Category Archives: Random Musings

So, What Comes Next?

The capitol building and a statue in Austin, Texas
Posted: 9/9/2019 | September 9th, 2019

One of the most-asked questions on my book tour was: “What comes next?”

Now that I’m back from Paris and have moved out of New York City, and now that my book tour is over, what are my next big plans?

Well…

Not much.

Right now, I’m back in Austin. I have to finish moving into my new apartment (why do couches take so long to arrive?) and, beyond a couple of trips to NYC and DC for weddings, I don’t plan on leaving Austin for a long time.

My passport is staying in my drawer. I’m not moving back to New York or Paris or some other city. I’m not working on a new book. There’s no new big projects. Nothing.

For the foreseeable future, all I see is Austin.

And I’m very excited about that.

A tree only grows when it has roots, and now that the madness of all this year’s projects is over, those roots can finally start to weave their way into the earth and provide the foundation for further growth.

I can finally get into the one thing I’ve been craving all year: routine.

I’m going to get into a better workflow, go back to the gym, start cooking again, take up some hobbies, sleep more, and maybe even start holding monthly meet-ups.

Who knows!

I used to think that I had to rush my travels, that there was too much of the world to see, and that that was why I couldn’t stop traveling — because, if I did, I’d never see it all.

And to me, that was a crime.

That’s why it was always “just one more trip.”

Part of me still feels that way.

But, in reality, there is no rush. You can never see it all. There will always be something else to see or do, or something new.

And it will still be there in a few months.

So, right now, the world can wait. I’m tired of being on the move. I’m tired of staying in spaces not my own. I’m tired of wearing the same three shirts over and over again.

When that kind of burnout happens, you have to stay put.

So I will stay put and recharge the battery named “travel.”

I don’t know how long it will take. I don’t really care.

I’m in no rush to go anywhere right now.

I always define travel as something that pushes you out of your comfort zone and makes you grow as a person. Being home and learning to stay put will be a new adventure. This is something I’m going to have to learn how to do (it was really tough passing up on super cheap flights to the Seychelles).

So, in a way, I guess that is what comes next is a deep dive into this concept called “home.”

I’m looking forward to the challenge.

Book Your Trip: Logistical Tips and Tricks

Book Your Flight
Find a cheap flight by using Skyscanner or Momondo. They are my two favorite search engines because they search websites and airlines around the globe so you always know no stone is left unturned.

Book Your Accommodation
You can book your hostel with Hostelworld. If you want to stay somewhere other than a hostel, use Booking.com as they consistently return the cheapest rates for guesthouses and cheap hotels. I use them all the time.

Don’t Forget Travel Insurance
Travel insurance will protect you against illness, injury, theft, and cancellations. It’s comprehensive protection in case anything goes wrong. I never go on a trip without it as I’ve had to use it many times in the past. I’ve been using World Nomads for ten years. My favorite companies that offer the best service and value are:

Looking for the best companies to save money with?
Check out my resource page for the best companies to use when you travel! I list all the ones I use to save money when I travel – and I think will help you too!

Want More Information on Austin?
Be sure to visit our robust destination guide on Austin for even more planning tips!

The post So, What Comes Next? appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

Are You Happy With Your Life?

black and white photo of a busy crosswalk with blurred people
Posted: 7/29/2019 | July 29th, 2019

I was recently gifted the sci-fi thriller Dark Matter. Without giving too much away, the book revolves around the idea of a multiverse, where every possible outcome of a decision plays out — and each decision thereafter creates another split and so forth and so forth. It’s an infinite multiverse of all the possible outcomes of every decision you could ever make.

But, to me, it’s really a book about regret.

It’s about wondering what would have happened if you had followed the road not taken.

Where would you be if you had stayed with that girl, taken that job, or moved to that new city? Would you be happier as a result?

We map out how we hope our life will unfold.

First this, then that, then this, then that.

But life never unfolds the way we imagine it will. Life isn’t like writing a novel where you can plot out how things will end and ensure the characters behave as you want. Every decision you — and those around — make throughout the day shifts the direction of your life.

Life is what happens when you are busy making plans.

One day, we wake up and find we’re far off from the path we had hoped to traverse. We took a different job; broke up with that girl; suffered a health issue, family death, or financial disaster; moved somewhere new; decided to go back to school; or met someone who inspired us to travel the world.

A million and one things can pull us off the path we envisioned.

When you look back on the whole of your life, it’s easy to see where you deviated from the path you laid out for yourself. You can see the pivotal choices and moments that changed your life for good or ill.

What would have happened if my friend Scott had never convinced me to go to Thailand all those years ago?

