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Comment by TriinT | Hacker News Reader

I used to nurture that dream as well. Now that I am older and wiser, I think it's a fantasy.

I honestly think it would be better to get 6-month or 9-month contract jobs, work like hell during that time, and then take some months off to see the world. And don't take your laptop with you ;-)

I have a bunch of Norwegian friends who did this. They would work March-September in Norway, when the weather isn't so bad, and then they would spend the winter months in Thailand, Bali, etc. I think this is the optimal scenario because work is separated from travel. When you're working, you are just working. When you're traveling, you're free to enjoy the places you visit and don't have to worry about deadlines, internet outages, etc

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Ditto, except without the older and wiser part, and with 'tried it, and didn't work out so well.' (I'm in Toronto for 4 months. Didn't know /anyone/ here when I came here. Mainly working, but it's not a high stress job because I'm still in college.)

It's always seemed to me that you don't really experience the culture of a place without living/working there for a reasonably extended period of time. So, I understand where the OP's motivation to do this stems from. However, honestly, people working in most places, aren't going to be willing to chat with you about cultural differences. They're busy working, hanging out with their existing friend groups, etc. You either end up very lonely and doing things by yourself, or spending a great deal of effort in making friends for a short period of time.

Doing what the OP wants to do would end up being a lesson in how to make new friends very quickly very often. Or, you might find out that you really like [x] location and stay there!

i agree that this is probably easier and accomplishes a similar goal, its not quite the same and not quite what i'd like to end up doing. may end up having to wander down this path though, as a compromise.

i think the underlying concept behind what i'd like to accomplish is the aspect of freedom associated with it. doing a constant cycle of hard work and then vacation doesn't quite have as much of that freedom to it.

beyond that, working a few hours a day and/or being able to work when i'd prefer to do it would probably leave me more satisfied and productive with the work i'm doing than if i were chained to a desk slaving away to ensure a few extra weeks vacation.

The way I see things:

Suppose I want to hire you for a few months. You tell me you will be traveling in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand for 6 months. You tell me you will have access to the internet and work while on the move.

I would think you're not committed enough. I would also worry that you may get your laptop stolen with proprietary data on it while on a bus trip through the Cambodian jungle. And I am worried that you will have trouble accessing the internet in some remote locations, which would cause you to miss deadlines. To cut a long story short, there are too many risks. I would be better off hiring someone else.

The freedom would be great. Everyone would love to have the freedom to travel around. That does not mean it's not a fantasy.

Why not travel around and do rentacoder.com programming gigs once in a while?

> Why not travel around and do rentacoder.com programming gigs once in a while?

I was considering trying this in the near future. Has anyone here used it (or odesk)? If so what was your experience? Is it difficult to get jobs given that depending on where you are people in other countries may be able to undercut your price by a significant amount?

oh, i agree. i don't think that i would be able to procure many longer term gigs like that, unless i had some special connections. the scheduling alone would be rough.

i think the ideal solution would be to do something like create my own subscription-based niche web app that would hopefully garner enough users to support the process (which i am in fact working on doing now). and then spend the 'work time' performing maintenance and improving it. and, if extra income is necessary, procure short-term gigs that i could knock out in days/weeks.

If you're working for yourself, then it could work.

Revenue is just one part of the picture. If you can lower your costs dramatically, then you don't need much revenue to support your nomadic lifestyle.

When traveling around Poland, I met a couple of Brits who had moved to Poland for some months to work on their startups. They did freelance work over the internet to pay for their expenses. Thing is, living in Poland you bleed off money a lot slower than you would in London, and you enjoy a much better lifestyle for the same price.

I think it's a good point. But I think - and never having traveled for an extensive period of time, maybe I'm wrong - just traveling could get old after a while.

I think having something to do in a place - even if it's entirely remote, but having something to do besides lay on the beach - could be grounding. Also, especially abroad where the cost of living isn't so high, if you can get by with 10/20 hour work weeks that leaves plenty of time to explore a city and make friends.

Again, never done extensive dedicated traveling so I can't say personally. But that's my feeling.

You don't have to go global, you can be a nomad in you own country. This guy was doing it before broadband (or the internet as we know it) existed.

http://microship.com/resources/technomadic-tools.html

Being a nomad in one's country is fun if one's country is big. I come from a tiny European country which would take only a few weeks to explore, eh eh.

That's a beautiful story. Thanks for sharing the URL.

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