Category Archives: travel

Travel Jacket and More Clothing for the Digital Nomad

October 26, 2016 curiouscat Leave a comment

This jacket from ScottyeVest (Mens – Womens) is designed with a huge number of pockets to secure all your gadgets and accessories. Sure your phone, headphones, keys, passport but also your iPad, Macbook and power supply. The jacket offers 29 pockets specifically engineered to hold your items and make them easily accessible and usable (for example letting you swipe and use your phone while it remains in your pocket).

ScottyeVest offers many different tech ready clothing options including:
Men Travel Pants (9 pockets)
Men’s RFID Travel Vest (26 pockets)
Women’s Travel Vest (17 pockets)
Follow any of those links to see many more great options.

This is the type of clothing I would create for my travels if they hadn’t done it for me. The convenience and safety offered by these many options are essentially for convent travel with all your devices and important papers (passport, credit cards, etc.).

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travel

Thoughts on Security Risks while Traveling (especially violence)

May 25, 2016 curiouscat Leave a comment

This is a reposting a response I made several years ago on Reddit on “defending yourself abroad.”

How to travel safely

Not getting drunk at bars likely proactively addresses a significant portion of issues.

Second, if you are coming from the USA or many other fairly high personal crime countries there are many places you are much safer while traveling. If you are coming from Japan, Singapore, Scandinavia you probably are much more likely to be the victim of crime than at home.

Kuala Lumpr, Malaysia

If you are not drunk the most likely crime is theft, while not good, it is much better than being attacked in my opinion.

The biggest concern in a new environment is that you don’t pick up on the clues of danger that you would in your home environment. This means to be safe you are wise to try and develop the ability to be more skeptical and more attuned to what is going on around you. You may also be the target as you may be more visible, may be seen as rich, may be seen as a jerk (often being drunk helps boost this impression).

There is danger everywhere. But we often exaggerate the danger of new place (new to us). Being careful makes sense, but the dangers away from home are often statistically less though are unfamiliarity may lead us to be less aware and able to avoid situations we find in unfamiliar surroundings. Also, being on your own (instead of in a city with lots of friends that help keep you in line, give you protection in numbers in some situations…) can increase the risk to you, especially again in unfamiliar surroundings.

I doubt learning fighting skills makes much sense. Outside of drunken brawls most places are not that violet and if they are many times it is guns and such things (though most often that level of violence is aimed at other criminals or family and friends).

There is other violence (between people) of course and it is sad and something to avoid. I would be amazed if car and bus deaths (of travelers) and injury don’t exceed by a long way any person on person violence against travelers.

travel

Camper Van Travel

February 28, 2016 curiouscat 1 Comment

One of the ideas I am exploring for travel around the USA is a camper van. One of the great things about traveling around SE Asia is the ease of finding perfectly fine accommodation at very reasonable prices. That isn’t nearly so easy in the USA.

And also travel around the USA by car offers many advantages over air travel (given how horrible the customer service is for air travel in the USA). Also most places you visit having a car to travel around is necessary. Especially if you want to visit state and national parks, as I would. Really there are a few places, such as New York City where traveling locally is easier without a car, but that is very rare.

This is a very interesting version of a custom built camper van (using a VW as a base):

The customizations are done by Danbury Motor Caravans. Sadly (for someone in the USA) they are in the UK (they also provide vans for Europe). Also the vans are not cheap, but they really are quite amazing vehicles. I hope we see more of these options. Comment with options for those in the USA.

Another interesting option from Danbury is the smallest, and also cheapest (from £19,345) based on a Ford Transit.

I would like something that I can drive easily (not some oversized behemoth), that is comfortable to sleep and work on the computer in (for when the weather is bad). The idea would be to sleep at campgrounds and RV parks and the like (but also with the option of staying at motels and lodges). For those times when you are parking and sleeping without the conveniences at a campground a bathroom option would be nice (but it seems that will be hard to fit – some kind of camper toilet would likely have to do).

I am not sure I will find anything that works but the right option could make for a really useful way to travel. I also probably wouldn’t get one of the Danbury vehicles (due to high prices) but the more of these on the road would mean used vehicles down the road which is something I might consider. Or if I come into a bunch of money then I might be able to pick up a wonderful vehicle myself.

travel

Location Independent Living Can Be In Your Comfort Zone and a Good Experience

November 1, 2015 curiouscat 2 Comments

A location independent lifestyle (digital nomad etc.) isn’t just for those that want to challenge themselves and step outside their comfort zone. There are many different types of people that a location independent lifestyle works for. I don’t really fit with “stepping outside your comfort zone” etc.. But quitting a “normal job” and traveling and working online works for me.

