I spent a month in Koh Lanta in the South of Thailand immediately after SteemFest IV back in November - December of 2019 (which feels like a different epoch!).
Koh Lanta is a beautiful island peninsula with EVERYTHING going for it - forests, beaches, plenty of bars and social activity going on, a choice of excellent cheap restaurants, and if you get there in peak season like I did, it's a perfectly lovely 30 degrees for most of the afternoon with a nice breeze, and not too hot at night.
I spent a month at a co-working venue called Ko-Hub, with some really interesting and lovely people too, so I got the live the digital nomad paradise dream for a month. ...
Despite my day one bike accident which meant I couldn't really do anything very much during my stay, it was still basically paradise - I mean probably the stereotypical image of it most of us have in our heads - golden beaches, beers, palm trees, breeze..... really just perfectly chilled, quite literally because of the decent air conditioning I had at work and at home during my stay!
HOWEVER, what I learned is that 'paradise' was a little too easy for me - and while I enjoyed the digital nomad experience it was just a little too ungrounded for me - too baseless, too virtual.
What I learned is that while I do live primarily online, paradise for me means being rooted somewhere physical, having a permanent base I can call my own.
So I was quite happy to leave this classic paradise island - it was paradise, but just not for me.
However, on getting back to my little house in Hereford, which I love, this most definitely wasn't paradise either - while I was rooted there was something unsatisfying about my lack of local connections and lack of land to do anything with - my house was quite small, and my part-time teaching job at the time started to get tedious early into 2020...
What I realised, what I'd always known, is that 'paradise' for me meant fulfilling my dream of buying some proper (quite a lot) of land and living and working with it!
Hence my move to Portugal, spurred on by Covid-19!
Welcome to Paradise
That's actually what one of the other British ex-pats said to me during a dinner I had very shortly after my arrival, someone else doing the whole 'off-grid-ish' thing in East Central Portugal.
They were right, in many ways.... the climate is wonderful - except for a couple of months in summer when it can get uncomfortably hot for about half yer waking day, but I'll take 10 months, winters are mild and easy compared to the UK.
East central Portugal is land locked, but there's mountains and I do love mountains, and wide open spaces, and great roads, empty and perfect for driving.
And language barriers aside (working on that) most of the people are lovely and friendly, only a few idiots who can be very unhelpful who tend to work for the man, in some state institution or other!
I knuckled down late 2020 and early 2021 and had my ideal piece of land purchased and I guess that's my little piece of Paradise......
Just a smidge of the land I own, down to the road .
Although there's a final twist...
Now I've got my piece of land I find myself under no urgency to do anything with it - I'm quite happy to take years to develop it, or rather, work with it minimally to let it find it's own way with a little help.
And guess what, I'm probably spending more time online NOW than I was when I was doing the whole digital-nomad thing back in Thailand nearly two years ago.
So maybe I've got more than one Paradise - the real and the virtual.
I can live with that.... .
This was my response to this week's POB Word of the Week!