they smell bad faster than any other material. The answer to all of our problems is wool. Wool does an amazing job wicking sweat away, dries quickly, keeps us warm even when wet, and smells great. I used to wash my wool shirts every time I wore them, but some experimentation has lead me to realize that just airing them out in between uses lets me wear them four or five times each before washing.Read more at location 735 • Delete this highlight
The best brand to buy socks from is Smart Wool, although if you follow my shoe recommendation and need to buy toe socks, Injinji is the only known manufacturer of wool toe socks. They aren’t nearly as wonderful as the Smart Wools, but they hold their own.Read more at location 746 • Delete this highlight
Wool is antimicrobial so it feels clean and smells fine even if you wear it twice in a row.Read more at location 751 • Delete this highlight
While synthetic shirts smell terrible quickly, synthetic pants don’t seem to. I wash mine once every week or two.Read more at location 761 • Delete this highlight
Wool is, of course, the fabric of choice, and there is one brand that stands head and shoulders above the competition: Icebreaker. Go for their lightest weight shirts, the 140gm / cm and 150gm/cm.Read more at location 771 • Delete this highlight
Get a Gorillapod instead of a tripod so that you can be in the videos as well.Read more at location 876 • Delete this highlight
Many studies have been done that positively correlate screen resolution with productivity.Read more at location 888 • Delete this highlight
The absolute best adapter is the APC INPA adapter. It’s an ingenious design which packs down small and can adapt any plug to fit any socket in the world.Read more at location 934 • Delete this highlight
The bed is called the Luxury Lite cot, and is sold by an eccentric inventor in Texas through his site, luxurylite.com.Read more at location 939 • Delete this highlight
To go with the bed, consider the Sea to Summit silk sheets. If there’s no wind, when you’re indoors for example, they add about ten degrees of warmth. Outside they do just about nothing, but they compress down to the size of a soda can so packing them isn’t much of an issue. If you have a little more room, you may want to buy the Mont Bell Spiral Thermal Sheet. It’s a thin down sleeping bag that looks comfortable and weighs next to nothing.Read more at location 942 • Delete this highlight
To pack efficiently we’ll need to follow two principle strategies: • Air space must be minimized. • The most frequently used items must be the most accessible.Read more at location 958 • Delete this highlight
A great packing tool is the Aloksak, which is a waterproof heavy duty plastic bag.Read more at location 963 • Delete this highlight
The Deuter can be separated into two distinct compartments rather than one big one. Using this feature allows you to pack the bottom compartment as tightly as possible while leaving the top area relatively empty, so that you can access items while traveling.Read more at location 966 • Delete this highlight
Not all who wander are lost J. R. Tolkien "This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." Western Union Internal MemoRead more at location 983 • Delete this highlight
Never allow a vendor in a foreign country to charge your credit card in dollars. It’s against their agreement with Visa or MasterCard to prohibit you from paying in local currency.Read more at location 999 • Delete this highlight
callback service, which Callwithus and Callcentric both provide.Read more at location 1102 • Delete this highlight
For receiving faxes, check out K7.net. The interface is laughably bad, but they will give you an absolutely free fax and voicemail number. No credit card or any sort of documentation is required. I’ve been using their service for years, and it’s been great. They have a feature I particularly like where every fax is just sent to your e-mail address, with no need to ever log in.Read more at location 1108 • Delete this highlight
My own health strategy is to eat healthy food, get enough rest, and exercise. As a result I haven’t gone to the doctor in the US or elsewhere in at least ten years.Read more at location 1127 • Delete this highlight
Many countries have high quality medical care at a fraction of the cost of US prices, and in fact have people go there specifically for "medical tourism".Read more at location 1130 • Delete this highlight
If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things. Henry MillerRead more at location 1134 • Delete this highlight
No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby-so helpless and so ridiculous. Ralph Waldo EmersonRead more at location 1171 • Delete this highlight
In the late 60s a psychologist and French teacher named Paul Pimsleur began to study language learning. Whet he discovered, amongst other things, is that there are certain intervals at which one needs to hear something to commit it to memory. Specifically, they are 5 seconds, 25 seconds, 2 minutes, 10 minutes, 1 hour, 5 hours, 1 day, 5 days, 25 days, 4 months, and 2 years.Read more at location 1199 • Delete this highlight
Each language consists of ninety half hour tapes, divided into three units. You do one a day, every day, for three months.Read more at location 1204 • Delete this highlight
there’s an excellent book by James Heisig called Remembering the Kanji.Read more at location 1247 • Delete this highlight
a good flash card system. The best of them, like Anki, use the "spaced repetition" method,Read more at location 1251 • Delete this highlight
There is also a community online called "Reviewing the Kanji" at kanji.koohii.net,Read more at location 1253 • Delete this highlight
