Months on the road, whatever ships
The diary
Not a vacation (mostly)
I said this trip wasn't a vacation, and it isn't, mostly. What a normal day out here looks like, and the latest thing I built: a free scan that shows online stores where they lose sales.Read the entry · 2 min · 3 photosClose
Before I left I said this wasn't a holiday, and I know I said, that it's not a self-finding trip either.
Truth: It was a little bit of the latter, why pretend otherwise. The six to eight months before I hopped on that plane were dominated by insanity and pathological individual(s). Maybe one day when TIA hits 100’000 followers I do a story time, I promise it is well worth the wait.
Truth: Work really did come with me.
A normal day
I wake up relatively late, around nine, and work from the apartment first. Then I pack the laptop and head to a coffee shop (not always the same one) and work some more. After that it's errands and enjoying the city, whether that's Da Nang or Bangkok.
Evenings go one of two ways: drinks with a friend, or more work from a 24-hour coffee shop. On weekdays I start on research around seven in the evening and trade from about half past, with projects running in parallel, until 2:30 or so in the morning. Then back to the apartment. Weekends, no trading.
The trading isn't big, but I enjoy it, and sometimes it helps pay for a dinner or a small day out :-)
(No, I'm not on a beach all day. Sorry to disappoint.)
One of the things I built
I've spent a lot of my working life in retail. Plenty of online stores get the visitors and not the orders, and some of the reasons are right there on the home page. In Narvar's 2025 survey of 3,461 US online shoppers, nine in ten said they check the return policy before they buy. It surprised me, and triggered an idea.
So I built something. A free store scan: put in your store's URL and an email, and a minute or two later you get a score out of 100, the biggest leaks it can see, and roughly the financial impact of it. In part lead gen? Sure, but nobody is going to call you 5 minutes after using the tool, and not just because I don’t collect phone numbers. I’d rather have someone tell me if it was useful and how to make it better than sell them a service.
Before it went out I tested it on ten real, well-known online stores. Four of them had no link to the returns policy, the shipping policy, or both, on the home page.
If you run an online store, try it on yours. I'd love to hear what it finds for you.
So that's what "not a vacation" looks like. The work came with me, like I said it would.
Don't be shy, say hi if you're in the area! Right now that’d be Bangkok.
Wear sunscreen
On what you carry, which sunscreen will get you fined in a Thai national park, and whether home has to stay in one place. A song somebody gave me years ago turns out to be a newspaper column, and the one line in it anybody ever proved is the one I am about to need daily.Read the entry · 2 minClose
Somebody very dear to me gave me a song years ago. Seven minutes of a calm voice listing the things that are going to happen to you. I've played it ever since, through the good stretches and definitely through the dark ones.
Turns out nobody ever gave that speech. It's a newspaper column, written by Mary Schmich for the Chicago Tribune in 1997, that went round the world by email under Kurt Vonnegut's name. Not why I'm writing this, but it does make the rest funnier.
The only line anybody ever proved
The column says sunscreen is the one item on the list with real science under it, and that part checks out. A trial in Queensland followed 1,621 people: 3 invasive melanomas in the daily-sunscreen group, 11 in the other.
I'm planning to move to Southeast Asia (no date yet, so don't ask), a good deal closer to the equator than Switzerland. So the one line anybody ever proved is the one I'll need before breakfast.
Since this is meant to be useful: Thailand banned four sunscreen chemicals across all its national parks in 2021. Oxybenzone, octinoxate, 4-methylbenzylidene camphor, butylparaben. Carrying it into a park counts, not just wearing it, and the fine runs to 100,000 baht. Read the back of the bottle before you pack it.
Home, and whether it stays put
I grew up somewhere, and in a lot of ways that's home, more for the people than the place. Then I moved half way across the world and that became home too. But did it ever?
Nomad is an overused word and maybe it fits. What fits better: home might not be a fixed place forever. It can be anywhere, for any length of time.
She gave me that song because she thought I'd like it, and she's been right for twenty-odd years. I don't think she had any idea how much this song would impact my life. If I were more dramatic I would say it saved my life, but what it certainly did was change the direction of my life when it needed a change of direction. If you ever read this: Thanks P! Always!
Some things only make sense backwards. Whichever year you look back from, it turns out things were not as bad as they seemed at the time. Don't let a temporary situation turn into regret.
Don't be shy, say hi if you're anywhere on the route!
Not all those who wander are lost
A plan in a notebook: get away, build, reset. Then it got longer. The flights are booked, the work comes with me, and I'm writing this from the desk I'm about to leave. First entry of a travel journal, before anything has happened.Read the entry · 2 min · 1 photoClose
I wrote the following plan in my notebook (yes, sometimes I still use pen and paper):
Plan: get away + build + reset
Get away is misleading, it implies I NEED to be somewhere other than where I am, I don't. I want to be, if for no other reason than the experience. It was a path I was on two-ish years ago. Things happen, plans change: the universe tends to have a way to show you who's boss.
Now after two years of caring more about other people's futures than they cared about their own, operation 'making it' is back on.
So I revised the plan, it came out longer. Get away, make new friends, collaborate, build, reset, learn, grow. The page still has the short version, better fix it soon!
The work comes with me
I build software on my own. I consult on marketing strategy, AI implementation (if you are curious check out detgaao.com or detgaao.ch (if you are of the Swiss persuasion)).
Eye roll all you want, I do it with a network of AI agents that run the parts of my life I'd otherwise drop, and a dashboard that tells me what they're all up to, they don't stop because I've moved, so this isn't a holiday.
The flights went through
I am not going to lie, I hesitated a little, dragged my feet on booking the flights (George could tell you stories about it). But now there are departure times, housing and even an international driving permit that's good until 2029.
I'm writing this from the desk I'm about to leave, so if you got here from a link somewhere: hello, you're early. Nothing to report yet. There will be, and when it happens it goes here.
Thank you for joining me for all or parts of this journey - don't be shy, say hi!