I think way more it is about this type of thing being in your comfort zone. When I hear people talking about how they stepped out of their comfort zone it seems to me they just aren’t comfortable plodding through an office for 40 years. Doing that is outside their comfort zone. The reason they did something else was because it was in their comfort zone.

I think there are benefits to shaking things up and trying things you are not comfortable with. I think way more often when people talk about that being successful for them what they really did was shake off the shackles of an uncomfortable situation and found one that is more in their comfort zone.

view of Johor Bahru and Singapore from my balcony

View of Johor Bahru, Malaysia (link to my blog on living in Malaysia with Singapore in the far background. This is the view I would see as I worked from my home office.

I think it sounds cool to say you are being adventurous and brave by doing things those boring friends are not willing to do as they stick with their boring jobs. But I don’t think that is really the most accurate way to view it.

If you want the best chance of a change making you happy figure out what you really are comfortable with and create that.

If you want to grow, challenge yourself and try different things.

There is a small group that is most comfortable constantly challenging things. For them their comfort zone is to constantly be taking challenges most people would find uncomfortable. If those people really want to step outside their comfort zone they should seek the opposite of wha they are comfortable with which they don’t want to do. They also tend to like to see themselves as mavericks and brave, etc. so the story of challenging themselves sounds good to them so they use it.

For most people, fairly small attempts to live outside your comfort zone, followed by a chance to reconcile what you learned during your challenge into your lifestyle will be the most effective way to grow. We (the types of people reading this) tend to think of growth as really important. I agree but I think we may also emphasize that a bit too much and just plain happiness too little.

But who knows, I certainly don’t. These are just my thoughts this day on this topic. I do think Aristotle was right about the importance of an examined life. But at the same time I don’t see a huge correlation with that thinking and how satisfied people are with their lives.

Still I believe accurate self evaluation is useful in figuring out what to do next. I think the whole step outside your comfort zone thing is largely a myth – especially the way people explain what they mean by that.

travel

Great Food in Chiang Mai, Thailand

October 15, 2015 curiouscat Leave a comment

I found several great places to eat in Chiang Mai. I enjoy good food. And thankfully I can find very good food all over the world (anywhere I have been). That makes me happy. I have fewer instances of finding really great food that I miss if I move on.

It isn’t that I don’t miss the great food I had but when I find lots of great new choices I am fine. I generally eat fairly cheaply, in stalls some, but also in simple restaurants. But rarely in expensive places (though in cheap locales I will splurge much more than if I am in an expensive city).

Banana Flower Salad at the Achan Vegetarian Restaurant. Absolutely wonderful. All photos by John Hunter.

I found lots of very good food in Chiang Mai. I found 3 places I really enjoyed a great deal (I went to each weekly, or more often). Anchan Vegetarian Restaurant is one of the places I would suggest everyone try. I see it as a highlight of being in Chiang Mai. I rarely find restaurants I feel this way about. To reach this level they not only have to provide great food, atmosphere and service but also capture some of the essence of locale.

The also had Anchan juice which when I asked what it was the waitress pointed to the blue berries on the mural. I didn’t enjoy the juice so much actually, so only tried it once, but it was worth trying.

Chicken Banana Curry at Cooking Love, again wonderful. They also give you very large servings.

Two other places I highly recommend in Chiang Mai are: Cooking Love and Food4Thought.

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My Early Experience as a Digital Nomad: Part Two

June 10, 2015 curiouscat 3 Comments

My early experience as a digital nomad has been enjoyable. It has also been filled with a series of small missteps and some small things that have worked out well that I haven’t read about from others (several might just be so simple that no-one bothers to mention them, but they may give you something to think about if you are planning to try the nomadic lifestyle.

Also see – My Early Experience as a Digital Nomad: Part One, Technology

Choosing to start in Chiang Mai, Thailand was fortuitous. It really is very convenient for digital nomads. Monthly renting is easy in Chiang Mai. Lots of great food and co-work spaces options. Good internet all over. It is an easy and enjoyable place to live.

Maybe I missed it but one very small mis-step was not packing a towel. I don’t recall that on the list of things to bring but there hasn’t been a towel at three of my stays, including Chiang Mai. Small missteps are the best ones.

I started my digital nomad ways a bit differently than most (though largely in similar ways). I lived in Malaysia a couple years first and then set off to be a nomad. I just sent two boxes a bit bigger than those for a ream of paper back home before I left. And I gave a bunch of stuff away I had picked up (books, printer, basketball, plants, cloths, etc.). But I decided just to start the nomad life with my large suitcase, carry on sized suitcase and my small backpack.

Those suitcases have been fine for my travels so far. But I have done what is probably sensible and create a much better system for packing. I don’t normally leave stuff behind but so far I have left behind; the electric cord for my shaver, two hats, 2 socks (not matching so I know have 3 socks of 2 types) and something else that I can’t remember right now.