Or if I had missed that bus in Chiang Mai where I met those backpackers who ended up inspiring my trip around the world?

What if I had never started this blog?

What would have happened if I had stayed in Taiwan with my girlfriend all those years ago?

Humans are really good at wondering about what might have been. We tend to look at our life in retrospect and judge our past actions by where we are now.

But when we’re in our life, you don’t see the grand vision. We’re just trying to get through the day as best we can. We’re thinking about the tasks at hand — the meeting in an hour, the laundry that needs to be picked up later, what we’re going to make for dinner — not the big picture.

Our brains aren’t hardwired for that kind of thinking.

For all our big talk about how humanity is different because we can think about the future, we’re often just like other animals: only seeing the moment right in front of us.

***

When I moved to Paris, I had big goals. I was going to meet people, attend influencer and tourism events, sightsee every day, and live that #bestlife.

Yet through long lunches and bottles of wine with friends and long days writing my new book, and by catching up on sleep and hosting a lot of friends, I strayed far from those original plans. Looking back, I did little of what I originally planned to do.

In a sense, I failed.

And I could easily look back with regret and wonder what would have happened if I had done what I had planned to do. What would I have learned about the city? Who would I have met?

But then I think back to Dark Matters and the question that sets the whole book in motion:

“Are you happy with your life?”

It’s such a simple but powerful question.

Beyond all the daily complaints and frustrations and minor annoyances, how often do we really ask such a deep and fundamental question?

“Are you happy with your life?”

Day to day, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. To never see the forest through the trees. To look back and think of the goals we made that we never reached.

But what we do every day is a reflection of our values and our goals.

If you’ve lived your values every day, haven’t you really reached those goals?

When you zoom out and ask yourself if you’re happy with your life, what do you say?

We get twenty-four hours to make the right choice.

And if we fail, we get to wake up and try again.

I wouldn’t trade those long meals and writing sessions or those quiet nights in for anything. They helped create a sense of balance in my life the first time in a long time.

When I look back at the what-ifs and see the choices I made, I can’t really regret them — because they brought me to where I am today.

And, when you’re happy with your life, how can you really regret the path that brought you there – even if it’s not the exact one you planned?

P.S. – I just released a new book! It’s called “Ten Years a Nomad” and it’s about my ten years backpacking the world and the lessons I learned from it. It features tons of stories I’ve never told on this blog and is a book that delves into the why of travel! Click here to learn more, grab your copy today, and meet me on my book tour!

Book Your Trip: Logistical Tips and Tricks

Book Your Flight
Find a cheap flight by using Skyscanner or Momondo. They are my two favorite search engines because they search websites and airlines around the globe so you always know no stone is left unturned.

Book Your Accommodation
You can book your hostel with Hostelworld. If you want to stay somewhere other than a hostel, use Booking.com as they consistently return the cheapest rates for guesthouses and cheap hotels. I use them all the time.

Don’t Forget Travel Insurance
Travel insurance will protect you against illness, injury, theft, and cancellations. It’s comprehensive protection in case anything goes wrong. I never go on a trip without it as I’ve had to use it many times in the past. I’ve been using World Nomads for ten years. My favorite companies that offer the best service and value are:

Looking for the best companies to save money with?
Check out my resource page for the best companies to use when you travel! I list all the ones I use to save money when I travel – and I think will help you too!

The post Are You Happy With Your Life? appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

Ads? On this Site? What? Why?

A laptop on a desk beside a cup of black coffee and a notebook
Posted: 7/1/2019 | July 1st, 2019

For eleven years, I vowed never to put an ad up on this website. None. Zero. Zilch.

I hate ads. They are ugly. They are intrusive, sometimes popping up right when you load a page. (And don’t get me started on pre-roll videos!)

So it might seem odd that today, after eleven years being ad-free, I’m announcing we’ve put ads up on this website.

Since I’ve been so vocal about how much I dislike ads, I want to explain to the community why we’re doing this:

The world changes. People change. People’s buying habits change.

And, to be a successful business, you must change too.

Over the years, we put a lot of our eggs into the ebook/digital guide basket.

That worked for a long time.

But the cold hard truth people don’t really buy ebooks these days. They want Kindle books or physical guidebooks.

That’s what the world wants.

Plus, with so much free information online, most people just don’t feel the need to buy ebooks anymore. They can often google what they need. If it’s not in a Kindle or paper form, it’s not a “real” guidebook. (We’ve looked into making paper guides but, frankly, the print on demand paper quality isn’t there. It’s just not at the quality that we can be proud of. And, to print in color, the costs are just too high right now.)

So our ebook sales have flatlined. They’re no longer an engine of growth that can fuel new projects.

