I took a short trip from Chiang Mai to Pai last weekend. Pai has a reputation for being a laid-back hippie village with lots of nature, and I was excited to explore. My slice of Pai was only three days long, which felt like the perfect amount. It is, indeed, a unique and charming place.
Author: afletcher
Chiang Mai is the first city that I’m living in outside the U.S. as a location-independent freelance copywriter, and I completely love it. My days are full of delicious food and coffee, comfortable working spaces, beautifully decorated shops, and lively markets. These ten photos will show you what I do more-or-less everyday.
Becoming a freelance copywriter paved my way to financial, creative, and location freedom. I frequently get asked for advice and tips from people interested in doing what I do. In this post, I’ll look back over the past year with specific examples and compile some of my biggest insights.
If you hadn’t guessed based on the title yet, I ended up in the hospital over the weekend with a very bad case of food poisoning. It was probably the sickest I’ve ever been. After a 60-hour stay, plus a few days since then, I’m doing a whole lot better now. I’ll get more into the details in this post.
If you asked me two weeks ago what I thought I’d be writing about in my next blog post, I would have guessed it would be about doing work from chic cafes and going to see Buddhist temples here in Chiang Mai. As it turns out, that’s not far off, but it’s not spot-on either. There have been some very pleasant surprises.
Here’s to exploring, to getting out of your comfort zone, and to appreciating lifestyles far removed from your own. There are countless routes to happiness, and I do not mean to suggest that travel is the highest virtue. But if we are blind to our own path, perhaps living among other cultures can spark new ideas and inspiration, helping us to find our way.
Koh Samui is famous among honeymooners and beachcombers alike, packed with picturesque seaside resorts and restaurants spread between its many harbor villages. Inland from its shores, steep hills covered in dense jungle hide an abundance of natural wonders and ancient respites. Located in the Gulf of Thailand due south from Bangkok, it’s Thailand’s second largest island, about half the size of Phuket — making it the perfect size to scoot around on a moped.
Phuket is hosting a quarantine scheme right now for fully-vaccinated international tourists where instead of having to stare at the wall of a locked hotel room for 2 weeks (as you would in Bangkok), you can roam about the island as much as you wish. It’s called the Phuket Sandbox.
When I think about how many random things seemed to line up, how many others fell apart, and how many remain where I’m still not sure how they’ll turn out — including this trip, mind you — it’s hard for me to even really care what the path is. All I know is that I’ll walk it with my full heart, open to wherever it leads.