#67 Financially Sustainable Travel with Nora Dunn - The Professional Hobo

Nora Dunn, also known as the "Professional Hobo" sold her busy financial planning practice in 2006 to travel the world. She is considered one of the original Digital Nomads and Lifestyle Travel Bloggers that specializes in slow travel. She combines her expertise as a former Certified Financial Planner with her lifestyle travel experience to teach people how to travel long-term in a financially sustainable way. Nora has traveled to more than 75 countries while working remotely and has been featured in Forbes, Business Insider, Lonely Planet, and even Oprah.

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Episode Transcript

(00:14):
You're listening to The Globe Trotter's podcast, the show dedicated to bringing you fresh
and diverse perspectives from traveling enthusiasts allover the world. I'm your co host
John O'to, and I'm Max Melganzalez. In our last episode, I interviewed
Kobe May's avid traveler from Atlanta,Georgia, who I met while traveling in
Carthahena, Colombia while he was workingfor the Selena Hostel. Kobe took us

(00:36):
through the process of what it takesto become an expat and his unique thoughts
on ethnocentrism in travel. If youhaven't tuned in, go back and give
that episode to listen. But intoday's episode, we're going to be speaking
with Nora Dunn aka the Professional Hobo. Back in two thousand and six,
Nora sold everything she owned, includinga busy financial planning practice, to travel

(00:57):
the world. She has enjoyed atravel life ever since and is considered one
of the original digital nomads and lifestyletravel bloggers. Specializing in slow travel,
she has lived and traveled to morethan seventy five countries while working remotely.
She combines her expertise as a formercertified financial planner. With her lifestyle travel

(01:18):
experience, she teaches people how totravel long term in a financially sustainable way.
She also empowers people to travel longterm through instructional and inspirational content on
their website, YouTube channels, personalconsulting services, book, and much more.
She has also been featured on television, radio, podcast and online outlets

(01:38):
like Forbes, Business Insider, LonelyPlanet, and even Oprah. Nour,
It's great to have you on theshow. It's such a pleasure to be
here. John and Max. Thankyou so much to you both. John
cannot just casually mention that you've beenon are featured in Oprah and not give
us more details. Nora, whatis the story on that? I know

(02:00):
it sounds really good, you know, and I really wish that I could
say that, you know, Oprahand I are like this, but unfortunately
the or fortunately or unfortunately the featurewas in Oprah magazine. Still very cool,
I mean it's in print, right, yeah, right, exactly.
I mean I could actually legitimately saythat I was on Oprah just the magazine.

(02:20):
I love it. That's yeah,that's absolutely amazing for this podcast.
Yeah, we haven't had an OprahInner Circle guest just yet, so welcome
to the club. Amazing. Canyou share what inspired your shift from being
a financial planner to a full timetraveler back in two thousand and six?
And did that vision happen before twothousand and six. The ultimate catalyst for

(02:44):
this lifestyle change of mine was bornliterally at the age of nine, when
I developed this dream of traveling theworld and experiencing it from the inside out.
And it was it was basically likethat. In school, they showed
me, like this documentary of somebased in Europe, and I'm looking at
this screen and I don't recognize anything. I don't recognize what the people are

(03:05):
eating or what they're wearing, orthe architecture is completely different. I don't
understand the language. Everything was completelyforeigned to me. And in my nine
year old brain, all I wantedto know in that moment was how do
the children play? What games didthey play? I was and I became
almost obsessed with this concept, likehow do kids play around the world?
And as I grew up, thisdream grew up with me, and then

(03:28):
it became a matter of not onlyknowing how the children play, but how
do the adults play? And youknow, what do you eat, how
do you cook, what do youtalk about around the dinner table, how
do you live your life? Andit just basically turned into this dream where
I wanted to crack the cultural codeof countries around the world, as it
were, and I took vacations andI never really kind of got there.

(03:49):
And so then my last traditional vacationthat I took was I spent a month
in South Africa, and people backhome thought I was crazy for going away
for a month that was unheard ofin Toronto, and people even suggested that
maybe I was being irresponsible with mybusiness for going away for so long.
And then I got to South Africa, but I thought, this is long
enough. I can do it.I can crack the code of South Africa.

(04:10):
And which of course is just ajoke. If anyone, if anyone
listening has ever been to South Africa, you'll know that this is one of
the most nuanced countries in the world. And so, spoiler alert, it
didn't end well. I returned withmore questions than answers, and also a
different perspective of how people traveled,because while I was there, people would
say to me, oh, so, how many months are you here for?

(04:30):
I looked at them like they werefrom the moon of like months,
people travel for months at a time. Is this a thing? So ultimately
that was just that whole experience makingme understand that I was never going to
be able to achieve this lifelong dreamthrough vacations, and that I came to
a few months later are real crossroadsin my life where I thought, Okay,
well, I can continue on thispath that I'm on, and I
had already achieved a modicum of successto society would define it. Technically,

(04:55):
all I had to do was workless and make more and more money throughout
the rest of my life. Butit was coming at the cost of this
travel dream, and I knew thatif I waited until a conventional retirement age
to live that dream, I mightnot be willing or tragically able to do
the things that I wanted to doaround the world. So I realized that

(05:15):
there was no time like the present, and I went on this grand experiment.
I didn't know anyone who had doneanything like what I was doing.
I felt like I was the onlyperson in the world to sell everything and
travel on an open ended ticket withoutknowing how I was going to make money
along the way, or where Iwould go or what I would do.
I just knew that I needed thatfreedom to explore whatever the lifestyle would bring
me. And I was open tothe possibility that, you know, six

(05:39):
months later, I might return backto Toronto and pick up life from where
I left it. But I wasalso wanted to have the freedom to not
do that, So that was whyI sold the lot and hit the road.
When you left on your journey toSouth Africa, just just a quick
question, were you prepared that youmight come back with regrets or was that
something? Is the term regret notin your vocabulary. I don't tend to

(06:02):
have regrets because throughout life, evenI feel like life's misadventures often make for
the best stories with a dose ofhindsight and a sense of humor. And
all of the bad things that havehappened in my life have led me to
this moment right here, and Icouldn't imagine being anywhere else or doing anything
else in this moment. So Ido tend to chuck up even the negative
experiences to just the stuff of life. But no, when to more specifically

