I have this fear, especially as a guy with a bit of meat on his bones, that it’ll always be hard for me to obtain clothing in other countries. It is probably unfounded, as not everyone in Buenos Aires was rail thin, but it’s still one of the things I worry about when abroad. It’s frustrating enough buying clothing for myself in North America and having things not fit my Ukrainian physique, but when you toss in a language barrier as well, it’s not something I’m entirely looking forward to attempting one day. That’s why prior to all my trips so far I’ve made a point of buying some ...

Rebuilt Storage Locker When I returned from Europe in April, I went down to my storage locker to grab a few items. Unfortunately, five months of boxes sitting on each other had taken its toll, and a few of them had shifted and fallen. Thankfully nothing was broken, but it was pretty clear that I needed to spend a bit of time rebuilding my locker at some point this summer. Yesterday I went to the locker and spent about two hours rebuilding everything. Based on the experience, here are a few pointers I would give to anyone putting their stuff away into a storage locker for an extended trip: Use ...

I’m down to 12 days until I leave to Thailand, and it’s definitely fast approaching. My friends Scott and Samantha leave tomorrow, so I’ll get to starting watching their Facebook stream in the next few days to see my first glimpses of Thailand. Cultus Lake Golf I spent the last few days camping up at Cultus Lake, which is one of my favourite summer activities. It was pretty much perfect weather, other than being a tad cold at night, and was really enjoyable and relaxing. I have all my camping gear in my car right now, and am going to start getting it ready this afternoon to put back into ...

If you want to see what’s wrong with the world of online journalism these days, simply read a few of the recent articles describing how Gerard Depardieu urinated on an CityJet flight to Dublin. Of course, most articles depict Depardieu getting up and purposefully pissing in the aisle of the plane, forcing it to go back to the gate. Passengers, especially men who urinate multiple times per day, were obviously traumatized having to watch such an event. If you read between all the fluff, it sounds all that happened is a 62 year old guy simply couldn’t hold it any more. Guess what? I’ve been ...

I just got back from a four day whirlwind trip to the Toronto area. That means I have another 4,000 miles of flying under my belt this year, putting my grand total somewhere around 50,000 miles since January I believe. The trip back to Vancouver was pretty rickety with turbulence, but I was working on my laptop which helped distract me from the fact that I was hurtling through the atmosphere in a big pressurized pop can. Thailand Beach, Photo by tartarin2009 on Flickr Thailand is fast approaching, and I’m down to only 18 days to get ready. While I’m looking forward to seeing a new country ...

In North America, it’s pretty easy to get by without carrying much cash around. For the most part I pay for all my smaller purchases with debit these days. If I have a larger purchase to make, I generally use my credit card to accumulate some points. But outside of North America and Europe, it’s been my experience that cash is generally still king. And while having a credit card is great for emergencies (such as being able to get a hotel or a flight in a pinch), I generally make a run to an ATM machine once a week and pull out enough cash to get me by. Local currency is best for obvious reasons, ...

Almost all airlines have some type of frequent flyer program designed to reward individuals who fly their airline repeatedly. While I’ve collected them periodically, I’ve never really obtained anything substantial using my accumulated frequent flyer milage. When I set out on my adventure back in January of 2011, I had a goal in the back of my mind to finally achieve some type of elite status on an airline this year or the next. I have worked with many business people who had either silver or gold elite status, and I imagine bypassing a huge lineup or getting the odd free flight is a pretty ...

Not that long ago I lost my only accessible set of keys to my Mazda 3 Sport. I have a spare set somewhere, but thought at the time that they were probably buried in the back of my storage locker in Chilliwack. Going out to Chilliwack to get them may have been an option if, you know, the key to the storage locker wasn’t also on the same keychain that was lost. Ultimately I had to tow my car to Mazda and get them to give me two new keys, both of which were entered into the onboard computer to allow them to actually start the car. Since that time I’ve reclaimed the set of keys that were lost ...

I gotta hand it to the S&P ratings agency – I didn’t think they had it in them. After the other two ratings agencies reaffirmed AAA rating a few days ago, I thought S&P would simply cave to political pressure and keep the rating in tact as well. In fact, I read a few news articles that basically seem to allude that the government was frantically trying to get S&P to keep the rating in tact. There was even talk in congress about passing some legislation to restrict the ability of the ratings agencies to downgrade any debt. But S&P followed through and downgraded US debt from ...

Earlier this year I was visiting the city of Ushuaia, Argentina, which is the southern most city in the world. I spent an afternoon visiting a penguin rookery, which was absolutely amazing and probably one of my best memories from my last trip. In the town of Ushuaia I ran into a store that was selling a bunch of plush penguins. I thought at the time it would be pretty cool to take one along with me on my travels, but unfortunately just didn’t have the room in my bag to bring one back with me on that trip. But that idea has been on the back of my mind for quite a while now. I was joking to my ...

