Category Archives: Travel

Nomadic Travel

Flying harms the environment. In fact, a round-trip international flight can burn around one ton of gasoline (1). So to lessen our environmental impact, we ought to reduce the number of miles we fly each year. The best choice is to not fly at all. And for the most part, I’ve stopped flying in order to practice conservation. But when I need to visit family overseas, I’ve decided to practice nomadic travel. The basic idea is to carry all your belongings with you when you travel, so that there’s never a need to return home.

By not having a home base, I won’t be in a rush to leave. I can stay longer each trip, reducing the total number of flights each year. As a nomadic traveler, I intentionally avoid owning a house, a car, or extra possessions at home. I also take my work online, which gives me greater time and flexibility while traveling. I hope to spend months (even years) in the same country, and when possible, I try to get around using slower forms of transit (rail and bus instead of flying). By staying longer and flying less frequently, I can help conserve fuel, which lessens the impact of travel.

But nomadic travel does more than just protect the environment. By flying less frequently and staying longer, I immediately save thousands on plane tickets alone. Less flying also means less time spent in uncomfortable plane seats, and more time to experience the country first-hand. I can learn the native language, meet new people, and see more sites. Vacation is more relaxing when done slowly since there’s no need to see the entire country in a single weekend. Instead of staying in expensive hotels, I can rent an apartment. These slower experiences will be far cheaper, more meaningful and more authentic.

To become a nomad, you need to adjust your traveling mindset. An average tourist is limited by all the possessions he has back at home–his house, job, and car. As a result, he’s bound by a tightly fixed schedule, which limits his flexibility to travel slowly. For a nomad, however, home base is wherever he’s currently staying. There’s never a rush to “return” when you travel with everything you own.

Giving up a permanent dwelling isn’t as painful as it sounds. Permanent assets can feel like deadweight. There’s the cost of paying for space you’re not using, and the emotional burden of caring for your possessions. Without a fixed dwelling, the cost of traveling can actually be cheaper than the cost of living back home. This is because of you’ll likely rent a cheaper apartment and own fewer possessions.

The major difficulty with the nomadic lifestyle is finding work on the go. In the past, being a traditional nomad meant you were confined to a life of tending sheep and raising cattle. But today, it’s possible to start an online business or find telecommuting work. Programming and design jobs are probably the easiest to find, but you can probably find online work in marketing, accounting, and engineering. Freelance Switch has compiled a monster job board you should check out, and FlexJobs looks promising as well.

Once you make the leap to become a nomadic traveler, you’ll find traveling to be a lot less stressful and expensive. You can travel once and stay put for months (years) at a time. And if you can get to your destination by bus or train, then you’ll literally save a ton of fuel.

Of course, if you can avoid it, don’t travel at all. That’s always the greenest (and cheapest) option available. When that’s impractical, try to take the train or bus instead, since both options get far better mileage than flying. But when you must fly, consider becoming a nomadic traveler. You don’t need to become the yak-herding shepherd type, either.

According to Michael Bluejay, a plane averages around 43.0 pmpg (passenger miles per gallon). The one-way distance between Los Angeles and Taipei is 6800 miles, so the round-trip distance is 13,600 miles. This in turn gives 13600 ÷ 43.0 = 316.3 gallons of gasoline burned per round-trip. Gasoline is about 6.073lbs/gal, and there are 2000lbs./ton, so you’ll end up wasting 0.96 tons of gasoline per passenger per round-trip flight.

The Freedom to Change Your Mind

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About 3 months ago, Hsinya and I left Irvine, hopped on a plane, and flew to Taiwan. We expected to return early March—then we changed our minds and decided to stay for an entire year.

By becoming a Greenimalist, I had opened up a whole new world of possibilities. With no baggage or burdens tying me down, I had no obligation to return to California. If I didn’t want to return in 3 months, I didn’t have to—I was free to go wherever I chose.

There’s something amazing about being able to change your mind. I’m not talking about being indecisive, but rather the ability to pursue new opportunities as they come. Too often, we turn down new opportunities—not because we choose to, but because our obligations force us to.

Your ability to change depends on how many burdens you carry. The more weight, the harder it is to pack your bags and leave. Possessions increase your weight, and so do long-term contracts and financial debt. Each one is a type of shackle on your freedom.