(06:28):
answer your questions, there was nopossibility of regret on my horizon. When
I left on that South African vacation, it was just excitement for the adventure
ahead. Incredible. And let's fastforward a few years and let's talk a
little bit more about a term you'vecoined, financially sustainable travel. Could you
explain this concept, what it means, and how it differs from let's say

(06:49):
budget travel. It happened to alongthe way ever the financial planner. When
I started traveling the world, Itracked my expenses because it was an experiment.
And one of the things that I'vedone throughout my entire travel career has
been to play with this experimental mindset. So everything has always been an experiment

(07:13):
for me. So, for example, when I sold my financial planning practice,
it kicked out. Instead of alumpsum, I got a monthly income
for two years. It was abouttwo thousand dollars a month, and I
didn't really think that was going tobe enough to support a full time travel
lifestyle. But I set myself alittle challenge. I decided to have a
little experiment. Let's see, canI travel full time on two thousand dollars

(07:34):
a month? And so I trackedmy expenses all along the way, and
in my first two years of fulltime travel, I was shocked, amazed,
and all the things to realize thatnot only did I meet that goal
of spending two thousand dollars a month, but actually I far exceeded it because

(07:54):
I only spent seventeen thousand dollars ineach of those first two years, and
that was all in that's life,lifestyle, travel, business expenses, I
mean that's everything. Every penny Ispent was less than I ever would have
spent a live in Toronto. Now. I employed a lot of really interesting
strategies to really keep my costs lowbecause I figured I was going to have

(08:15):
to be careful about my expenses.And in fact, actually in my first
ten years of full time travel,I saved over one hundred thousand dollars using
some of these techniques that I developedalong the way. Yeah, I know,
that's just a little teaser for somethingI'm sure well this put later right.
So anyway, I was just amazedthat this was a possibility. It

(08:37):
shocked me and amazed me. SoI thought, okay, you know what
this is. This is something that'sachievable. I mean, people could do
this if you wanted to travel longterm or full time, you could do
this, and you could it's affordable. So in my first ten years of
full time travel, I tracked andpublished my annual income and my expenses to
prove that the lifestyle was sustainable.So this is how I came about coining

(09:01):
the concept of financially sustainable travel.It's not doesn't have anything to do with
eco sustainability, and it doesn't haveanything to do with budget. It has
to do with three specific pillars.The first pillar is earning money in some
way, earning money remotely, earningmoney passively, earning money in a location
independent way that allows you to travelthe world, So that's the money in.

(09:24):
The second pillar is making creative,conscious choices as to how you spend
your money. And this can vary, right, So if you're bringing in
more money, you'll make different choices. And pillar two and pillar three is
balancing the money in with the moneyout so you can sustain the lifestyle for
as long as you want. Soin the initial years, when I was
traveling on a small budget and Iwas developing my online career, I made

(09:46):
different choices to the choices I wouldmake now that I'm making more money.
This is why it has nothing todo with budget travel. Because some people
are making remote employee might be makingone hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year,
they don't necessarily really need to considerdoing some of the things I did
at the beginning that included volunteering andhouse sitting, unless of course they want
to. So it really is abalancing act and it is absolutely different for

(10:11):
everybody. And when people ask me, they it's like, Norah, give
me a budget template for lifestyle travel, and I say, no, I
want because because it's it's different foreverybody. How much money do you make?
What do you want to experience aroundthe world. I mean, if
you're big on scuba diving, youbetter have a bigger budget because scuba diving
is expensive. If you want todo that around the world, power to

(10:33):
you. But that's going to beentail a whole different set of choices.
Then if you just want to,you know, I don't know, take
pictures of wildflowers, you know,or something that is inherently, ahurrently less
expensive. Right, I feel attacked. That is awesome. I think there's

(10:54):
a lot to unwrap there, andI think you made a lot of really
good points, especially with how budgetis so different for everyone, tying into
like the your digital nomad journey.How have you managed these challenges and rewards
of being a digital nomad since hittingthe road nearly two years or sorry,
twenty years ago, and how?And can you tell us a little bit

(11:16):
more about the name how the professionalhobo came about? All right, I'm
going to start with the second questionbecause that's an easy answer. The first
one could go on for a bit. But so the professional hobo came about
because when I first started traveling theworld, when I left Torontal, Canada,
I took the train westward and Iactually spent about seven months in the

(11:37):
rocky mountains of Alberta, and thenI spent about six months in Hawaii,
and then I kind of left thecontinent and went to other places. But
in those initial months, I'm arotarian. So I've been a rotarian for
a million years. And so oneof the great ways that I meet people
in various destinations that I visit isto go to local rotary meetings where I

(11:58):
meet people that I wouldn't normally meeton the tourist path and North americally,
can you tell our listeners what rotaryclub is in case they're not familiar with
it. Sure Rhetori is a worldwideservice organization. Everyone is held together under
the same idea of the motto ifyou will is service above self, So
it's about being of service to localcommunities as well as to the world at

(12:22):
large. Rotary is an organization isalmost single handedly responsible for eradicating polio around
the world. I did not eitherpibilities of getting of banding together as a
global organization for the greater good ofhumanity. So it's it's a fabulous way
to meet people who are all againcommitted to this idea of being of service
to other people around the world.So it's a great unifying aspect. And

(12:46):
then of course a Rotarian can showup to any meeting around the world,
and because we all understand the fundamentalprinciples of Rotary, there is a certain
camaraderie and solidarity that happens that cantranscend cultural and linguistic challenges. Shout out
to all the rotator out there,right, so I so then I would
go to these Rotary meetings. Andof course there's a lot of business people

(13:09):
around the world. Rotary is,you know, like it's well over one
hundred years old organization, and initially, in its initial stages it was kind
of a networking organization for businessmen.So it's come a long way since then,
but there's still a heavy business kindof element to it. So and
in North American culture, one ofthe first questions that people will ask you

(13:30):
in order to gain a better understandingof who you are is, of course,
what do you do? And Iwas like, I don't know what
I do? Favorite question, right, I'm like, I don't know.
Like I hadn't yet had any vestigesof a remote career. I was still
trying to figure out how I wouldmake money along the whale. I knew
I was homeless, and I waspretty sure that wasn't a good answer.
So I wanted to make I wantedto make homeless look good, So I

