Me: Just had one of the most lovely and uncomfortable meals of my life…staying at a beautiful boutique resort to promote – again by myself – and had a reserved table in the empty onsite restaurant then had the staff standing by my table the whole time as I ate by myself… Luckily there’s no […]

I’m retiring the ‘Day-to-Day’ series and ending with an updated look at my daily life here in Chiang Mai. You can always go back and take a look through all past posts – snapshots from expats’ daily lives all around the world, from New Orleans to New Zealand – here and thank you to all […]

This is the third and final part of a three-part post about how I’ve managed to keep traveling and living abroad these past four years without using up my savings. It’s not a guide on how to save money for travel or a complete budget breakdown, but an overview of how I’ve personally made it work. If […]

This is the second part of a post about how I’ve managed to keep traveling and living abroad these past four years without using up my savings. It’s not a guide on how to save money for travel or a complete budget breakdown, but an overview of how I’ve personally made it work. If you’re just […]

I realize that what I do for a living and my lifestyle is difficult for many people to understand. I don’t quite believe it myself most of the time, and rarely feel like I know what I’m doing so certainly don’t expect other people to get it. But I have noticed that there tends to be two very big […]

“Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.” – Alan Keightley This month marks the 2-year anniversary of Paper Planes – which feels strange to say since, depending on the day, it either seems like I’ve been doing this forever or […]

This past weekend marked my three year anniversary of leaving Seattle and moving to Southeast Asia. Though at the time I didn’t really think of it as ‘moving’, more like I was leaving for an extended trip, I’ve now used Chiang Mai as a home base for longer than anywhere else I’ve lived after high […]

I’m going home next week for the first time in more than a year and the entire thing kind of scares me. I want to go home.  It’s time.  I need it.  I want to see my family and friends and eat cheese and Mexican food and bake and sleep in my bed and see […]

After two years of living abroad, there are a few tips for expat living that have come up frequently that make life and settling down in a foreign place a little easier.

Lately I’ve been having people ask me how I made the decision to leave home.  It wasn’t easy, and a lot of thought and planning went into it, but the turning point came when I stumbled upon this quote.  Cliche?  Maybe.  But I scribbled it down in my planner and kept returning to the phrase […]