
Ask HN: Have anyone traveled the world while working as a freelancer? - jajahallo
If so, what kind of work did you have? How was it? Do you have any tips or suggestions?
======
nnd
I’ve done it for around 3 years. My only tip would be for you to ask yourself
why do you want to do those two things at the same time. From my personal
experience doing both, you don’t actually work productively, nor do you
immerse in local cultures and get to enjoy the travelling part. Eventually I
realized that I need to choose one, travelling became a distraction.

So my advice would be: don’t do both at the same time.

~~~
featherverse
I've thought about doing this myself. I don't have quite that level of revenue
yet however. I was thinking of traveling the country and visiting various sci-
fi conventions, living out of the discounted hotel rooms that often accompany
such events, and spending my copious free time enjoying the entertainment of
con-life.

Travel is a pain tho. Especially if you have pets. I've got a cat who hates
traveling, and we are best friends, so it wouldn't be right to leave him alone
constantly. Ah well.

~~~
justboxing
> I've got a cat who hates traveling, and we are best friends

Awww! I'm in a similar situation. Have you considered getting a small camper
van and customizing it for the cat (litterbox, water dish, food station etc)
and travelling around the country in that. Would save on hotels also and once
you are done, you can sell the van and made back most of your $ invested in
purchasing it. I'm toying with this idea.

~~~
featherverse
That's a really great idea! Thanks for the tip.

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hoodwink
I've been nomadic for the past two years. I quickly learned that travel is a
lot of work. Every time you move, you need to figure out where to go, where to
stay, how to eat, what to do, etc. if you do this every week, it consumes much
of your productive working hours. Much better, for me at least, to stay in the
same place for a minimum of 2 to 3 months.

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sp527
One bit of advice. Traveling solo gets rough after a while (say 3-4 months)
because of the loneliness factor. Easier to do in 'bursts' in my opinion. In
fact, I think a model of going on sabbatical every 1 to 1.5 years or so makes
more sense. You could easily do that in between jobs.

~~~
borplk
What do people do with their homes and stuff? As a renter I don't know how I
could possibly pull that off.

~~~
Grustaf
I would put my things in storage when I went travelling, and leave the lease.
Usually quite affordable, even with the big brand name storage firms.

~~~
borplk
Finding a new rental every time sounds like too much of hassle for me to have
it on a schedule like that.

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parmesan
I freelanced for a while in Australia, it was a wonderful time. Worked at a
startup, and a larger app agency. The pay was WAY better than here in Sweden,
also the much lower taxes did wonders for my economy.

I had a great plan, just got a temporary working visa, booked a flight and a
crappy inn in the middle of Sydney. A week after me and my partner arrived at
Sydney I started looking for some short 1-3 months contracts and got a few
(20+) opportunities. I did a couple of interviews and found a nice startup
that had a good vibe, and that wasn't _cheap_. Did a little bit of work, a lot
of travelling and had a great time throughout.

I'd say go for it, the worst thing that can happen is that you go back home
with the feeling that you appreciate your home a LOT more!

~~~
wskinner
Can you say more about how you found contract work? I've heard bad things
about ODesk and similar sites.

~~~
jayeclissold
You can get contracts that are just like normal jobs on sites like seek.com.au
in Australia. My family and I moved to Sydney in February when I got offered a
3 month contract. It's been extended twice now. Once it finishes, we'll do
some travelling before I take another contract.

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edoceo
One of my early startup hires was remote, started remote and is still remote.
Over three years he's stayed all over the world for weeks/months at a go. Five
continents! Makes his daily reports no problem, handles his stuff well. Gets
to really experience a place when you there for four weeks.

I see it being easy for him, single, job that don't care, AirBNB.

When we hired him I was nervous about that pattern. But he demonstrated his
skill and tenacity so quick. Remote workers get a touch more scrutiny,
remote+travel, from this employer view, gets even more scrutiny.

Really, tho, solid members of the team can basically live how they want,
IDGAF, just deliver.

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dejv
Yes, I did it for about 8 years, all solo. For a few years I did rent a cheap
house, which I used to travel back to when I was in between trips, but then I
redirect all my mail to my moms house and went full hobo and lived out of tiny
backpack.

Any tips? Just go for it. Dont plan for staying 5 years, just do one month and
see what is it like, then return back and plan another trip. Experiment with
various length of your trips and various locations. Find what works for you.

I did settled down in 2013, so how did I see that in perspective? It was fun
and interesting, but memories did fade out a bit and it feels like it happen
to somebody else now. My work went ok-ish, I did good amount of work, earn
some money and spent it all on travelling. Basically all friendships back home
went away and I had to start again at 30.

I would do that again in heartbeat, but ask yourself why you want to do it. It
is not like you are helping yourself in areas of connections or career and you
will have to live with it for the rest of your life.