(13:54):
called myself to make fun of myself. I called myself a professional hobo,
and that's always got a laugh.And then it ended up stick, and
in the years to come, itactually embodied a whole bunch of other bits
of poetry. Because I'm also somewhatevangelistic in my love of train travel.
I've probably written more trains around theworld than most people I know we will
discuss later on. It's a thing. And of course, the term hobo

(14:20):
actually harkens back to the nineteen thirtieswhere migrant workers would hop on a freight
train and take it to the nexttown and hop off the train and look
for work in that town, andthen when that worked dried up, thought
they'd hop on the next train andlook for work in the next town.
So there's a certain bit of poetryto the professional hobo. But that was
entirely unintentional. But I still liketo talk about it like it like I

(14:43):
somehow had a part in choosing thatterm. I love it. So I
think your second question, or yourfirst question was about misadventures now, how
you manage between challenges and rewards,and how that's like maybe evolved over the
last twenty years. It's so funnybecause when you asked that question, the

(15:05):
word that I latched onto was challenges, of which there have been many.
Right, I already said earlier thatI think it's the misadventures that you know,
make for the best stories with thedose of hindsight and a sense of
humor. And I have hit becausewhen I started as a full time traveler,
don't one else was doing this,or if they were, I didn't

(15:26):
know about them and they didn't knowabout me because blogging wasn't a thing.
Social media. Social media was noexactly like, I didn't have it.
I didn't even have a Facebook accountuntil like two years in back on my
Space, I got you right.I think it was Twitter. Actually,
I think I had a Twitter account. I was. I was amant guard,

(15:48):
and so there was this abundance ofinformation that we currently have did not
exist. So I was. Ibasically just stumbled my way up the learning
curve, and I made every misteryou can possibly make along the way.
But that doesn't even it's not evenexclusive to those initial years of traveling the
world. I continue to make allkinds of mistakes, and I've experienced burnout

(16:11):
in many different ways. I've experienced, you know, work related burnout,
of experience, travel, lifestyle relatedburnout. I've hit all these walls along
the way. I've actually fived threenatural disasters. I got three tropical diseases.
I got robbed, I was inyour fatal accident. I had all
kinds of crazy stuff happened to mealong the way. But each experience in
itself was a learning experience and withsomething that now I can bring to the

(16:36):
forefront to help other people with thislifestyle. And I'll give you one specific
example and a fairly recent example ofhow that happened for me. In twenty
eighteen, after twelve years of beingproverbially homeless, I burnt out of the
lifestyle. I'd lost all sense ofbelonging in the world, and I thought,
I just I realized it was terriblyill. And I just thought,

(16:59):
oh my god, gosh, isthis me now? Like, have I
destroyed my life by virtue having traveledfor the last twelve years, like to
the point where I don't feel likeI belong anywhere in the world. And
apparently this is actually a third culturekid syndrome as well, this sense of
feeling like you belong everywhere and nowhereat the same time. So I thought,
okay, well, I grew upin Canada. I must be missing

(17:22):
a cultural sense of belonging. Soin Canada is my people. So I'll
go back to Canada and I'll geta place and I'll be with my people
at least part of the time.You know, I'll get that grounding whatever
that I needed, and then Ican continue to travel the world. But
I went back to Canada and Igot a place, and I realized that
Canada's not my people. I mean, they're not my people, but they

(17:45):
weren't the people that I was lookingfor. And it took another few years
of exploration, both in our explorationbut then also speaking with friends and colleagues
who also have this lifestyle to makeme realize that what I was miss the
sense of belonging that I was lookingfor, was with other people who have
a travel lifestyle and remote careers withwhom we could we had that baseline and

(18:10):
that synergy and could understand one another. So in twenty twenty three, ever,
with the spirit of experimenting, Itried traveling the world in a whole
new way, even though I'd alreadybeen on over eighteen years. I found
a whole new way of experiencing theworld by virtue of experimenting with co living

(18:30):
and co working programs as a wayto foster connections and live and work and
travel with people who have similar lifestylesand to develop that social network that I
had actually been missing that would enableme to then have a different mix and
a different balance of traveling and livingin local places as well as with other
people with this lifestyle. So that'san example of a challenge along the way

(18:53):
that I turned into a learning experiencethat I can now help other people shortcut
so they don't have to go throughthe agony that I went through. And
let's talk a little bit more aboutthis topic before we start exploring some of
your amazing adventures that you've already brieflytouched on. You know, you started
in two thousand and seven. Foryou, how has the world of travel

(19:15):
and being a digital nomad evolved andwhat trends do you see emerging? Which
I think I want to place moreof an emphasis on that second part of
the question absolutely, and the worddigital nomad itself, where the term digital
nomad is the first and greatest placeto start. Of course, when I
started, digital nomad as a termdidn't exist. Actually it did, but

(19:37):
it was obscure such that I didn'trealize that that was a term or a
thing or a lifestyle. But itdid become a term that became a little
more part of the lexicon of peoplewith this lifestyle. A few years into
my travels, however, it wasstill a very purest term in that the
definition of digital nomad was someone whotraveled full time, had no home base,

(20:00):
and worked digitally, worked online.So of course I did that to
its strictest definition for twelve full years. And then around the time that I
got my home base in twenty eighteen, I thought, okay, well that's
it. I'm holding I'm hanging upmy shoes. I'm no longer a digital
nomad. I got a home base. Like, even if I travel seven
months a year, I can't bea digital nomad because I got a place

(20:22):
to go back to. But aroundthat time I also noticed the definition of
digital nomad was shifting because more andmore people started being able to work remotely,
and they wanted to be able totake those careers on the road.
The pandemic, of course, thenblew the top off this. When you
know, I mean, companies aroundthe world were forced to go remote,
will become obsolete. Millions and millionsof people's jobs then became remote, and

(20:45):
again a percentage of these people wantto try traveling long term while working remotely.
So apparently, as of now,thirty six million people around the world,
half of which are Americans, identifyas digital nomads. However, and
I don't know the exact statistic.But the majority of these people are not

(21:08):
digital nomads to this strict original definitionof being homeless. They don't travel full
time. They just travel or theyhave the freedom to travel with while working
full time. So now digital nomadis a much broader definition, and it's
a lot more inclusive in that regardbecause you don't have to be fully nomadic.
You just have to have the abilityto work remotely while traveling the world

