After 10 years in the Internet industry, veteran web designer Kelly Hale and developer Mike Schimanowsky (Shim) have sold their worldly belongings, bid farewell to friends and family, packed a laptop and traded in the daily 9-5 for a life of nomadic freelancing and travel.
Our first stop? It was the Philippines, where began our search for the idyllic stretch of sandy beach… complete with WiFi connection.
Since then, we’ve been through Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Hong Kong. After a year abroad in Southeast Asia, we returned home to Canada for a brief visit with family and friends. Then continuing the journey, we moved on to Costa Rica to begin the Central American leg of our nomadic travels.
Here we hope to relate our travels and post pictures for friends and family, and to provide some insight into the challenges and rewards of our journey.
Best,
Mike and Kelly
Posted by: Shim
This is dangerous reading… I’m starting to look at exotic places, fantasizing about leaving my job, telling my boss I’m outta here (oops, I am the boss), and generally getting lost somewhere there isn’t a real estate developer in sight. (Is that even possible???) Anyway, love your photos and musings. Vicarious living seems to be my lot right now. But one can dream …
WOW! I’ve been reading some of your blog and it’s really cool and interesting. This is an excellent way for me to kill time when I am supposed to be doing work. Keep it up! :)
wow kelly it’s great to be working with you again ~so envious! (asia rain still seems better than yvr rain for some reason)
So that means, i got another year in this dreaded business before i can move and live somewhere exotic. haha. great blog
wow… nice that the first stop was in the Philippines! hope you really had fun and hope you will be back! you should go to bantayan island in northern part of Cebu..
my fiance and myself our planning a similar paradigm shift.we live in victoria bc yet constantly crave foreign culture, challenge and excitement which we have found comes with travel. we have a home in Bali which we use as a base to explore south east asia. my fiance being a teacher we hope to in the near future have her work only one semester and travel the remaining six months throughout Asia.
Sounds like a great plan Adrien. Good luck in your travels! Roaming southeast Asia was an unforgettable experience. Bali was really great too! We were in the Seminyak and Sanur area for a month. Really nice people.
Hi Mike and Kelly – I’ve been reading your blog for a couple of months and then last night, lying in bed, I thought: I should thank them! So, thanks!
I’m blogging about gearing up for a traveling life – including all the tiresome detail about selling a house, fretting over how to pay the bar bill on the road, and doubting whether it will all, ever, come together (www.ShoreDiveLife.com), and your blog has GREAT details on costs, keeping in shape (or not so much), and everything else I’m pondering. Hey, maybe you should trademark “You know you’re fucking jealous!” parties – we’re already planning ours!
Haha. That’s great Nancy! Thanks for the thanks. I’m glad to hear there’s something of value here for others.
Best of luck with your travel preparations. It’s sometimes more challenging than the traveling itself, but everything comes together eventually… It’s an inevitability when it won’t all fit in your suitcase. ;) What’s your next destination?
Western Carribean cruise for Thanksgiving, and then Curacao and Bonaire (my favorite!) for some shore diving! Hope something of note happens soon in Tamarindo so we can hear all about it…
Salut, i just stumbled on your blog. Inspiring. I’m in the process of reorienting my life, leaving my sedentary life for a nomadic one. I’m also a graphic designer, mostly in print but morphing to web slowly. I’m giving myself a couple of years to settle everything i can: sell my house, get a couple of client and learning more about the web, setting up website and learning a couple of new trade to diversify my income. You can now count me as an avid reader. :)
Pat
Hi Pat, welcome to the site. Thanks for letting us know you’re out there. Congrats on choosing to pursue a nomadic lifestyle and best of luck in making the transition. We’re certainly glad we did.
how was the transition process for you? Maybe a blog about how you did it. I’m very interested in knowing how you made it and i’m sure alot of people would also. Maybe you already did, if it’s the case let me know…:)
Thanks
Hey Pat,
We’ve done a couple posts in that vein in the planning category of the blog. Have a look here and bounce back to the beginning. Or this one in particular. Cheers!
Thanks for the post and have a great year to come. Cheers.
hi guys, love your website…..glad i stumbled on it…..we are on our 6th month of travels….currently in S.E. Asia…..too bad we won’t be running into you–you seem very nice…..well, at any rate, we will be sure to follow you on your travels…..be safe, christine and paul
Hi Christine. Thanks for the compliments. I see from your travel blog that you’re in Kuala Lumpur at the moment. If you get a chance, check out the Old China Cafe in chinatown. Great food! Yeah, it doesn’t look like our paths are going to cross any time soon, but best of luck to you guys on your journey and maybe we’ll have a chance to meet up when we head over to Europe. Thanks for stopping by. Hope to hear from you again.