Happy New Year!

First off I would like to wish you a very happy new year.

There are tons of things that I could write about in this post, but I’m going to try and keep it as short as I can.

Needless to say, 2013 has been without doubt one of the best years ever for me personally.

In fact, I would say it’s actually the best.

Back in January, I launched a small online business.

In the following 6 months it allowed both myself and Florence to jet off to Thailand knowing that we’d be able to work and travel as we pleased.

This in itself was a tremendous feeling of achievement on my own part, but it also proved to me once and for all that things can be accomplished online once you put your mind to it.

Prior to last January, I’d absolutely no idea about how to go about starting/running an online business.

Thanks in no small part to a very brilliant online community over at Location Rebel, I was able to get my feet wet with various forms of online businesses.

Now, 12 months later I’m putting the finishing touches on a second business project, and I’m also managing an online advertising campaign for another travel blogger.

In addition to all that, I’ve learned so much about how the interweb money machine can make things happen.

Living In Thailand

We are just approaching the 6 month period of living in Thailand. We left home on a one way ticket to Bangkok back in July.

While we’ve not done much travelling, and only stuck to Thailand in that time, we’ve still notched up a few travel memories and experiences.

We spent a cracking 4 months in the South of the country in Phuket, where we relaxed on islands like Koh Phangan and Koh Samui.

We partied at our second Full Moon Party, canoed into caves in Phang Nga bay and witnessed the surreal Chinese Vegetarian Festival to name a few things we did.

After Phuket, we ventured up to the North to the vibrant Chiang Mai.

We’ve been here since the middle of November, and we leave in around 3 weeks time.

Online Buddies

Prior to leaving Ireland, I’d been following a lot of various travel bloggers over the previous two years.

Travel blogging was something that I had been dabbling in here and there since 2008, but never took it seriously.

Since moving to Thailand, I’ve met with some pretty cool people that I’d followed online. In fact, I’ve ended up working for one of them as part of an SEO company.

Getting to mingle with these kind of people really gives you an insight of what can be achieved when you put you mind to it.

They are in this online game a lot longer than me, so it’s good to see that it can work if you put in the effort.

We also got to meet up with other fascinating people who were all in the same boat as us – working online and being location independent.

Favourite Travel Moment

This is without doubt the day I brought the laptop to Kata beach in Phuket and got an hours worth of work done right there on the beach.

That moment represented me achieving my goal for 2013 of working from a beach in Thailand, and also realising that I made the whole online thing work for us.

Definitely a cool feeling, and one that I’ll remember no matter what happens for a very long time.

Now, it must be noted that literally working on a beach isn’t very productive or easily done(sand, dust, water etc).

But I did get a small bit of work done, so it was enough for me to say I did it. 🙂

Favourite Travel Photo

This is a combination of the Cat vs Mantis fight and the photo from our overnight stay on “the beach” at Maya bay.

Favourite Travel Blog

I follow quite a few of these and I enjoy most of them. The one that continues to stick out for me is Wandering Earl.

Derek(middle name is Earl) left home something like 14 years ago with $1,500 to his name and craved out a life of consistent travel ever since.

His blog is filled with epic stories and solid travel advice. I highly recommend you check it out.

Favourite Travel Video

This one is easy. Graham Hughes was the first person to travel to every single country in the world without flying and he produced this simple yet immensely cool video clip that you need to watch. Hands down one of my favourite YouTube vids ever.

Adventures Await Us….

The next year is going to be a little more travel orientated for us.

Next month we’ll leave Thailand and wander into Laos, before hitting Vietnam and then Cambodia.

That will take up into April.

We then fly to Barcelona for a few days, before heading to Lanzarote for a mates wedding where I’m a groomsman.

A week later we’ll fly back home for a 6 week period to prepare for the next leg of the journey –

BRAZIL for the World Cup and the rest of South America afterwards!

We are beyond excited at the prospect of touching down in South America.

We’ve never been over that direction before so we are really looking forward to that.

One of my things to do in life was to go to a world cup game, so we applied for group stage tickets and we bagged ourselves some for what has been called the worst world cup game in history!

Nigeria Vs Iran

Still, it’s a world cup game right?

I also applied for semi-final tickets, but we won’t find out until Feb if we get those.

The odds are not in our favour however.

Those are our plans for 2014. They will take twists and turns no doubt – but that’s how we like it.

I hope 2014 is a crazy one for ye all.

I’ve received lots of words of encouragement from some of the readers on the blog, and I appreciate the kindness.

So, once again happy new year to you and I’ll chat to you soon.