(21:32):
longer term and in a different wayfrom the way you would travel the world
if you were on vacation one hundredpercent. Yeah, I was just going
to echo because if if you wereto ask me at different parts of my
life, and I know this istrue for Max, I think we would
maybe that second definition that's a littlebit more inclusive, would encompass maxim myself
where I'm not fully or homeless forlack of a better term, where I'm

(21:55):
between shelters. That's one way ofsaying it. And so that is interesting,
just the definition of the word,how it's changed over time since you
started your adventure. Yeah, andI feel like we can see that shift
in definition and the term in generalcoincide with like the van life movement,

(22:15):
and COVID really brought that out wherea lot of people were all of a
sudden all about this hashtag van life, and it's like, you just bought
a van, you still have ahouse, You're not living out of the
van. You're going on site likelittle vacations and little travels, which are
great, but it is still verydifferent from the original term, and so
I just feel like that's worth noting. Yeah, Nora, normally when we

(22:37):
have a guest on this show,we focus on one, maybe two travel
experiences, but you've experimented with somany and travel styles, from long term
volunteering to wandering around namelessly. It'dbe a shame if we didn't discuss a
handful of these trips and experiences,and we're going to get into some of
those in more detail, but tojust kick it off, how do you

(22:59):
decide your travel approach and what doesit say about the importance of adaptability and
travel. So my original answer formany years to this question was that I
would let my destinations choose me ratherthan choosing my destinations, and that's not
inaccurate. I still do like,usually my destination will choose me in the
form of a unique opportunity, achance to stay with somebody, a house

(23:22):
sitting gig, a conference, aca living opportunity. There's always something in
addition to the destination that gets meon that plane, train, bus,
talk talk, taxi, scooter,whatever it is, it's going to get
me there. And because that opportunity, whatever it is for me, is
what provides the context for my beingthere and the depth of my experience.

(23:44):
If I were to just randomly choosea place and go, I want to
go there and start from scratch.Ay, that's a lot of work.
It's a lot of work to travelplan, you know, to figure out
Okay, so I've chosen the country. Now I'm going to choose the city.
Now I got to choose the neighborhood. Now I going to figure out
where to stay, and I gotto make sure it has good internet and
it's near a co working space,and then it's safe in the middle of
line, and I to figure outyou got to get there and figure out
how to survive. Like, there'sa lot of work that goes into the

(24:04):
travel lifestyle. So if I don'thave a context or a specific reason for
being there, that work can becomeoverwhelming. Having said that, Like I
said, I like putting a themeto my travels, and that theme is
often what will dictate the destination.So a little bit earlier, I said
that I saved over one hundred thousanddollars in my first ten years, and

(24:26):
I did so by getting my accommodationfor free, and I literally read the
book on it. There are fivedifferent ways to get your accommodation for free.
The best one, right, thebest one for digital nomads is house
sitting or home exchanges. If youhave a home to exchange, it's a
similar concept to house sitting, butthat gives you all the comforts of home.

(24:47):
It's just somebody else's home, andit gives you the time and space
to be able to work as wellas to explore your local neighborhood. And
you're living very locally, which isgreat. House sitting gigs are not all
created equal, so sometimes the tasksrequired of you can be a little onerous.
I've been lucky enough to choose housesitting gigs that are have a very
reasonable set of expectations for me.Yeah, exactly, and in some cases

(25:14):
just ridiculously reasonable, and in exchangefor a ridiculously amazing place that Yeah,
literally, I literally had that.I had a house in Zurich and their
their cottage and Lucerne. So Ispent three months in Switzerland in the summer.
I had the house, the cottageand the car and all I had
to do was check the mail andwater the orchids I actually killed I actually

(25:40):
I couldn't even do that. Ikilled one of the bloody Organs. But
it's okay. I bought them inthe one they seemed okay with it.
You had one job, Nora,one job, well, two two jobs.
Oh my god. That's hilarious,but also a lot of really good
inside. A lot of people don'trealize that you can travel for free and
you just kind and I have tounderstand what your strengths are and how to

(26:03):
kind of you know, work aroundthat and how sitting is absolutely fantastic.
Yeah, going back into like someof these really intense adventures that you've had
that John's mentioned, one being survivingthe Victorian bushfires in Australia, Can you
give us more context around that specificexperience, and then how have those kind
of those experiences affected you or impactedyou personally as a traveler. That was

(26:30):
an epic experience right, it was, and it was actually ironically my second
natural disaster, but it was thefirst one that I found myself in the
middle of literally, and so Iwas volunteering in trade for free accommodation in
this little rural town about an hourand a half northeast of Melbourne, and
I just finished the first tour,I guess six months of doing that,

(26:53):
and my partner at the time andI had really fallen in love with the
area again using the contacts of rotary. We'd joined the local rotary club.
When we were going to the meetingsand we had an act of social life.
Now in the small towns, wewere experiencing like small town Australian life,
which was just like a cultural mishmash, and it was fascinating and the

(27:14):
nature was beautiful, We had friends, it was all great. So we
got our own place, and thenthree weeks later the Victorian bushfires blew through,
which was to that date Australia's worstever natural disaster. We found ourselves
literally surrounded by fire, in thatwe didn't see the flames personally, but
there was no way out for weeksas these fires burned around us. And

(27:38):
so it was kind of weird andscary and all the things, and of
course with the Rotary contacts, immediatelywe went to service. So immediately we
became a part of the team thatset up the warehouse to receive donations of
goods to fire survive and then wethen turned around and redistributed those goods to

(28:02):
fire survivors. So again another exampleof Rotary on the ground immediately getting to
action and helping people. And soI was in the warehouse one day and
experiencing and seeing this amazing solidarity inAustralian culture which is just amazing and feeling
of service and doing the thing,and my phone rings and it's the Canadian
consulate going, ohoh man, I'mso glad we found you. And I'm

(28:25):
like, wow, I didn't knowyou were looking. Thank you. They're
like how are you, And I'mlike, well, you know, I'm
going to evacuate it for my placeI'm sleeping on, you know, pub
floors and intents, and give mea place to see you right exactly.
But you know, we're all gettingby and it's fine. And they're like,
okay, do you because it couldn'tget me out if I even if