I also spend way more time looking for stuff than I should. I think I would be wise to create content pouches that then go in specific places so I know where to find stuff. I do that in a half-hearted way now that works in general but those few items that fall in can waste a bunch of time. I have a house for this stay and room to fully unpack and arrange things, so hopefully I will be in a bit better shape after this stint in Vietnam.

I also managed to rip a pair of my shorts pretty spectacularly on a hike. I managed to get home ok, my uncool belly-pack hid the ludicrous tears to some degree. Luckily for me as part of my packing up I took a couple extra pieces of clothing, so I didn’t need to replace the shorts. I have extra cloths I don’t really need and probably wouldn’t take if I go the large backpack route when I relaunch as a nomad next time (which I think is what I will do, and also take my current backpack).

Large tears made while I did the wonderful Chompet hike across the river from Luang Prabang.

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Circumhorizontal Arc (Fire Rainbow) in Hoi An, Vietnam

May 7, 2015 curiouscat 1 Comment

I saw my first Circumhorizontal Arcs (Fire Rainbows) display in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. A couple days ago I experienced them again in Hoi An, Vietnam.

The scene looked much more spectacular than this.

All I had with me at the time, was my iPad mini and this is the best photo I could get. Zooming in on the fire rainbow provided very poor photos. The iPad mini and iPhone (and other smart phones) have remarkably good cameras for many shots. But for a few types of shots they are very poor. Getting a good shot of this rainbow was one such case.

I biked home and got my Canon PowerShot SX60 HS and took this photo.

Close up of circumhorizontal arc (fire rainbow) in Hoi An, Vietnam with Canon

I had actually posted about the phenomenon of circumhorizontal arcs on my science blog in 2006 before I had seen them for myself.

A circumhorizontal arc (also known by the exciting name, fire rainbow) is an optical phenomenon – an ice-halo formed by plate-shaped ice crystals in high level cirrus clouds. If the cloud is at the right angle to the sun, the crystals will refract the sunlight just as when rainbow is created.

Fire rainbows can only occur when the sun is 58 degrees or higher above the horizon and when the clouds or haze contain plate-shaped ice crystals. The arc has a considerable angular extent and thus, rarely is complete. When only fragments of a cirrus cloud are in the appropriate sky and sun position, they may appear to shine with spectral colors.

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My Early Experience as a Digital Nomad: Part One, Technology

April 28, 2015 curiouscat 2 Comments

Choosing to start in Chiang Mai, Thailand was fortuitous. It really is very convenient for digital nomads. Monthly renting is easy. Lots of great food and co-work spaces options. Good internet all over. It is an easy and enjoyable place to live.

In this post I will explore my experience with technology and in part two I will discuss other topics.

Getting a large data plan has been great (10 Gb+). That is the biggest tip I have for digital nomads. If you only work in a cafe or co-working space I guess it doesn’t matter. But I like to work when I wake up and late at night in my room. And making video calls, uploading photos and videos or streaming video also required a good connection. Sometimes the place I am staying has good or great wifi and things are good. But it is very nice not to have to worry about connectivity.

Lizard on golden Buddha statue in Luang Prabang, Laos (see more of my photos from Laos)

My first 3 destinations (Thailand, Laos, Cambodia) has had 10 Gb plus high speed data plans for about $10 (for a month). My 4th, Vietnam only offers 3 Gb for about $10 and Viettel blocks a personal hotspot, I thought only the USA was that lame). I think I will try another that offers 5Gb (I still need to find the price – a hotspot will let you tether your laptop for them).

I went to 3 Viettel stores and none were able to help or really seem to know what personal hotspot or tethering was. An authorized Apple reseller understood but was unable to get Viettel to work and could see Mobifone worked fine so suggested I just use that.

I went to a mobiphone store in Hoi An (location marked on our Hoi An map) and with trouble got the new sim card. They eventually went to the back and got a supervisor (I suppose) and then things went fine. It still didn’t work so the supervisor took me to a nearby mobile phone store where their tech person was able to get it to work quickly. You need to update the APN listing for cellular data and personal hotspot (she forgot the 2nd one).

The first APN field is m-wap with username mms and password mms (I think). There is lots of stuff online about editing APN to get Viettel to work, none of that worked for me or the various people that tried it (1 Viettel employee did and the authorized Apple store did).

In Luang Prabag, Laos I was 95% on my data plan as the great place I stayed didn’t have wifi essentially at all (much worse than ancient dial up). By using a data plan I could stay there.

