Year 3 Nomad Travel Spend Report – Unplanned Pandemic Year (Part I – The highlights)

I can’t believe it has already been 3 years since we got married, got rid of all of our stuff, and left San Francisco to become nomads and slowly travel the world! 

Year 1 was exciting and amazing! We were living out our dream lifestyle to see the world and staying in some really cool cities. Year 2 was the year of settling into our travel routine. We were becoming seasoned nomads and getting into a rhythm of enjoying new places, eating delicious meals, exploring nature, settling into monthly apartments, and even making new nomad friends. 

Year 3 was an interesting year since 2020 was an unprecedented year for everyone. For the first time, we stayed in the same country for pretty much an entire year due to an unforeseen global pandemic. We canceled our booked travel plans to Japan, Poland, Italy, France, and Greece. However, thanks to the flexibility of being nomadic, we were able to proactively select the country we thought would be safest from Covid, and boy did we luck out! Thanks to Taiwan and their amazing work to handle COVID19, we never really felt the lockdowns that most of our friends had to face for more than a year. Our life was very free since we got to enjoy plenty of hiking, domestic travel, eating out at restaurants, and all the things we loved doing since we became nomads.

We have learned a lot from these past 3 years from both a travel and budget standpoint. In this two-part series, we will be digging into each topic. In this first part, we are diving into the fun/travel part of our journey by looking at our top highlights. 

Are you ready to be blown away by all we did during the pandemic year?

Where did we go? What did we see?

After spending our first year of nomadic life mostly in the Americas, our second year between Europe and Southeast Asia, we spent our 3rd year in only two countries: Taiwan(11 months) and the US(1 month).

Although mostly staying in one country doesn’t sound very nomadic, we were able to stay mobile and move around Taiwan a bunch. During this time, we spent 3 months in Taipei, 13 days in Tainan, 6 days in Kenting, 6 days on Green Island, 11 days in Hualien, 3 days biking between Hualien to Taitung, 4 months back in Taipei, a very nice getaway weekend for my 40th anniversary with some interesting lessons learned, 18 days in Kaohsiung, 3 days on the island of Xiaoliuqiu, 8 days in Kenting, another 2 months in Taipei and a 6 day getaway to the Penghu Islands to celebrate our wedding anniversary. For the final month of the year, we went to California to spend time with our family.

Year 3 Highlights

By slow traveling and not having to go to an office 5 days/week, the amount of free time we added to our life roughly went from 2 days a week (ie. our weekend) + the usual 2-3 weeks vacation a year to nearly 365 days/year. This represents at the very least a 3X increase in the amount of free time we used to have before. With all of that, you can imagine that we got to do a lot more than what we used to do, with way less stress. Since we had so many memories, let’s look at some of our favorite ones!

I won’t explain the whole pandemic situation and how lucky we got by coming to Taiwan (and becoming Taiwanese residents). If you need a recap, you can read;

• Nomad life during COVID-19: exiting Bali and home quarantining in Taiwan
• Taiwan: a safe heaven for nomads during the coronavirus pandemic
• How to get a multi-year resident visa in Taiwan: the Taiwan Employment Gold Card 

Taiwan was definitely underrated for me and there were lots of surprises.  By being able to safely and freely travel around the country, I really enjoyed:

• 2D Cafe in Taipei – There are a few of these popular cafes in the world and it was fun to finally visit one of them. While the drinks were overpriced, you got to enjoy some pretty cool designs. You can find 2D cafes in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Russia, and this list is growing. They let you put things in perspective (pun intended) which is important to do once in a while as you can see in the video below!

• Kenting – Kenting is a region in the very south of Taiwan that ended up being our go-to place when we needed our fix of beach, sun, and good food. The snorkeling there is extremely good as you will see on the video below. We got to see some butterfish, triggerfish, angelfish and even barracuda that were just a 5 minutes swim from the beach! 

• Biking in Houbi – Houbi is a very cute town a few minutes away from Tainan (the former capital of Taiwan) that had great bike paths that were the first we got to enjoy during our visit to the country.

• 3 days biking trip along the east coast of Taiwan – As we got hooked into biking in Taiwan, we stepped up our game and went on a 3 day biking trip on the east coast of Taiwan (between Hualien and Taitung) and got a really good overview of the amazing scenery that Taiwan has to offer! We are now considering the idea of doing a much longer trip around the island one day.
  
  Here was our itinerary:
  • On Day 1 75km from Hualien to Ruisui.
  • On Day 2 about 65km from Ruisui to Chishang.
  • On Day 3 another 65km from Chishang to Taitung.
  • Total distance: ~200 km

For more, read: Biking in Taiwan: Ultimate 3 Day / 200 km bike ride on the east coast (from Hualien to Taitung)

• Hiking – We hiked 2-3 times a week as Taiwan has hundreds (if not thousands?) of hiking trails and 300 summits you can get to. What about that? (Read: 10 Reasons we love hiking)

• Hot springs – They are pretty much everywhere in Taiwan. The hardest but most rewarding part is to find the ones that are wild and accessible.

• River tracing – With the summer being extremely hot in Taiwan, we quickly learned that hiking wasn’t going to be very fun all year long. So we switched gears(literally) and discovered river tracing. River tracing is basically hiking following a river. So you still get the hiking experience with the fun/challenges associated with the water. 

• Slow food and slow living – We got to have an amazing and immersive experience in Taitung where we got the chance to immerse ourselves in some 100% authentic Taiwanese food culture. This was an eye-opening and life-changing experience. (Read: Slow Food in Taitung: our top recommendation to immerse yourself in Taiwanese food culture.

What do we expect for Year 4 of nomadic life?

From a destination standpoint, the pandemic taught us to stop planning too far ahead. As such our immediate plan will be to spend the fall in France and most likely return to Taiwan after that. The Delta variant is on top of our mind and who knows in what situation we will be once the winter hits. The good news for us is that Taiwan is still doing a really good job at keeping the virus away from its border so we know that if we return there, at least we can safely enjoy the outdoors and the many activities and wonderful food the island has to offer.

Wait, how much did you spend?

When the pandemic hit, we were really nervous about a major economic market crash and being able to control our budget. We didn’t have the flexibility of geo arbitrage anymore given that travel suddenly stopped. Our initial impression was that Taiwan wasn’t extremely expensive but it was no Thailand or Mexico. So did we blow our budget? We will dive into how much we spent this past year in the second post on this series where we will be sharing and diving into every single penny we spent during that year.

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What about you? How were your past 12 months? Did you get to find a way to explore in your backyard or within your own country? Maybe you also found a way to travel? Let us know by leaving a comment in the comments section below!