(28:48):
I wanted to, and They said, do you need money, and I
said no, yes, of course. I'm like, why did I say
no? No? And they said, well, what do you need?
How can we help And I said, well, actually you want to help
us, because then I guess theyhad found out what it is that we
were doing as well to be ofservice. And I said, if you
want to help us, actually extendour visas which you're about to run out,

(29:11):
and give us working rights. Ididn't need the working rights, but
my partner at the time did nothave a location independent career and he was
out of money, so this wasgoing to give him a way to replenish
his coffers so we could continue travelingthe world. They said, no problem,
we got you, and that's exactlywhat happened. So we got the
extension, we were able to stayin Australia longer, my partner was able
to get a job, and thenof course we were able to be of

(29:34):
service. But what I did duringthe fires, among other things, was
I mean, I'm sitting there onmy head, especially on the actual day
of the fires. There's nothing todo except just sit there. And I
had a friend who was a volunteerfirefighter, and so we were sitting in
the volunteer firefighting warehouse and we're listeningto all of these calls come through,

(29:57):
you know, like, oh,there's a fire, the mail and Narbathong,
there's nine people surrounded by fire.There's another fire over here, there's
another fire over here, there's anotherfire over here. And I'm listening to
all these announcements come through and it'sjust, I mean, it's unbelievable.
And I thought, well, whatcan I do? All Right, Well,
I'm a writer. I can writeabout this experience. I can log
this experience. So then I started, literally, minute by minute, I

(30:21):
started writing down what was happening andall these announcements that were coming through,
and the actions that were happening,what people were doing. And a lot
of the other people at the firehousestarted getting into it as well. They'd
be like, hey, Norah,this announcement just came through. Make sure
you get that near notebook. Andso for literally for the next three weeks
of the fire's burning, as extraordinarilyas they did, I kept this written

(30:44):
dialogue and written report of what washappening, and that actually got archived in
the National Library of Australia as apiece of history. That's so that's just
so epic. Yeah, I mean, it's epic when you say it that
way. But I mean from ayou know, being in your shoes in
that moment, is there any sortof fear or concerned for your safety,
because I mean, these are someof the worst fires that graced Australia up

(31:07):
until that point in time. Sure, absolutely, I'll be scared. It's
hard to describe the situation really,I mean, it was I wasn't immediately
scared for my life, and thatI was not. I mean, we
were running from fire on the firstnight we were we had to pull everything
out of our house, and thenwe had to move to the next town.

(31:29):
And then there was word that thattown was about to burn down,
so we had to move to thenext town, which we thought, you
know, okay, I mean,and we went to bed that night thinking
we may or may not be surroundedby fire again when we wake up.
So there was a certain level ofrunning from the fires, but that initial
so the first night was the terriblenight where most of the damage was done.

(31:49):
The next three weeks then the firefightingteams were just trying to kind of
stem to control, hold the firesback and contain the fires. However,
there did not. I didn't feelimmediate risk of losing my life or being
everything around me being burnt down.And perhaps also because I didn't have,

(32:10):
like all of my belongings fit intoa suitcase. I didn't have a house
that was going to burn down fullof family heirlooms that would be lost,
that would be so there was acertain sense of you know, if I
if I came out with this withmy life, I'm good, right if
I still have my laptop bomb meeven better and my passport, you know,

(32:34):
And that was literally what I tookfrom the house. It was like,
Okay, what do I need?I need my laptop on my passport.
I couldn't even think of anything elsethat I needed in that moment.
I think that's something really important torecognize too. You know your position there.
I wanted to ask you think writingkind of helped distract you and keep
you optimistic through that time to apoint, yes, I would say,

(32:55):
so. It gave me something tofocus on for sure, and I tend
to be I identify as an observerin life anyway, so being able to
document those observations was definitely a gift, and it was a way for me
to put a lot of the nervousenergy that I had to good use.

(33:17):
Amazing. I want to flip thescript a little bit here. Let's talk
about another epic journey that you wenton, maybe a little more uplifting one
he went on. One that wasIt was a thirty day I believe twenty
five thousand kilometer, which is roughlyfifteen thousand, five hundred and thirty four

(33:37):
miles. I did that math inmy head. I didn't look it up
or anything. Train journey we're talkingabout here, so a very long thirty
day train journey. What inspired thisUltimate train Challenge? And can you share
some of the highlights of that trip? Absolutely? What inspired it, of
course, was already I had thislove of trains. When I left Toronto,

(33:59):
I took the train across Canada.And then when I was in Australia,
I got at the year after thefires, I got a rail pass
and I rode every inch of railin Australia. So I did. The
first thing I did was like athree day train ride from Darwin to Adelaide,
and I thought, oh man,this is the longest train ride I've
ever done. Three days, threewhole days on a train. You know,

(34:21):
I'm going to get bored. SoI brought books and music to listen
to, and work to do andall kinds of things. And I got
off the train three days later andI hadn't really done any of that stuff.
Instead, I've lost hours looking outthe window and talking with people on
the train and having amazing meals.So I thought, okay, right,
So I still had this rail passburning a hole in my pocket, and

(34:45):
I was like, okay, I'mup the ante. So I decided to
go from Melbourne to Sydney, whichis an overnight train, and then Sydney
to Perth, which is a threeday train ride, and then I turned
around and got right back on thesame train back to Sydney and then back
to Melbourne. So it was eleventhousand kilometers in eight days or ten days.

(35:06):
And my goal for the experiment wasto see if it's possible to get
bored on a train. What achallenge. Yeah right. I was just
like, let's see what happens.And I didn't get bored. So then
the next year, the Ultimate TrainChallenge happened. And this was not my
brain child. It was the brainchildof some travel blogging friends of mine,

(35:27):
but I joined in with glee becausethis was the world's longest navigable route by
train from Lisbon to Saigon. SoLisbon all the way through Europe up to
Moscow, then the Trans Siberian overthe Beijing and then all the way down
through China and Vietnam twenty five thousandkilometers and we did it all in thirty
days. Initially, the idea behinddoing a stunt like this was again not

(35:52):
only a combined love of train travel, but then also an idea that in
future years maybe we would turn thisinto a thing that members of the public
could participate in with, you know, like scavenger hunts and other little activities.
And we never made that. Itnever came to pass in that way,
but for ourselves as the adventure ofexperiencing the world's longest navigable route by

(36:13):
train and to have those adventures ofyou know, going through it was like
fourteen countries or something. I wentthrough in that time, and I went
on the world's longest train ride andthe world's fastest train ride and the world's
most messed up train rides, andit was just fantastic as an experience and
believe it or not, was notthe end of my train experiments and adventures.