I actually brought an extension cord (again I probably wouldn’t have but I had the room so…). It has been very helpful: I only need one converter (though I have 3) and can attach lots of devices with them all sharing the right type of connector (laptop, dumb cell phone, razor, battery charger (for my camera). It is also helpful in stretching from the power outlet to a convenient place.

I keep a dumb cell phone because some places require 2 factor authentication (credit card for making a payment online and I have some sites setup to require 2 factor authentication also). I get sim cards in whatever country I am in and only have an iPad mini (data but no cell phone capability). So even if I could get the phone number updated in each country (probably could for sensible places like Google) I don’t have one to update too. But even more critical to keeping the dumb phone is I can’t image getting the bank to make something work. Getting normally stuff is like pulling teeth. Changing my phone number all the time seems like it would be a recipe for trouble. I added money to my long life mobile phone plan in Malaysia (it lasts a year for something like US$10 and you just pay per call – I figure it is also an emergency phone in case something happens) and I have gotten text messages (for those 2-factor authentication needs) everywhere I have been, for no charge as far as I can tell.

Not having a local number is actually a bit annoying, but not critical. I wanted a larger screen to view maps while walking around (so didn’t want an iPhone – and I didn’t want Android). I would likely get the new iPhone 6+ instead of an iPad mini if making a decision now.

Continued in: Part Two

Related: Online Plane Reservations (also on my trip I have found online is not always the cheapest airline fares) – Extending Your Visa in Chiang Mai, Thailand – Curious Cat Gadgets Blog

travel

Curious Cat as a Celebrity in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

March 17, 2015 curiouscat 4 Comments

As I visited site in and around Yogyakarta, Indonesia I was frequently asked to be in photos. As a non-celebrity this was an odd experience. One of the things I enjoy about travel is the odd experiences or just seeing things that are a little different. These are usually small things many people wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t care about but I find it a fun addition to seeing amazing sites.

School kids photo with curious cat

Now I suppose some people may try to explain that Curious Cat isn’t a celebrity in Yogyakarta, but I think they are just jealous. Sure lots of other people seemed to be asked to be in photos during my visit. I determined they must just be celebrities I didn’t notice (how many people would recognize me after all?).

I just imagine the Indonesian tourists in the Yogyakarta area are very observant and appreciate internet celebrities (even super minor ones).

I suppose an alternative explanation might be they just liked having foreigners in their photos to show friends. That might seem a bit odd but most things we do seem a bit odd if you have to explain it to someone. Why do we take photos with even more famous celebrities than me? Why do we share photos of our cats sitting in boxes? Why do we post photos of our lunch on Instagram? Why do we like to get together with our friends while each of us texts with other friends using our smart phones?

I enjoyed being able to do people a favor just by being in their photo. I like to help people especially when it doesn’t require I suffer much. I don’t know why the girls in this photo wanted a photo. They didn’t speak English so I could get answers from them. But they were at a very minor temple, Candi Sambisara. During the time I was there only one other couple that showed up, who were also celebrities (based on the girls getting photos with them too) – they were too far away for me to recognize them.

I suppose in this instance it might be some sort of exercise to get kids to practice interacting with people. They spoke a few words of English. If so, it seems kind of silly, but lots of what I was put through in school was pretty silly. Or maybe they just thought it was a fun way to hang out with their friends and occasionally go get photos with whoever came to this minor temple.

The other asking to have me in photos were usually from people I think were tourists from other parts of Indonesia. It was definitely a concentration of such request that I don’t normally see. I do occasionally get such requests, as I travel. Usually I think just people having a bit of fun interacting with other people. But they are rare, in my trip to China it happened once.

The more remote your destination and the fewer tourist the more likely for people to be interested in just you as a stand in for something but not anything significant (so basically a stand in for a celebrity), I find. Which is one thing I find out about it being common in Yogyakarta, there are tons of tourists for the amazing Borobudur and so much more.

My other experience with drawing crowds just to see me and be around me was in the Sahel (Niger and Burkino Faso). My brother and I were distinctly rare – white kids. White adults were rare there, but kids extremely so; I would imagine rare enough we easily could have been the first ones any of the kids saw and even maybe even so for the adults in many of the places we went.

travel

Jianshui Wet Market in Yunnan, China

February 3, 2015 curiouscat 3 Comments

Jianshui, Yunnan, China has several tourist destinations including an old town with a restored Qing Dynasty mansion and garden and the Jianshui Temple of Confucius. The Jianshui wet market is primarily for the locals with a few tourists, like me, that take in some local culture.

The market isn’t really much different than many such markets all over South East and East Asia. They each vary a bit but are pretty similar.

Some of the rest of this post might be a bit much for some, so if you are squeamish you might want to skip it. One of the interesting things about traveling is seeing how differently people think and how our culture guides our thoughts and feelings.

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