I swims in the Tagus all across at once, and I rides on an ass or a mule, and swears Portuguese, and have got a diarrhea and bites from the mosquitoes. But what of that? Comfort must not be expected by folks that go a pleasuring. Lord ByronRead more at location 1267 • Delete this highlight
Even without getting into expenses like car payments and property tax, most people pay for things like gas, phone service, cable, electricity, and internet service. A conservative estimate tallies those expenses up be at least two to three hundred dollars a month. Spending a lot more wouldn’t be difficult. To put things in perspective, I pay an average of just $265 per month in airfare.Read more at location 1273 • Delete this highlight
I spend somewhere around $1500 per month, which is broken down approximately as follows: • $500 for lodging[1] • $265 for plane, train, ship, and cruise tickets • $500 for food[2] • $50 in fees for phones, remote mail, faxing • $185 in gear replacement and miscellaneous expenses[3] This is an average over the long term. In places like Panama my expenses are closer to $900, and in Tokyo they can be closer to $2000. Often times the most expensive flights lead to the places with the cheapest lodging and food, so those two figures relate conversely.Read more at location 1290 • Delete this highlight
The easiest way to check the whole week at once is by using the "flexible dates" feature of your favorite flight search engine. My favorite is Kayak. Beware, though, the flexible date feature is not completely accurate. Often times it will find the best flights only on your preferred day and some second best flights on the other days. I always spend the extra few minutes to manually check each day individually. Not doing so could be a hundred dollar mistake!Read more at location 1336 • Delete this highlight
Even if you only need a one way, check the price of a round trip ticket as well. It is extremely common for a round trip ticket to be sold less that a one way ticket for the same route.Read more at location 1340 • Delete this highlight
aggregators don’t show you the best flight you can buy. They show you the best flight that you can buy from one vendor. This is a small but crucial distinction. Often times you can buy two complementary tickets which end up costing far less than the best price on the effective combined route.Read more at location 1351 • Delete this highlight
Hub to hub flights, like LAX to NYC are so cheap that it’s often worth taking a quick hop to the closer one to get to the other. Las Vegas is a city that is unbelievably cheap to get to from almost anywhere.Read more at location 1366 • Delete this highlight
An advanced strategy you can employ is to use the return ticket to get to a hub city.Read more at location 1371 • Delete this highlight
Air Asia offers totally free fares several times a year, and Ryan Air has them on a pretty regular basisRead more at location 1378 • Delete this highlight
These lounges are owned by the airlines and command a hefty annual fee for entrance. However, all American Express Platinum Card members are entitled to unlimited entry as long as they’re flying on the airline whose lounge they want to use. Alone this can nearly justify the annual fee of the card, but combined with the other benefits, it’s an easy decision to get the card. But what happens when you’re flying on an airline that doesn’t have a lounge? Normally I just hang out in the terminal with the peasants, but if the layover is three hours or longer, I exploit a small loophole. Simply go up to the nearest gate of the airline whose club you want to use, and tell the agent you’d like to purchase a fully refundable ticket on the last flight of the day to New York. Once you get your ticket, head to the airport lounge, and then call the airline on your cell phone to cancel it once you get inside.Read more at location 1434 • Delete this highlight
Some airports are better suited than others for overnight stays. Luckily there’s a great web site at www.sleepinginairports.net that reviews a huge number of airports.Read more at location 1475 • Delete this highlight
"Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! We return." - Edward M. ForsterRead more at location 1494 • Delete this highlight
Locals travel on trains, which provides a good opportunity to make friends with them and ask them about their country.Read more at location 1499 • Delete this highlight
the Trans Siberian railroad from London to Beijing. The trip costs little more than an equivalent plane ticket, and it takes you through Russia, Siberia, and Mongolia.Read more at location 1506 • Delete this highlight
check Seat61.com to see what train trips are availableRead more at location 1509 • Delete this highlight
Beware of rail passes. Not all buffets are worth the price of admission. Europe has an amazing rail system, but it is disappointingly expensive. Rail passes, unless you are hell-bent on extracting every last dollar out of them, generally aren’t worth the cost. Check the various options before making that decision for yourself, though.Read more at location 1510 • Delete this highlight
Queen Mary II. She’s the only ship that regularly crosses the Atlantic,Read more at location 1557 • Delete this highlight
When shopping for cruises, the general rule of thumb is that fifty dollars a day or less is a great price. Through Cruise Compete, most standard cruises can be booked at that rate.Read more at location 1567 • Delete this highlight