The senate passed the deal to raise the debt ceiling today, which means the United States can pay their bills and not default. But truthfully, that’s probably the worse thing that could have happened, since the US has delayed dealing with some very hard problems. First, let me comment on the ratings agencies. Right after a deal was announced, two of the three major rating agencies reaffirmed the United State’s AAA credit rating. These are the same ratings agencies that also gave AAA ratings to the credit default swaps and other securities that were the underpinnings for the 2007-2008 financial ...

Canadians who just show up in Thailand are usually given a 30 day tourist visa without any hassles, or so I’m told. But given how I’m heading there for two months, I require a visa that is valid for a longer than normal duration. Generally people in my scenario can simply do a visa run, where basically you exit the country and return a short while later. In Buenos Aires most people would simply head over to Uruguay for the day and obtain a new 90 day visa upon return. But truthfully, I didn’t really want to have to worry about that while in Thailand, so I decided to get it all done beforehand. ...

I have less than a month to go before I return everything to my storage locker and hit the open skies again. Last time I departed I headed south and ended up in Argentina. This time I’m flying west and hitting a little island off the coast of Thailand called Ko Samui One of the aspects discussed in the book Vagabonding that seemed was relavant to me this summer was the concept of reintegration. The author claims in the book that after an extended trip it becomes difficult to find a way to fit yourself back into your old life. That was definitely the case for me this time around, and lately I’ve ...

I wrote a post recently about my travel metrics from the last six months. One of the observations I made was that I had spent roughly $500 a month on average for airfare. Given that I gave my apartment up in British Columbia prior to leaving, airfare is one of my only extra expenses I have when I travel. Taken together with a $90 a month storage locker and roughly $50 a month in travel insurance, that’s a rough cost of $650 a month that is in excess of what I would normally spend back in North America. If you do the math, a person will realize that they can actually make money traveling the ...

I’ve been going through some old photos recently, and was reminded of a trip I took a few years ago to Japan. I spent nine days there and thought I would give a little overview of the trip and would I ultimately thought of Tokyo Travel From Vancouver At the time the flight to Tokyo was the longest I had ever experienced. From Vancouver it’s approximately a ten hour flight over the Pacific Ocean. I remember how weird it was looking out of the plane on the way back and realizing I was over Vancouver Island – prior to that trip, I had always flown in the other direction, which meant a return ...

I’ve been working on revamping this website for about six weeks now. I’ve actually never really had a proper logo or header on any of my personal sites, and used to simply creatively use a few fonts to achieve some kind of clickable header. It was a bit ghetto, but it worked. Given that I enjoy travelling and writing about my experiences, I decided over a month ago that I needed to make this site a bit more professional and also focus the content a bit better. If you’ve been following along, you’ve noticed incremental updates over the past few weeks. The logo was commissioned about six ...

I’ve been a pretty loyal user of Apple’s Macbook Pro line for the last few years. I purchased my first one after Northern Voice in 2007, mostly because the laptop that I recently had Vista installed on failed to work for me during a presentation. Since then I’ve probably been through three or four of them, often upgrading every year or so to keep up with technology. The first few were the 15″ model, and the last Macbook Pro I purchased was a 13″ model. Macbook Air While the Macbook Pro is a great computer, the Macbook Air has always intrigued me. Most of my uber techie friends have one, ...

I’ve been striving hard to reduce the amount of online “noise” in my life lately. Without setting any quantitative goals, I’ve been working relentlessly on removing distractions and trying to minimize interruptions. Normally when I wake up I have around 50 messages waiting for me in my inbox. Many of them are automated – comment notifications from WordPress, Google+ messages, Facebook, etc, but they are still things I need to deal with, even if it’s just to identify that they belong in the trash. Every email I receive and have to deal with probably notches my background stress level ...

If there is one person in particular who has inspired my travels to date, it would be Scott Hadfield. Scott discovered he had the ability to work remotely years ago, and left to go explore the world while still working for a North American company. He would show up in Vancouver from time to time, but mostly he was working remotely in Buenos Aires or South Africa. I was recently planning a trip to New Zealand for the fall when Scott and his wife Samantha informed me they were going to be having a three month party in Thailand. A party? Without me? Not gonna happen. So I bought a flight and will ...

One of the hardest parts about traveling with technology is lugging all of your gear around with you. Once you arrive at a destination and rent an apartment, you can store some items and only carry along a few things at a time. But when you’re in the process of traveling to or from a destination, you have to have all your items on your person for a period of time. I’m actually using the MEC Pangea 40 litre backpack as my main travel bag. For small trips I only bring the backpack with me, but for my major travel between destinations that I plan to live at for more than a week, I store everything ...