I don’t know how many of would say yes but just around South East Asia, it isn’t something difficult to pull off. You can also change those with maybe Europe, South America, or the US. But the point is, regionally where the income and cost of living, culture are similar, it’s not too difficult to move around. For example, sampling data from nomad list, you can see that all around South East Asia, their number is around $800-2000/month for a nomad “lifestyle”. But those numbers are overestimation and it is the number where you can live a lavish lifestyle and not-so average local style.When you get your basics sorted, rent and food, you can live off less of that data and perhaps, similar lifestyle to average blue or even white collar worker in one of SEA capitals. Since my 6 months time is up, this year I question myself again, with a similar margin and difference and knowing that I could still live pretty okay, why don’t I move around more often?

There’s one word, Comfy...

Once I touched my country soil and readjusted to living in this place, I got a lot more comfortable. One in particular is just my ability to have most convenience without going through hoops. I can conveniently order food at 3 AM, no transfer fees or figuring out currencies, I don’t have to call my bank if I want to make a purchase or switch country, I can order things and it’ll arrive in 2 hours.Most importantly, while the quality of my life is not too far off, somehow that feeling of not being a stranger can be quite comforting too. Maybe others feel the same too when they’re back to their home country.

I have been putting off a few of plans just because now I am tied with my gaming session, comfy chair and room. I have some set of routine that I believe will be obsolete once I move around again and I can’t let that go yet. Since I live in a place where it’s pretty vibrant and accessible, I do not want to leave all these comfiness behind just and deal with some bullshit that I might encounter as it’s often unavoidable outside the country. Recently, I talked to my mom about moving to a new place but I have that sense of getting exhausted introducing myself all over again. It gets tiring at times when you have to tell people your name, what you do, and having to explain the same thing probably a dozen of times. But at the same time, I know I am probably bewitched by comfiness. It’s a nasty curse that makes me complacent at times because just being in my comfort zone I have no sense of challenge and often being so out of touch with reality.While being out there almost all the time, I was exposed to so many different realities and somehow, being in a certain place was truly inspiring to me. More often than not, I ended up growing my network and we’d see each other randomly just all around SEA.

Recently, I think people who travel alone are crazy but then looking back, I was traveling to a country known for its hot bed of human trafficking by myself. Didn’t I realize how lucky I was? I mean, considering getting into a random car out of a sketchy border there could be million possibilities and these are the things that in my comfy brain thinks utterly ridiculous & dangerous. My comfy brain thinks that taking a 12 hours train to some random city is a strange idea. It also overthink about how do I move around there, live, etc while I got by just fine a lot of the time. Funnily enough, everything justified and crossed as “ adventure” when I snapped out of the curse. I don’t have any other way to break the curse other than really just pack my bag and go. Usually that helps and after the travel bug bites, it’s gonna be a constant moving. One of the days, I might do that as the weather allows me to do that.