My First Thai Massage

I’d like to preface this post by saying I have never had a massage in my life; or at least not a real one. For years I have heard about these fantastic Thai massages that you can get for dirt cheap prices all over the country.  Well as it turns out, all of the legends were true, as every where you look you see all sorts of massages advertised for less than the price of a Big Mac back home. Well yesterday morning I found myself with some time to kill, and decided to wander the streets near Khaosan Road and see if I could find an acceptable place to get my first massage.  I eventually wound up in a really

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My Thailand Packing List

Well I am currently about halfway through Asiana flight 243 en route to Seoul, South Korea.  So far the trip has been fairly painless, aside from arriving in SFO about half an hour late due to a delay on the tarmac. NOTE: Sorry I am a few days late in getting this posted!  Between jet lag, Ayuthaya ruins with Cody Mckibben, and lack of  wifi, I haven’t had the time to post! I was really excited to see the difference between flying a domestic airline (such as my usual United) and one of the great Asian airlines I have heard so much about.  The results so far are a bit of a mixed bag.  My seat is definitely more cramped than I

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Embrace Life’s Defining Moments

At the time of this posting I am probably getting ready to board my flight down to San Francisco.  From there I will be headed to Seoul, South Korea followed immediately by my flight to Bangkok, Thailand. To say the last week (and past few days in particular) have been a whirlwind would not be doing me justice.  Between trying to see all of the people in my life who will not be venturing across the world with me, and tying up countless loose ends, I am ready to hop on a plane and just sit. For a long, long time! As I’ve been thinking about my imminent departure, I’ve realized that this could be labeled a defining moment in

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Happy New Year!

It’s amazing how quickly the last few weeks have flown by.  I leave for Thailand in 5 days, and it still hasn’t quite sunk in yet.  With that being said, I’m quickly realizing how much needs to be done and how many people I would like to see before my departure. There are multiple posts that I’d planned to have completed before I left, however the unfortunate reality is that with everything that needs to be done, I just haven’t been able to spend the time to write a second high quality entry for this week. My goal is to write two or three posts during my nearly 48 hours of travel time next week.  I plan to do a

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Stuck In A Rut? Get Out While You Can

This is a difficult thing to admit to myself.  After swearing that I wouldn’t let it happen, and taking many precautions to ensure that it didn’t, I have been stuck in a bit of a rut for the past few weeks.  While certainly not in the sense that I am depressed or doing nothing but sitting on the couch watching TV, it is more a lack of productivity around projects that I had higher hopes for a few months ago. If you’ve been on a set schedule for years, as I had been up until October 20th, the lack of structure can totally throw you off.  No matter how much you prepare, it’s definitely a shock to the system. For

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Top 10 Reader Comments of 2009

So as you, the reader, are the most important part of the success I have seen on this blog, I wanted to take a moment to reflect upon your finest moments.  I have received hundreds of comments on my posts, and those are hundreds more than I ever expected to receive.  I got the inspiration for this from a post that Corbett Barr wrote a while back called “10 Favorite Quotes From Readers (And Why You Should De-Lurk).” I think the more I can integrate the readers into the writing and what I am doing, the more useful and exciting it is for everyone. I also wanted to quickly take the opportunity to revisit some goals that I set in

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The Mental Evolution of a Cubicle Dweller

For the past few weeks I have been reading Chris Guillebeau’s annual review posts, and it has inspired me to do a bit of a personal review myself.  While I haven’t written a book, inspired thousands of people, or almost been kicked out of Saudi Arabia, I have been thinking a lot lately about how much has changed in 2009 and reflecting upon where I was a year ago.  If you have been reading Location 180 for awhile, you have a general sense of what I have been through, but you probably don’t realize just how far I have come to get to the point where I am today. If you had asked me a year ago, what I would

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Digital Nomad Blog Carnival (6th Edition)

Welcome to the 6th edition of the Digital Nomad Blog Carnival.  Each month writers submit their best articles about the lifestyle of a digital nomad, and the publisher for the month (in this case me) chooses the best of the best to display. If yours wasn’t chosen, the chances are it was a too far off topic to be included, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a great post!  Now on to this month’s selections: Stacey over at The Smarter Wallet, submitted a great post entitled How to Work From Home and Start a Home Business.  While on the surface, this may not seem very nomadic, I found some of her suggestions to be very applicable for those looking to start a

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Online Friendships and The Real World

Since the beginning of Location 180 back in May, I have met alot of new people.  That is one of the biggest unexpected results from beginning the blog.  I never anticipated the community that would form around my site, as well as the communities around dozens of other sites out there that I would become a part of.  As you all have probably experienced, it is awesome to be able to connect with so many like-minded people, and it would have been nearly impossible if it weren’t for the power of blogging. Although there is a caveat.  95% of these relationships will always be digital.  I will never meet the vast majority of the bloggers that I follow, or the

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Holy Crap, I’m Actually Moving to Thailand

I’m not sure when the realization actually hit me, but at some point in the last week, I couldn’t help but think to myself “holy crap, I’m actually moving to Thailand”. I don’t know if it was finalizing the visa, or getting my plane ticket purchased, but after over a year of trying to work towards a new lifestyle, it is finally happening. How awesome is that? I can now write in peace knowing that I am not, in fact, a hypocrite. I don’t have to read travel blog after travel blog, lusting after exotic locations that people like Nomadic Matt experience on a daily basis; now I’m one of those people! I realize that since announcing the move, I

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