And we have a great project in the works that needs fuel.

Remember The Nomadic Network? The global meet-up thing we tested out a few years back. We were going to build local chapters, host educational and social mixers, and get people excited about travel.

Well, this fall, we are bringing it back to life.

But we need money to make that happen.

One thing we learned last time we trialed this was that we need a dedicated person whose job is just to run the events and coordinate with all our local chapters.

The revenue from our book sales isn’t going to cover that.

The team and I searched far and wide for an alternative — but the truth is that ads are the only thing that can give us the substantial and sustained revenue we need to relaunch the Nomadic Network as well as maintain and grow this website. (We would like to pay more guest writers and hire another research assistant.)

So that’s why we now have ads.

It’s not simply so we can have more money (or Chris can finally upgrade from sleeping in dorms).

It’s so we can relaunch this community initiative (one we are really, really excited about but have put aside for way too long) and invest in the website.

I know it’s a big change and we tried to make the ads as non-intrusive as possible.

But know that this decision didn’t come easy. I still have mix feelings about it but the world changes and sometimes you just have to change with it.

Feel free to leave comments below (but know we’re not going to reverse this decision).

Sincerely,

Nomadic Matt and team

The post Ads? On this Site? What? Why? appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

Rediscovering the Lost Art of Travel

a man on a bicycle in Mezöberény
Posted: 5/16/2019 | May 16th, 2019

Seth Kugel is the former Frugal Traveler columnist for the New York Times and author of the new Rediscovering Travel: A Guide for the Globally Curious, from which this is adapted. I’ve known him for years and our travel philosophy dovetails a lot. I read his book last year and thought “If I were ever to write a book on the state of the travel industry, this is the book I would write!” It’s a great book and today, Seth excerpted part of the book for us!

Stenciled in white block letters on a dreary cement wall in Mezöberény, a tidy but fraying town of twelve thousand in the hyperbolically named Great Hungarian Plain, appeared the word:

SZESZFÖZDE

Hours earlier, in the overcast predawn hours of a nippy January day, I had stumbled off the Bucharest-to-Budapest train to see what it would be like to spend the weekend in the opposite of a tourist destination. Mezöberény was not just absent from guidebooks — it did not have a single restaurant, hotel, or activity listed on TripAdvisor, something that cannot be said for Mbabara, Uganda, or Dalanzadgad, Mongolia. I did have some info on the town, though, thanks to its municipal website: resident József Halász had recently celebrated his ninetieth birthday.

Or that’s what Google Translate told me. Hungarian is a Uralic language, more closely related to the output you might get falling asleep on a keyboard than to English or German or French. That makes even basic comprehension a challenge, as I found as soon as I rushed from the train to the station’s restrooms and faced the urgent need to choose between two doors: FÉRFI and NÖI. The authorities had apparently saved a few forints by not splurging on stick-figure signs.

The day had been born cold and gray and stayed that way as I walked through the town, slowly getting my bearings, intrigued by the pre-war, pre-Communist homes and the more than occasional bike rider — there were almost more bikes than cars — who waved hello. But then a winter drizzle took up, causing an abrupt decline in the number of cyclists even as the number of wandering American visitors held steady at one. To me, a travel day that turns rainy is like a piece of chocolate I’ve dropped on the floor: it’s significantly less appealing, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to throw it away.

It was in the first minutes of rain that I came across that stenciled sign on an otherwise residential street. Beyond the wall, down a cracking, now puddle-pocked driveway, were a dozen or so plastic barrels lined up like nuclear-waste drums. Beyond them, maybe a hundred feet from where I stood, was a one-story L-shaped building. What was this place? Well, SZESZFÖZDE, apparently. But what was that?

In the old days (say, 2009), I would have pulled out an English-Hungarian phrase book or pocket dictionary, but instead, I activated international roaming on my phone, carefully spelled out S-Z-E-S- Z-F-O-Z-D-E, and tapped Go.

Szeszföde distillery in Mezöberény, Hungary

The less-than-lightning speed of Great Hungarian Plain mobile service provided a dramatic pause. And then came my answer:

DISTILLERY.

You don’t say.

I would have guessed PRIVATE PROPERTY maybe, or DANGER—STAY OUT, or MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS, YOU MEDDLING FOREIGNER! But a distillery? A wave of adrenaline washed down my torso as my lips curled into a dumb-luck smile.

Two rather gruff-looking men emerged from the door, the older one smoking a cigarette and wearing a sweater and work-stained trousers that suggested Warsaw Pact 1986 more than modern-day European Union. I waved to them, pointed to the bulky Canon 7D hanging from my neck, and then to the building. Old-school Google Translate.