Every fall and spring there is a great migration of cruise ships. Cruise ships can generally make more money in Europe in the summer and more money in the Caribbean in the winter. That means that in the fall many cruise companies want to move their ships to Europe, and in the Spring they want to move them back.Read more at location 1571 • Delete this highlight
One excellent route is to take a ferry from Beijing to Seoul and then another ferry from Seoul to Tokyo. It’s far cheaper than a flight from Beijing to Tokyo, offers a lot more character, and gives you a stop in South Korea.Read more at location 1598 • Delete this highlight
There are many ferries that coordinate with train schedules and stops. It is actually possible to go from Morocco all the way to Vietnam by train and Ferry.Read more at location 1602 • Delete this highlight
Towns are full of people, houses full of tenants, hotels full of guests, trains full of travelers, cafés full of customers, parks full of promenaders, consulting-rooms of famous doctors full of patients, theatres full of spectators, and beaches full of bathers. What previously was, in general, no problem, now begins to be an everyday one, namely, to find room." Jose Ortega y GassetRead more at location 1615 • Delete this highlight
I’ve had my best luck with sites like VRBO and Craigslist.Read more at location 1668 • Delete this highlight
couchsurfing.com, creating a profile, and searching in the area you want to visit.Read more at location 1675 • Delete this highlight
Take the Atlanta Hotel in Bangkok, for example. In the fifties it was the best hotel in all of Bangkok. It hasn’t been maintained well, but it’s in the dead center of the best area of the city. The staff are wonderful, the rooms cost around twenty dollars a night, and there’s a large and deep pool to sit around and swim in. Staying there is the easy choice when visiting Bangkok.Read more at location 1688 • Delete this highlight
The key to getting good deals on hotels is to avoid big sites like Expedia. Unless you’re going to Las Vegas, they won’t have the best price. Search Google for hotels and book at their individual sites. Better yet, here’s a trick I learned from a friend in the hotel industry: call up and ask if they have anything other than the "rack rate". The rack rate is the insider term for the published rate. Using it makes them assume that you’re also in the hospitality industry, and has never failed to earn me a discount. I don’t know how to say rack rate in other languages, though, so I’ve only done it in English speaking countries. Another excellent option for bigger cities is Priceline. Using advanced techniques found on sites like biddingfortravel.com, you can often get amazing deals, especially on upscale hotels. I managed to book a $237 room at the Westin on the water in Toronto for just $60, and I suspect I could have bid lower.Read more at location 1699 • Delete this highlight
If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success. John D. RockefellerRead more at location 1728 • Delete this highlight
I’m a die hard entrepreneur, and I find it difficult to even consider that there is any decent reason to work for someone else.Read more at location 1731 • Delete this highlight
I have a wonderful assistant from the Philippines who does great work at a great price.Read more at location 1743 • Delete this highlight
Do work that you’re passionate about. Let the money come second. • Create something remarkable that provides real benefit to your customers. • Work harder than anyone else and hold yourself to higher standards than everyone else. • Be ruthlessly persistent. Most people aren’t.Read more at location 1748 • Delete this highlight
Craigslist is a great resource for finding remote work.Read more at location 1761 • Delete this highlight
Elance.com is a site that is specifically dedicated to freelance contractors, complete with ratings and searchable listings. The site is perfectly designed and I can’t imagine anyone going there and not finding something they could do.Read more at location 1764 • Delete this highlight
If you have no skills to draw on which translate well into online work, then maybe the time to build them now. Businesses are always looking for workers who can use specific programs. If you learn how to use Photoshop, for example, you can make a living. Figure out which program you’d like to become proficient at. Buy the software, buy the great tutorials to learn it from Lynda.com, and spend some time practicing. The money you’ve amassed from selling everything should easily last you through the transition period.Read more at location 1775 • Delete this highlight
The modern American tourist now fills his experience with pseudo-events. He has come to expect both more strangeness and more familiarity than the world naturally offers. He has come to believe that he can have a lifetime of adventure in two weeks and all the thrills of risking his life without any real risk at all. Daniel J. Boorstin,Read more at location 1801 • Delete this highlight
To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries. Aldous HuxleyRead more at location 1872 • Delete this highlight
And of course, there’s the internet. Besides UNESCO’s web site, there are two places I check for every single trip: Wikipedia and Wikitravel. Neither is as comprehensive as a guidebook, but they’re generally written by people who really care about the area they’re writing about. Amongst the standard hotel recommendations and tired commentary on the strange political situation of the country, you’ll often find a gem of a tip.Read more at location 1893 • Delete this highlight
We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started... and know the place for the first time. T. S. EliotRead more at location 1905 • Delete this highlight