------
nathan_f77
There's a pretty big community of people that are doing this. There's a lot of
Facebook groups, subreddits, and slack groups. Check out Nomad List [1] and
/r/digitalnomad [2].

[1] [https://nomadlist.com](https://nomadlist.com)

[2] [http://reddit.com/r/digitalnomad](http://reddit.com/r/digitalnomad)

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HighlandSpring
I'm in the UK and when I graduate I'd like to eventually become a remote
developer in London (or somewhere else if the money is good). I plan to
establish basecamp in my dirt cheap (relatively speaking) hometown in Poland B
and live my life on a UK salary, eastern Poland living costs and frequent
multiple-week working holidays to places with an acceptable timezone
difference.

Is there anyone here who's done something similar or can comment on what
difficulties I might face?

~~~
fishnchips
I'm currently working remotely for a London-based company. Incidentally, also
from PL (Warsaw). Difficulties? The usual with remote work: a bit of
loneliness, in 2017 video still sucks, and text is bad at carrying contexts,
requiring more careful communication. Oh, and EU VAT is a minefield in PL.
Otherwise the plan is sound, if the employer can be convinced to hire you as a
remote worker.

~~~
Grustaf
In my experience it's much easier to get a remote job for a company that you
first do non-remote work for, if only for a trial period of a month or
something. Even non-remote firms will agree to this if you're good enough, and
live close enough to come over every once in a while.

~~~
fishnchips
I actually spent the first month with the team.

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philip1209
Yes, we are traveling full time while freelancing and building
[http://MoonlightWork.com](http://MoonlightWork.com). We just finished
spending the summer in Mexico City, and are continuing onto Denver, LA, and
Buenos Aires over the next few months the.

Our tentative plan to avoid travel fatigue is to stay places for three months
at a time. While both working and traveling, it's important to stay longer so
that you have enough time to explore.

We are also stopping back in the States fairly often, which is helpful for
maintaining professional contacts, meeting with clients, and avoiding burnout.

Some tips in no particular order:

\- if you rent an Airbnb for multiple months, you get billed monthly (like
rent). Monthly discounts vary a lot for listings, so pay attention to them.

\- we like having coworking separate from our apartment in order to have some
work/life separation and a daily routine

\- if you want a second monitor while traveling, an iPad with Duet Display
works great

\- A vpn like Cloak is helpful while abroad. Turns out that many sites, eg CA
DMV, are limited to IPs in the States!

\- We use Google Fi for cellphone plans. It has great global coverage

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KerryJones
I did it for 15 months. I had a consistent gig that would pay the bills that I
expected to be working on 4 hours a week so I decided on the following:

\- Move to each city for 1 month (allow immersion in culture)

\- The place needs to have privacy & wi-fi (no shared hostels)

\- Use meet-up/expats/dances to meet people

\- Research each city before hand on things to do/currency/language
barriers/transportation (Austria, for instance, doesn't use Google maps)

It was one of the best times of my life, but it wasn't just pure happiness. It
was very introspective, most of my time was spent alone, but I made so many
life-long friends as well.

Loneliness/homesick is definitely a factor.

------
zapperdapper
As nnd mentioned it's pretty difficult to do both at the same time
(freelancing and traveling).

A few notes from my past experience that may be useful:

1) My first real remote working gig was as a dev/tech writer for a software
company. I worked out of an apartment in BKK initially before relocating to
Malaysia and then Philippines. You feel like you have a base rather than
constantly moving around. As I was a remote working I didn't have to look for
new freelancing gigs. This approach worked really well for me. This was not a
freelance gig though.

2) Career break. I've had a few of these over the years. I saved hard, then
quit my job. I then took a year out, travelled etc. before coming back to look
for another job.

3) What I do now. I work for three months of the year on (freelance) contract
in UK. I then take 9 off - that's my target anyway. It does vary a bit as
sometimes the length of a contract does vary. During the 9 months off I do
travel. The great advantage of this is when I'm on a freelance gig I focus on
that, but when I'm off I can travel without having to think about work - at
all. In order to be able to do this I had to make some pretty big changes - I
sold my house, my car, I live on less than 1K a month. It's not for everyone
but I love it. I would not go back to my old life in a million years.

There have been a few threads of this nature recently - I guess you could
check my comments to find those other threads.

Good luck!

------
pier25
I went freelancing to Mexico for a couple months and ended up staying 8 years
(so far) and getting married.

I kept doing web dev for a few clients back at home, and started doing a lot
of interactive stuff for museums which was super fun (Flash, Arduino, Cinder,
OpenFrameworks, Unity3D, etc) although not very well payed. Now I'm back at
web and mobile dev at an education company but I always get the itch of moving
somewhere else.

------
18xpipeline
It's comforting seeing the same response in this thread (maybe this thread is
attracting birds of the same feather?).

I could as well (my team even encouraged it), but I enjoy being in my hometown
with my family and friends. I've been to Europe a few times, so it doesn't
seem as adventurous.

To be completely honest, I would rather save that money and put it in a mutual
fund, and I'm only 28 lol.

