The Telecommuting Traveler - Live and Work Abroad

By Roadjunky, Posted Oct 23, 2006

Telecommuting webmaster

The modern office

All you need is a laptop and to live somewhere that doesn’t have power cuts every ten minutes.

Dig it, in the old days if you wanted to make money you had to turn up at the office, do working lunches with clients and slog all day at your desk to get the project done.

The internet age now means that for a variety of professionals, there’s no longer any need to live in the place where you get your work.

laptop at the beach

Proof reading can be fun...honest! http://www.flickr.com/photos/palmtreezswayin/

Why live in a city in the first world where the rent and bills are high, the quality of life is low and you can just about make ends meet – when alternatively you could be sitting on a beach somewhere tropical, living cheap and actually saving loads of money as you continue to earn first world wages?

If you’re a writer, designer, photographer, programmer, webmaster, journalist, editor, translator, video blogger, academic or do any other kind of job that doesn’t need you to turn up in flesh and blood, you could equally well be working abroad.

Sure, it would be tough to maintain a professional presence whilst hanging out with a tribe in the Amazon, but the internet is reaching more and more parts of the world these days and finally freeing the traveling freelancer from the trap of city life. More and more people are joining the decentralisation movement and realising that a better quality of life is in their hands.

So get yourself a reliable laptop, an ATM card and hit the road.


Want to meet other road junkies?
Come to the Road Junky Sahara Retreat Feb 6-11 2012 to hang out with 30 other travelers to meditate, make yoga, tell stories and dance under the full moon in the desert.

Follow Road Junky on Twitter for live updates @roadjunky

Read More

Punting in Cambridge

I was staying at a hostel in Chiapas, Mexico when I got talking to an English guy about ways to make money working around the world. I told ...

Continue reading >>

Venice, the Fragile and the Extraordinary

Venice at twilight. The sea mist which enveloped the city the entire day seems to be disappearing, and the sky begins to reveal herself. Thick ribbons of peach ...

Continue reading >>

Overland Through the Ex-Soviet Republics in an Old Army Truck?

Neither had we. Then we bumped into the guys at Soviet Truck and they got us thinking about this vast tract of land which for most travelers is an unknown ...

Continue reading >>