Have Internet Will Travel A blog about travel freelancing in the Philippines

Continuing our series of travel budget posts, here’s the numbers from the last 3 months. We spent 2 months in Malaysia with 1 month spent in Penang and 1 month in Malaysian Borneo. Since this was the end of the Asian leg of our journey, we traveled around a lot more and took part in a few more costly activities like diving at Sipadan and a motorcycle tour near Kota Kinabalu. I also had to buy a new laptop in Kuala Lumpur to replace my busted computer. Then there’s the clothes budget. We had to prepare for upcoming Canadian weather and business meetings. Overall, it was a big hit to the wallet.

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Posted by: Shim

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So a while back, John from JetSetCitizen.com asked us if we’d like to do an interview with him about our nomadic travel lifestyle. We took him up on it and the resulting interview was just posted.

Have a look here: Interview with Nomadic Couple, Kelly Hale and Mike Schimanowsky

Thanks John! It really made us think about our lifestyle, traveling as a couple and how that impacts our journey and relationship.

Posted by: Shim

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Happy September 1st! This marks the 1 year anniversary of Kelly and I becoming homeless wanderers.

There’s been a lack of posts from us for a few weeks. I suppose that’s because not much has really changed back home since we left a year ago. The same old haunts are still there. Our friends are pretty much as we left them. Just a few of them got married, or popped out babies, or got a little heavier. ;)

We headed back to Kelowna after visiting Kelly’s family in Edmonton, and it was my turn to see my parents. My folks are based on Vancouver Island, but just bought a place in Kelowna and took possession this week. It would be really convenient for us if we ever came home. No more choosing who’s parents we spend Xmas with, but this year we’ll have to ask them to come visit us instead. Read More…

Posted by: Shim

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This week was all about the family! We rented a car in Vancouver and headed to Kelowna. First stop was my mom and Bryan’s place where we spent four days eating and chatting and chatting and eating. It was super nice to see the folks, sleep in a comfy bed, play with the dogs and eat lots of good food. Read More…

Posted by: Kelly

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Vancouver is cold! We stepped off the plane Saturday, looked at each other and thought “Holy crap, why are we back?”. But seriously it’s sooo good to be home! The first thing I did after checking into the hotel was brush my teeth without having to use bottled water… it may sound like a little thing, but drinkable tap water is so nice!

Next up was Caesars! Oh, how we missed caesars! I know those of you who aren’t Canadian don’t really understand this, but it’s one of the few truly Canadian things we have. That first one was so good, we just had to have another…
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Posted by: Kelly

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Wow, our last week in Asia! I can’t believe it’s been a year already, (ok, so we’re short by two weeks, but close enough). We’ve been busy making plans for our next couple of moves, and generally just getting organized. We’ll spend just over a month back in Canada visiting friends & family, and making a few work connections before we head off to Costa Rica to continue this crazy lifestyle of ours.

In preparation for our return to North America, we spent this week shopping. We’ve been wearing pretty much the same clothes for the last year and they’ve definitely seen better days, so it was time to stock up on some new threads. We needed not only replacements of all the board-shorts/beach-clothes we’ve been wearing, but also a few client friendly outfits, as we both have a couple of meetings while we’re back in Vancouver. Read More…

Posted by: Kelly

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Since Mike finds monkeys creepy and had no desire to see Orang-Utans while we were in Asia, we didn’t bother making the trip to Sandakan, eastern Borneo, to visit Sepilok Rehabilitation Center. Luckily, however, there is a smaller Orang-Utan sanctuary, not too far from where we were staying. I took a day out from motor-biking and went to see the Orang-Utans by myself.

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Posted by: Kelly

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Back in 2007 I picked up an issue of Bike magazine with an idyllic inside cover shot of a motorcycle traveling up a pristine, empty road through lush jungle valleys shrouded in mist. “Like a trackday paradise” read the title, and I was pretty much sold. Reading the actual article did little to dissuade me. Government funded and maintained highways, little to no traffic, and you get to stay in a beautifully architected house overlooking a valley of rainforest below? This was undoubtedly motorcycle paradise. The article was ear marked, often re-read, and each time I swore that if I had a chance to visit Borneo, I’d be tearing through the S-curves on an Aprilia Pegaso, wind in my face, tires to tarmac. Who knew at the time that Borneo also housed a little diving gem called Sipadan? When planning our trip through southeast Asia, my sales pitch to Kelly lasted all of 30 seconds before we were arranging itineraries in Sabah.

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Posted by: Shim

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Here’s just a taste of the what we saw diving at Sipadan. David, one of the guys from our 2nd day of diving had a Canon Mark II 5D in an underwater housing and was shooting video in HD. He was nice enough to give us the footage and I’ve edited together a little piece from the day. Check out all the turtles, sharks, and the barracuda tornado!

View on YouTube

Posted by: Shim

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We spent this week in Kota Kinabalu, Borneo, quite content, doing practically nothing. After a couple of weeks of budget living (single beds, shared bathrooms and cold water) we couldn’t wait for a hot shower, and the prospect of whiling away the hours with a good book and a hot bath was something I’d been looking forward to for months. Those of you that have traveled in Asia understand how rare it can be to find a bathtub, and we were quite intent on making the most of it.

Our grand plan of taking the last few weeks off, kind of backfired on us, and we both ended up putting in a few days of work. I also spent a big chunk of time going through all the pictures from our 5 days of diving in Sipadan & Mabul, and Mike has been busy editing together a video with some of the footage we got from one of the guys we dove with our last day in Sipadan.

In-between working and wasting away in the bathtub, we enjoyed several beers along the waterfront, and had a couple of really good meals. KK is definitely the place to get some fantastic seafood. There are several good restaurants, and the night market has some really great BBQ stalls.

All-in-all it’s been a pretty chilled out week, but exactly what we needed.

Posted by: Kelly

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