~~~
sgberlin
If you are doing it right you can put _more_ money in your mutual fund. The
idea for lots of people doing it is to earn, for example, a western european
income but have eastern european/south east asian living expenses. I live in
Zurich and will spend way less money travelling next year than staying at
home.

~~~
s3nnyy
It all depends _how_ you live. You can live frugally, also in Zurich.

------
ddebernardy
I did this for a bit over 10 years while selling software online. It was
wonderful. A few tips:

1\. When you try a new place out, initially aim for a cheap accommodation that
you can instantly move out of. Sometimes this literally means a shitty hotel
with cockroaches, and that's fine. Get a feel of the place's vibe. Sometimes
it's a few days to decide it's not where you want to spend time in; other
times it takes a few weeks to decide to settle (or not). (Aside on this: don't
forget that hotels can't sell empty rooms from yesterday; arriving at 10pm
gives you serious leverage to get a huge discount.)

2\. As you're deciding whether to settle, go out. Often. Your initial set of
contacts will usually be people you meet in bars, incubators, meet-ups, etc.
Whatever your thing is, by all means don't stay at home in your earlier weeks.
You're going to be living there for the people and the location's vibe much
more than for the actual city.

3\. Once you decide to settle, consider a flat share over a private flat. This
allows to meet locals much faster. If you prefer a private flat for any
reasons, don't hesitate to go through real estate agents if you can sensibly
afford it. It costs extra but it'll spare yourself from visiting random crack
shacks - work out how much you earn per hour, and contrast it with the time
wastage due to visiting places you'd never want to live in.

4\. Forget about long-term relationships unless you plan to settle. Every date
you'll have will tell you they love to travel, but in reality nearly all will
actually mean they love to go on vacation while having a nest somewhere, and
can't fathom not having a nest that they call home.

5\. You'll meet your future spouse some day or another. It's probably time to
settle (in a private flat) when you do.

------
alexcnwy
I run a Machine Learning consulting business. Been fully remote without a
'home base' for about a year. Really loving it so far and plan on continuing
for the foreseeable future!

My advice would be to spend at least a month in each place - it's also a
discontinuity point in accommodation pricing. AirBnB snaps into monthly
discounts and it's the minimum period for short term rental. Definitely just
google "city name short term rental" and look at the local sites - you can
find some amazing apartments for a month at a time.

I'm traveling with my girlfriend who works in online marketing. I believe it
makes it a lot easier but we've been together the entire time so I can't make
a fair comparison. I can see how it might get lonely but I really enjoy
hanging out with the girlfriend and go to meetups while traveling so haven't
felt lonely at all...

------
AlexAMEEE
I could ... but for some weird reason I'm still sitting in my hometown.

I occasionally do trips but I'm not traveling the world, maybe next year I'll
spend some time in other countries.

~~~
dasmoth
"Digital nomad" is far from the only lifestyle enabled by remote work. Another
example (which strongly appeals to me) is being able to move somewhere you can
afford enough agricultural land to get a smallholding off the ground.

I image that will translate into less, rather than more, long-haul travel. But
definitely tempting should the right opportunity arise.

~~~
AlexAMEEE
Would you then keep the land and move permanently to that location, or would
you just sell it after a few years?

~~~
dasmoth
For me, ideally permanent. I'd like to get the chance to know one place,
really really well.

------
Mz
Tips:

The cloud is your friend. Try to keep important things available via internet.

If you can take family, SO or friends with you, it helps mitigate the
loneliness factor people are talking about here. Also: online forums can be a
good way to keep in touch with a consistent group of people as well.

As others are saying, traveling a lot can seriously cut into work time. So,
one important trick is to ruthlessly cut expenses.

Get a virtual mail address. It doesn't solve everything, but it is a nice
thing to have.

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joelrunyon
Just got done doing this for the last year. Worked for myself + my own
business (not really a freelancer), but maybe you'll find the lessons helpful.

[https://impossiblehq.com/one-year-travel-
lessons/](https://impossiblehq.com/one-year-travel-lessons/)

------
maneesh
5 years. Documented the story + transition from freelancer ==> digital nomad
blogger ==> Travel Channel host ==> Wearable Tech CEO on my older site
[http://hackthesystem.com](http://hackthesystem.com) (no longer updated).

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swimmercol
I do since 4 years ago as a developer :)

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rootsudo
Did it for the past year.

IT takes a toll, a toll.

Sysadmin