They waved me in and gave me a tour.

Inside the ancient but fully functioning distillery, the men let me take pictures as they gave me a vaguely intelligible lesson via pointing, expressive looks, and smartphone-translated Hungarian, on how pálinka — Hungarian fruit brandy — was made.

Those barrels I had seen outside, it turned out, were full of fermenting pear and grape and apple juices. Inside, it was distilled somehow through a looping and tangled system of pipes running out of tin tanks up and along the walls. It looked like the laboratory of a mad scientist with a penchant for tacky linoleum flooring.

As they led me around, I engaged in that most intrinsic of travel activities: trying to see the world from the vantage point of someone utterly different from me. What was their life like? Had they traveled? Who were their parents and grandparents? The language barrier that did not allow them to answer did not stop me from wondering.

After soaking in every rusty detail and every glint of pride in the men’s tired eyes, I typed, “Come visit me in New York” into Google Translate — laughs all around — then headed back onto the drizzly streets of Mezöberény, utterly elated.

What was so great about this moment? Sure, the szeszfözde was a neat little story for friends, and in my case, worth a few paragraphs in the newspaper. But wasn’t it just a grimy business making local hooch in a town that even most Hungarians would classify as the middle of nowhere?

a man smokes a cigarette at the Szeszföde distillery in Mezöberény, Hungary

It was a great moment because I discovered it. Not an earth-shattering discovery in the sense of a cure for AIDS or a previously unknown species of poison-spitting neon frog the size of a pinky nail. But it was 100 percent unexpected, 100 percent real, and 100 percent mine.

Discovery used to be the lifeblood of travel, at least for those of us who shun tour-bus groups and all-inclusive resorts. We used to leave home knowing relatively little about our destination — perhaps with some highlighted guidebook pages denoting major attractions and local tipping etiquette, a list of tips culled from well-traveled friends, or articles copied and pasted into a Word document. For the ambitious, maybe a notional feel for the local history or culture gleaned pre-trip from a historical novel.

Beyond that, we were on our own.

Paper guidebooks frozen in time helped us along, as did pamphlets and paper maps from tourist information booths and tips from a hotel concierge. Earlier this century, Google searches in internet cafés also lent a hand. But otherwise, there was no choice: You decided what to do with your own eyes and ears, by wandering, by initiating human-to-human contact. Tips came from hearing fellow travelers’ stories over hostel or (non-Air) B&B breakfasts, entering a shop to ask directions and ending up in a conversation with the owner, or catching a whiff of fresh bread or sizzling chilies and following your nose.

Of course, all that still happens today — but only if you really go out of your way to make it happen. Not only is nearly every place in the world documented to within an inch of its life but that documentation — which comes dressed as both fact and opinion — is overwhelmingly and immediately available, thanks to pervasive technology. That’s great for many things in life — medical information, how-to videos, shorter commutes. But don’t we travel to break our routine? To experience the unexpected? To let the world delight us?

If we do, we have a funny way of showing it. We pore over online reviews for weeks, plan days down to the half hour, and then let GPS and the collected wisdom of the unwise lead us blindly. We mean well — no one wants to have a romantic dinner go wrong or to get lost and miss out on a “must-see attraction” or to risk chaos by failing to keep the kids entertained for three minutes.

But isn’t that just a digital version of the old-fashioned group tour? Well, almost, except that on the bus tour, you actually get to meet the person whose advice you’re taking.

One of my most ironclad rules of travel is this: the number of visitors a place receives is inversely related to how nice locals are to those visitors. Mezöberény, as far as I knew, had received precisely no foreign tourists ever. It was the anti-Paris, and this distillery the anti-Louvre.

People who inhabit the still-plentiful tourist-free swaths of the planet tend to be not only just nicer but more curious. They say a bear in the wild is just as scared of you as you are of it. I say people in places where outsiders rarely go are just as curious about visitors as visitors are about them. The question is not why the distillery workers invited me — a camera-toting, gibberish-talking stranger — in for a tour, it’s why wouldn’t they? If it were me, I’d be thinking: “What is this odd foreigner doing outside our szeszfözde with a camera? Wait till I tell the kids! And by the way, isn’t it about time we took a break?”

More importantly, is it possible that stumbling upon a dank distillery might be just as thrilling as a tour of one of the world’s great monuments? Did the surge of emotion I felt when the word distillery popped onto my screen match what I felt when I first glanced up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?

Probably not, although I remember the distillery moment quite precisely and barely recall what I felt at the Sistine Chapel. Why? Because although Michelangelo’s prophets and sibyls and biblical re-creations are several trillion times lovelier than rusty pipes in a concrete building reeking of fermented fruit, I had seen them before in photos, heard professors talk about them, and read other travelers’ accounts as I sought the best times to avoid crowds.