(36:34):
I more recently circumnavigated the United Statesby train with a stranger. That
was fun, and then and wedid that in a period of slower period
of times over three weeks. Butthen in the subsequent two years I finished
off all the other long distance routesthat Amtrak offers, So I've pretty much
there's like maybe one route two routesmissing, and other than that, I've

(36:55):
done all the train rides in theUnited States. That's Yeah, there must
have been some characters in that thirtyday Ultimate Train Challenge, like I can't
even imagine, because yes, okay, one thing is saying, hey,
I can entertain myself, but there'sgot to be other people that are turning
to others, let's say, vices, to kind of entertain themselves to make

(37:16):
it through such a long train viade. One of the things that I love
about train travel in particular is thatnobody takes the train because it's the fastest
way to get anywhere, and rarelyis it the cheapest way to get anywhere,
Because if you wanted the fastest way, it's probably going to be to
fly and if you wanted the cheapestway, it's probably going to be a
bus, which means anyone who's ona train probably has an interesting story fair

(37:38):
and that is what makes it.And you're all on this train together,
and you're all experiencing this journey together, so it becomes easy to strike up
conversations with people along the way becausethe other thing that you all have is
the luxury of time while you weregetting from one destination to another. And
you know, when you fly somewhere, you don't really have any sense of

(38:00):
where you're going. In that whatlays between your destination and your origin,
your origin and your destination, youdon't know where. If you take the
train, you actually see the landscapechanging. And not only that, you're
seeing a really different angle of whereveryou're going through. For example, like
you're usually seeing the backs of housesand businesses, Like nobody builds their house

(38:23):
to face the train, so whatyou're seeing is like again this inside scoop
of how people are living their lives, which is another reason why I just
find it a fascinating experience. Yeah, I do want to ask, do
you happen to know how much thatthirty day Ultimate Train challenge costs you just

(38:45):
for those out there, No,what we will do is follow up with
everyone on our social media feed andmake sure we provide some figures there,
because that is very interesting and entertainingway to travel. Like you said,
I think it was twelve or thirteencountries in that stretch, yes, and

(39:05):
again I lost track of it,but I know that I documented it on
my website, of course, andthis was also a long time ago,
so the crisis would have changed,and I was doing it with some fellow
traveled bloggers. Full disclosure, therewere elements of that that were sponsored,
which is part of the reason whyI don't have an accurate cost estimate.
And I'm sure there's a little bitof challenges now navigating through some of those
countries, given what's going on rightto your political climate. But I want

(39:28):
to read this line from a blogpost pertaining to a trip you took to
Thailand. While pampering, starving,shitting, and massaging myself into wellness on
an idyllic island in Thailand, Iembraced the first noble truth of Buddhism with
great irony. All life is suffering. This scripting story has three parts.
The irony, the agony, andthe ecstasy. Can you talk a bit

(39:52):
more about your experiences in Thailand andwhat you've learned and how that blog post
came about. I'm so glad thatyou read that poet. That's one of
my two or three favorite articles thatI've ever written. I'll occasionally have these
experiences where like I'm in the middleof something happening, and then suddenly it's

(40:14):
like this voice comes from somewhere elseand starts narrating my experience as I'm having
it. And if I listened tothat narration as I'm having it, it
usually turns into one of my bestpieces of travel writing. And this was
one of those experiences, and itwas this was actually when I was having

(40:34):
this breakdown of lifestyle burnout, andI was in the middle of realizing that
I've lost all sense of belonging inthe world, and I was ill,
and I was trying to do whateverI had to do in order to get
better, and so I was physicallytrying to fix myself. And in this
particular experience, I was in KopanganOn, which is an island in the

(40:55):
south part of Thailand. I'm soglad that you pronounced that you might have
known it is that I took outthe name of the island out of me
reading that just because I wasn't surehow to pronounce it. But well,
and I'm probably still not doing itjustice, But I most people will agree
anyone who knows the island will knowthe island that I'm referring to. And

(41:16):
I had been I had been inThailand a few times in the north of
time, but this is my firsttime on one of the islands, in
this island in particular. And thisisland is varied. It's very interesting.
It's it's renowned for their full moonparties, which happened in the south part
of the island. But what otherpeople, many people don't know is that
on the north part of the islandis a whole kind of different, quieter
community dedicated to spirituality and wellness andall these things. And I had found

(41:40):
this center in the north part ofthe island that does these fasting programs.
You know, when I thought,okay, well I need to it because
I had reason to believe that Ihad, you know, parasites and potential
heavy metal poisoning and all kinds ofissues from water borne illnesses of unfortunately,
it's spending too much time in countrieswhere the water is not drinkable and not

(42:01):
properly treating the water. So Iwas thinking, and I was starting to
think, you know, okay,well I don't feel right. Maybe it's
my gut. So I thought,I'll let me start with my gut.
This is because I hadn't still hadn'tquite admitted that I was experiencing lifestyle burnout,
and I was like, now,let me systematically figure out what this
is and kill it. So Iwas going for the gut in this particular
experience. And so, yeah,I did this seven day fast in Thailand,

(42:24):
Like in Thailand, you should beeating curry, and instead I was
eating nothing, and I was doingthese weird colonic experiences. I get to
the whole thing was completely messed up, and it was a slugfest the whole
way. Like I know people onthis program who were like, after once
they hit like day three or so, they're like, oh, I'm not
hungry anymore, and my energy levelsare higher and I feel great. And

(42:45):
if I could never eat again forthe rest of my life and feel like
this, I would That was notme. I was suffering the whole time
like I was in pain. Iwas like it was a slugfest. There
was emotional ship coming out that.I was like, everything the whole time
was just terrible. And from thesecond when we broke the fast, I