A house can be a great investment, except it weighs you down. A car could get you to work faster, except it weighs you down. A dishwasher, vacuum cleaner, and refrigerator are all great, useful stuff, but each one slowly takes away your mobility. You lose the freedom of being able to spend time with your family, move to a better job elsewhere, or volunteer on worthwhile work. Once you start making irreversible commitments, it’s hard to turn back.

Some obligations are totally worth taking on. It’s worth losing some mobility to have a family or to work on a meaningful job. But I refuse to surrender my mobility in exchange for more stuff.

Life is full of unexpected surprises. It’s impossible to predict what opportunities will present themselves 10 years from now. 10 years ago, I was still in middle school; cell phones were a novelty; and Google was a small company. I have no idea what the next 10 years will bring. All I know for sure is that the more mass I take on, the fewer opportunities I’ll be able to pursue.

Last year, I could never have predicted that I’d have such a great time staying in Taiwan, that my Grandpa would be happy to have visitors, and that I’d be able to find a solid church here. If I had kept all that extra baggage back in Irvine, I would have to return—like it or not—because the high price of storage was driving me back home.

But because I didn’t carry so much dead weight, it was easy for me to change my mind. And so I did.

This post was inspired by Less Mass from software company 37Signals. I took their unconventional guide for creating lean, mean web apps and adapted it for everyday life.

Why I’m Grateful For Mainstream Organics

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We visited the Zhong Xin organic farmers market in Taichung.

Is this all they have? There were only a handful of vendors that morning, and the limited produce they carried was heavily-packaged and overpriced. After traveling half-way across the city, I was shocked to discover how small the farmers market was. I tried to act nonchalant, but deep down I was incredibly disappointed.

That Sunday morning, Hsinya and I visited the organic farmers market at Zhong Xin college. I was excited to see the city and taste some good food. Hsinya told me that the famers market was located in the heart of campus. What better place, I thought, for a social gathering and for delicious, wholesome food?

My first experience with an organic farmers market was in Irvine. Each Saturday morning, almost a thousand foodies showed up to enjoy a lively shopping experience accompanied by live folk music. Some were there to strike up conversations while munching on hot, toasted kettle corn. Others were there for the roasted almonds or freshly baked bread. On both aisles, vendors would hand out free samples of sweet peaches, apricots, and strawberries. It was here where I fell in love with dried dates and figs, and it was here where I first sampled fresh goat cheese mixed with chives and jalapenos.

Perhaps my expectations were too high when I arrived at Zhong Xin. I brought my camera that day, all too eager to blog about the fantastic experience I was anticipating. I never expected that at Zhong Xin, the vendors would outnumber the customers, and that some displays would even be empty.

I surveyed the entire market twice. They had a few batches of veggies, some Asian pears, and a few tiny bags of brown rice—little else. There was no meat, dairy, or legumes. Forget about the artisan-crafted bread and aged cheddar cheese; they hardly had any fruits. At Irvine, I could buy organic dragonfruit, but here, I couldn’t even find oranges. If I wanted to stick with a pure organic diet, I’d either have to scavenge other markets, or just suffer from malnutrition.

Their organics resembled gifts more than they did food. They were sold in tiny packages for display purposes. They sold gift tea leaves, but not soybeans. Sure, the food was technically pesticide free, but it probably wasn’t sustainable, and it definitely wasn’t affordable.

When I saw the organic coffee beans, shrink-wrapped in endless layers of plastic, I snapped at my wife. This is just marketing gimmicks targeted at rich people.

Hsinya returned an irritated, resentful stare. Buying organic was your idea, anyway. Don’t you blame me for this.

She was right. So I did what I could that day: I picked a few package-free veggies, mumbled some broken Chinese, packed the produce into my reusable bag, snapped a few photos, and headed home.

On the way back, I realized how ungrateful I had been for what I had in Irvine. Organic produce might have been slightly more expensive, but at least it was affordable and easy to find. Hopefully, it’ll be the same for Taichung someday, too.

It’s been tough buying organic while traveling, but I haven’t given up on organic just yet. Zhong Xin did have a few package-free veggies, so I might visit again in a few weeks. In the meantime, I’ve been shopping package-free produce from local, traditional farmers markets.