That’s why I believe it is time we rediscover travel and recognize the value of what an overdocumented world has taken away: the delight of making things happen on your own.

***

Rediscovering Travel: A Guide for the Globally CuriousSeth is the former Frugal Traveler columnist for the New York Times and author of the new Rediscovering Travel: A Guide for the Globally Curious, from which this is adapted.

In this book, Kugel challenges the modern travel industry with a determination to reignite humanity’s age-old sense of adventure that has virtually been vanquished in this spontaneity-obliterating digital age. You can purchase the book at Amazon and give it a read.

Book Your Trip: Logistical Tips and Tricks

Book Your Flight
Find a cheap flight by using Skyscanner or Momondo. They are my two favorite search engines because they search websites and airlines around the globe so you always know no stone is left unturned.

Book Your Accommodation
You can book your hostel with Hostelworld as they have the largest inventory. If you want to stay somewhere other than a hostel, use Booking.com as they consistently return the cheapest rates for guesthouses and cheap hotels. I use them all the time.

Don’t Forget Travel Insurance
Travel insurance will protect you against illness, injury, theft, and cancellations. It’s comprehensive protection in case anything goes wrong. I never go on a trip without it as I’ve had to use it many times in the past. I’ve been using World Nomads for ten years. My favorite companies that offer the best service and value are:

Looking for the best companies to save money with?
Check out my resource page for the best companies to use when you travel! I list all the ones I use to save money when I travel – and that will save you time and money too!

The post Rediscovering the Lost Art of Travel appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

Want to Write for Nomadic Matt? Here’s How!

a woman in a yellow sweater writes from her laptop
Updated: 04/22/19 | April 22, 2019

Earlier this year, I announced I was opening this website up to guest posters. For years, I turned away unsolicited guest posts, but, this year, I decided it was time to change that policy as I want to add more voices, opinions, stories, and tips to this site.

I want to bring in people out there who have helpful information and insight I might not have, especially now that I’m traveling a lot less.

So, if you’d like to write for this site, here are our guidelines for submissions:

What Content Do We Want?

First, what kind of submissions are we looking for? We’re interested in the following (and only the following) areas:

  • LGBT content: stories by transgender people, queer couples, and solo gay, lesbian, or bi travelers
  • Africa-related content (bonus points if it’s East or Central Africa and Egypt related)
  • Middle East–related content
  • Central Asia–related content
  • India-related content
  • China-related content
  • Technology- or gear-related content

Your pitches should have a focus on budget-related issues: cheap things what to do, budget accommodation, good companies or apps to use, travel hacks, or ways to save money. We want the kind of service article that will help readers travel cheaper, better, and longer.

Of course, travel stories are great too, so long as they contain a lesson or advice that can be used to help people travel.

Typical posts are 1,000-2,000 words, are super detailed, contain lots of useful links, and have tips and tricks not found elsewhere. I love insider knowledge!

How to Submit a Post

Send an email to matt@nomadicmatt.com with the exact title “New Guest Writer Article Submission”

Include the following:

  • Your travel history
  • Your blog or channel
  • A link to two other guest posts you’ve done
  • Your topic idea(s), with suggested title(s) and description(s) of the article(s)

Here’s an example of a good email:

Hi Matt,

My name is John and I’m writing about submitting a guest post on your site. I’ve been traveling the world for ten years, with a focus on Africa. For the last six months, I’ve been traveling around East Africa as a backpacker and have a lot of resources that can help. My blog is johnsworld.com, and I’ve written some posts on the subject that can be found here and here.

My proposed topic is “How to Visit Tanzania on a Budget,” which will focus on how to get around, eat, and safari without spending a lot or money or doing an expensive tour. The idea here is to show people you can travel the country independently.

Here are links to some of my writing so you can see I can put words together.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

John

Simple and to the point. If I like your pitch, I’ll reply. Please DO NOT follow up. While tenacity can often be appreciated, DO NOT follow up. I get too many emails.

Please follow the rules above too. I like people with an attention to details so if you send an email with the wrong subject line or miss any of the other following rules, we’ll delete your pitch!

Finally, please note that if you send me a draft and I find that it will be too much work to edit, I reserve the right to reject it. Additionally, since I am pretty picky, there’s also 99% chance I’ll ask you to make changes to your draft so please expect notes and rewrites.

Oh, and we pay $250 USD per post.

That’s really it.

If you have any questions, leave them in the comments.

Matt

The post Want to Write for Nomadic Matt? Here’s How! appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.