(43:07):
don't even like papaya. But assoon as that papaya hit my mouth,
my disposition changed. Like I was. People were like, no, who
are you like? Because suddenly Iwas like, I'm back, I'm eating
food. Life is good. Idon't like. Yeah, I say,
you don't like pap I'm about toend this podcast recording right now now,

(43:28):
I actually have I gotta I gottago. Actually, hey, you can
delete this recording. Man, it'sit's thank you for your time. Yeah,
you don't do you eat papya?Now? Under yourress? Oh my
god. I would like to apologizeto our listeners for having such a such

(43:52):
a guest on that doesn't like papaya? Wow? Just wow. Anyways,
No, but your story is fantastic. I don't know if I can go.
I don't know if I can gotwo days without eating. I've done
one day fast before. I don'tknow if I could go over to I
have a hard time for like sixhours. I can't I don't know.
Well, I mean, and Iwill actually say, hunger was not the
issue because they stuff you full ofof They called them dtox shakes, which

(44:15):
of course for me, I waslike, Oh, it's gonna be like
a fruity shake, it's gonna begreat. No, it's sillium husks and
clay, you know, Like itwas not enjoyable. So I had to
drink all of this kind of stuffand like handibles and handibles and supplements and
all these other things. So Iwas so busy drinking all of these detoc
shakes, and I had one thingof bowl of broth every day, and

(44:37):
so there was my stomach was alwaysfull. I strangely wasn't hungry. It
was just everything else. It wasthe deprivation, It was the cravings,
It was the strange muscular thing.Was like I lost flexibility, Like who
knew that when you don't eat youcan't touch your toes? Like I didn't
know that. So it was allof that other stuff that just led me
to this feeling of not having lotof fun. But again, this voice

(45:01):
came from without and just kind offed me this experience and gave me this
way to write about this experience thatwould be you know, entertaining for me
and hopefully for my readers as well. So that's one of my favorite pieces
of writing, John, So thankyou so much for bringing that up.
And I hope that anyone who islistening to this will then go through and

(45:22):
read that article and some of theother ones that I have that are my
personal favorites. But they don't paythe bills because you know, it's not
about ten things to do in changMYI. It's just a wonderful story that
has no logical conclusion. No,no, And I'm glad that we're giving
snippets because I think you have suchan You're a great storyteller. In number
one, then you just have somuch travel experience that I hope we're giving

(45:45):
people enough snippets that he catches theirattention that they want to go check out
your website, which we'll also touchon, but let's shift the conversation back
to fiscal responsibility and sustainable long termtravel. You have a pretty big following
on YouTube. Congratulations since, bythe way, when you first started out
as a content creator, who wasyour intended target audience and does the reality

(46:07):
match who you thought would be interestedin learning from you. It has been
a moving target all along, Okay, I mean when I first started travel
blogging, travel blogs weren't a thing. Travel blogs were glorified online journals,
which is basically what mine was.So the tagline was the adventures of a
Girl with no fixed address, withthe intention that my target audience was my

(46:27):
mother and you know, any ofmy friends who wanted to follow along.
It was not intended for public consumptionas it were. However, with the
advent of the Victorian bushfires and anothernatural disaster a year prior that, I
had accidentally started an international NGO.It's a story into itself, but suddenly

(46:47):
my website was being read by peopleother than just mom, and concurrently,
travel blogging was starting to develop intosomething that was a thing, and then
as the years continued to go on, it now became a monetizable thing.
And along the way, I becamerecognized as one of the og travel bloggers.

(47:08):
And this, of course served mevery well because in the initial years
of travel there was a very smallhandful of US travel blogging, So if
someone wanted to write about or featurea travel blogger, I was one of
a small handful of people that theywould reach out to, so that gave
me a lot of valuable backlinks asan example of how this served me.

(47:29):
So initially my audience was people whoyou know, and I just wanted to
write. It was a creative outletat a hobby, so anyone who read
it was just anyone who would beinterested in armchair traveling along with me.
And then, of course, asthose years went by, and I was
tracking my expenses and I was,you know, publishing my annual expenses and

(47:50):
income. I was also a freelancewriter, and I was writing for personal
finance websites, leveraging my financial expertise, and I was writing for travel web
sites leveraging my experience. And somewherein the middle of all of that,
I got the Moniker if you will, as being the finance of travel Girl.
So that was when I decided forit was time to rebrand my website

(48:13):
into how to travel long term ina financially sustainable way, and that rebrand
sticks. I'm still with that rebrand. However, I'm also shifting again to
be a little more focused on digitalnomad resources. So again it still falls
under how to travel long term howto arrange your affairs, So that you
can travel long term in a financiallysustainable way, but then also helping people

(48:37):
shortcut these experiences or shortcut the learningcurve and have really hit the ground running
being able to live, travel andwork on the road without losing productivity,
time or you know, making themyriad mistakes that I personally made. So
that's my website audience, which isvery much geared towards long term lifestyle travel.

(49:00):
Something a little different happened on myYouTube channel though, and I'll spare
you the minutia of the last seventeenyears of having a YouTube channel. Please
don't go looking for the early stuff. It's painful. But about a year
ago I started a series on myYouTube channel that really took off, and
it's just called travel Smart in Style. And I also have another series on

(49:22):
my channel that where I review travelgear and remote work tools and products as
well, and that's also tied inthere. But travel Smart in Style is
pretty basic travel tips the but soit appeals to a different people. I
mean, I obviously I still dodigital nomad content because that's a concept that's
near and dear to my heart.But the videos that really do perform very

(49:45):
well are often about packing tips.I have a video with two million views
about mistakes you make in the TSAline. So it appeals to anyone really
who was interested in travel, rightand again right. I want to shure
god people's experiences. I want tohelp them travel smart in style. And
I will say this because I knewwe were doing this recording and all the

(50:07):
way back from London coming to theUS. I've traveled several times. I
know that they're asking them for meto put the liquids in the special bag,
because some countries make you do that. I just chose not to do
it. At the very end,I was like, do I really want
to open this up? Right asI'm getting in, you know, as
I'm about to like get it scanned, And of course they pulled my bag

(50:28):
out. They took it out,they actually packed it for me, and
they're like, sir, did youdo you want to keep this? It's
like yeah, of course. Firstback in re scanned it and went through.
I was like, great, wow, oh that's not that's not the
common threat. Are we going tosay this is not travel advice. I'm
pretty sure that's not trying. Yeah, anti travel advice, definitely not.

(50:49):
I was just too lazy in themoment. Yeah, I think it's I
think it's worth the highlighting that.Like, you know, you mentioned that
there's these basic travel tips, andlike with anything in life, like I
still even photography, I feel likeI know a lot, but I'll still
go back and just double check thethings that like I either already know or
should know. And sometimes you justpick up those little things that are super

(51:10):
helpful and you don't realize it becauseyou skim over it, because it's the
basics, you know, and that'sair quotes right there, the basics.
So for anyone listening, you shoulddefinitely check out Nora's videos on the travel
basic tips and make sure you're notskipping over anything important. So, Norah,
you offer guidance for others to travellong term and full time. You've

(51:32):
kind of gone over a couple ofthose, you know, helpful tips and
pieces of advice. But what aresome of the really key pieces of advice
that you would like to give tothose aspiring to travel, whether it's full
or long term, or even shortterm. For anyone who wishes to sample
the digital nomad lifestyle, be thatfor a long, long time, short

(51:55):
time, or full time. Thenumber one piece of advice I can give
you is also the number one misconceptionabout the lifestyle, and the misconception is
that travel equals vacation. I thinkreally until recent years, the only definition
we had for travel was vacationing.And when you are on vacation, you
are experiencing the world in a dramaticallydifferent way to how you would experience the

(52:21):
world if you're working remotely and workingfull time along the way, And so
I think that and that plays intoevery aspect, it plays into how you
develop your budget. Like there's alot of naysayers, Like I have a
couple of social media posts that wentviral about how you can travel full time
in a financially sustainable way, AndI mean the numbers, you know,
like with every million views you getand you get exponentially orders a magnitude more

(52:44):
naysayers, and there's a lot ofnaysayers, and they're saying it's not possible,
and it's because they attach travel tovacation. If you take a vacation
budget where you're not working and you'redoing touristy stuff every day, and you're
staying in hotels, short term accommodation, eating all of your meals out.
If you take the daily budget foryour vacation and you multiply that times three

(53:04):
hundred and sixty five, yeah,you know what, it's not affordable.
But when you travel as a lifestyle, everything is different. You're renting accommodation
by the week or usually by themonth. It also means you have a
kitchen facilities so you can cook someof your meals. You're not eating all
your meals out, and you're workingfull time. You're not doing touristy stuff

(53:24):
all day, every day the wayyou would if you were on vacation and
not working. So the number ofexperiences that you'll have in the course of
a week that you could equate toa touristy experience will be like two or
three. The rest of the time, you're tending to the daily tasks of
life. You are living there ratherthan just traveling through it. So the

(53:45):
decisions you will make will be dramaticallydifferent if you want to travel long term
versus if you are traveling for avacation. Yeah, couldn't agree more.
And even in my current job,like or previous job, if I work
remotely, if I go somewhere let'ssay six seven days or longer. I'll
make sure that it's some type ofaccommodation that has a kitchen, because number

(54:06):
one, I still have to work, and number two, it's easier to
make breakfast and get into that routine, and it also helps lower the cost
of you know, eating out.But so I agree with you there.
But before we run out of timejust because we are pushing it, we
do have a fun segment we liketo play with all of our guests.
We're gonna ask you five travel relatedquestions in quick succession, and please answer

(54:28):
as quickly as you can. Areyou ready? Ready as I'll ever be?
What country has been your favorite tovisit? Only one? Dad,
I didn't answer that quickly. It'slike choosing children. One has their favorite.
It's okay, okay. Which countryhas the best cuisine perof What has

(54:57):
been your favorite beverage abroad? Alcoholor otherwise? Peru Tho's so good?
Yes, Vietnam for sure? Actuallyyes? Is there a specific drinke yes?
Cafe the coffee? Yeah? Yeah, coffee? Agree? Which country

(55:21):
are you most looking forward to visitingfor the first time? For those just
listening, her eyes just like itgot so wide I could tell she was
like, Oh, what countries haven'tI been to? There's oh not even
It's just like there's so many tochoose from. I don't know. I'm
really interested to see more of thecontinent of Africa. I should be there

(55:42):
right now, but that's another story. But randomly, I'll say Turkey.
Okay, the most adrenaline pumping experienceyou've had abroad, and it can't be
something you've already mentioned on this podcast. A TV show that I filmed in
New Zealand. I was a gueston a adventure travel TV show in New

(56:06):
Zealand and I got to do everyif. It was the world's highest,
longest, fastest, deepest, craziestthing. I did it all. That's
so epic, very cool. Yeah, yeah, definitely name drop the link.
I gotta go see that. Yeah. But congratulations, you made it
through the rapid fire segment, theentire Yeah, we won't send you a

(56:30):
papaya. Yeah awesome. Damn,I didn't know papaya I had such evangelistical
line. That's amazing. I justdon't get Yeah, well, we almost
made it through. We still havetime to delete this episode in recording,
so let's just make it through.We'll send you papaya juice package, frozen
and everything. Yeah, uh,Nora, thank you so much for being

(56:53):
a guest on the show. Beforewe leave, Where can our guests find
you if they want to learn abit more about you and what you do?
My original online home is and alwayshas been, the Professional Hobo dot
com and in fact anyone if youwant to go a little bit deeper with
the sort of stuff that I canprovide in terms of lifestyle advice, I

(57:13):
have a free gift if you goto the Professional If you go to the
Professional Hobo dot com forward slash freegift, you will get a checklist of
ten things to do before you travellong term and that'll help you cover the
bases along the way. And fromthat website you can pretty much get to
anywhere else I get I am.But if you search for Nora Done on
YouTube, that's where you'll find myother online home. Great, and that's

(57:37):
a great free resource that you're ableto provide. Make sure you take advantage
of it. And if you wantto find out a little bit more about
us, you can do so byvisiting our website at www dot gtspodcast dot
com. You can find us onInstagram, or Facebook at Globetrotter's podcast,
Twitter at globetrot Pod. Make sureyou drop us a review on Apple Podcasts

(57:57):
or Spotify if you enjoyed listening tothis converse. Editing was done by our
very own Jonathan Oltero. Thanks forbeing here, Nora, it was incredible
to learn from you and to ourguests, Thanks for listening. Until next time,