Travel

I'm looking at flights and wondering what personal experience people have with different indonesian cities.

These Oahu turtles are so chill.

I wonder if this is the same guy who came up to me last time.

All three times I've been to Japan, the official dates from Sendai to Osaka have been two weeks early, so on my third visit I backpacked across Japan for 3 months to make sure i caught plenty of blooms, and it worked wonderfully.

Waking up in a blossoming orchard in my hammock was beautiful and surreal. Hyper-real

The big ones always startle me before my brain identifies them as not-shark.

Empty plastic bottle, poke a small hole in the neck of the bottle, fill the bottle up with water, screw on the cap, flip upside down, instant bidet.

Oahu

With 2 billion English students, English speakers can move around the world and immediately make 3-5k USD a month teaching 10-30 hours a week while living in a drastically lower cost of living country.

Learn, eat good foods, climb some mountains, meet new people.

Traveling rocks and English speakers lucked into a guaranteed high-paying job.

If you're curious about a specific country or anything else, comment below. And happy new year!

Made-up name, I can't identify the ghost eel.

About 4 feet long, seahorse head, pearl but maybe translucent, pretty tricky to see.

Oahu

Whoop, i think it's a "trumpetfish"!

There are many medical care destinations to choose from, I've used and still choose Thai medical care over other countries for their quality/expertise first, cost a close second and comfort a very close third. speed/care availability a fourth, come to think of it.

There are other good options, but Thailand is the medical destination I still recommend over any other for its comprehensive quality in all areas.

By traveling to Thailand, you can instantly access higher-quality health care than in the US and most other countries at a vastly lower cost(more than 90% lower than the USD equivalent in many cases).

This is a direct comparison of local surveys showing the preference of locals for Thai health care over US health care; these bar graphs provide some comparative global context for those numbers.

These survey data are supported by the factual numbers of publicly available fee charts, hundreds of studies and analyses on Thai healthcare, and of course any number of firsthand medical experiences abroad like my own.

This article summarizes a few of the established benefits of Thai health care over the US for their respective citizens; 99.5% medical coverage of Thai citizens; $1-fee doctor visits; a longer Thai life expectancy than the US despite having 90% lower income per capita and a much lower GDP; far lower costs for procedures across the field.

Buy a plane ticket and you can take advantage of high-quality, affordable medical care, including dental and vision.

These are a few cost comparisons of the average US cost for common medical procedures compared to relatively expensive prices from the top Thai private hospitals. They are still a good example in that many of the costs at the most expensive Thai private hospitals are still 90% cheaper than the US.

Hip replacement? Go to Thailand, save $40,000.

Heart bypass? Go to Thailand, save $58,000.

IVF? Save $10,000-15,000 per procedure.

These cost savings can be found with all medications I'm aware of: common depression/blood pressure/anxiety medications, insulin, hormonal supplements, chemotherapies; every medication I've ever heard of is available in Thailand at the same or better quality at a much better price.

The effective and simple explanation is that the Thai government invested in health care. They bought new equipment, trained doctors in world-class universities for 30 years, and now there is a generation of Thai doctors rated among the best in the world in a country with cutting-edge medical expertise and equipment that anyone can access for pennies on the US dollar.

Those reduced fees that people like me pay for root canals and crowns are more than enough for Thailand to continue purchasing cutting-edge medical equipment and funding the training and expertise of their world-class medical professionals.

Please ask here or message me about any medical tourism questions or concerns, and if you have medical needs you can't afford, seriously consider traveling to a country with a better-developed health care system.

Please ask about any clarifications or details.

Sunlight came through the clouds right when he was flapping up there.

Oahu sea turtle

If I'm not backpacking or renting locally, I almost always use airbnb these days.

Airbnb works almost everywhere, has filters, has community reviews, and has some pretty crazy good monthly rates.

examples:

Type in Cusco, select "entire home", filter by price under $350 USD, and you have 18 private housing options in Cusco to choose from.

Once you choose a place, that price is locked in and you can extend by a few days or months at a time.

You won't have to repair anything, pay for utilities, bother with anything except living where you want to live.

I'm going to the Philippines next, so I'll probably make a similar search like this: and choose the one that looks good.

If you want to live in a more or less expensive area, just adjust the price filter up or down by $50-100 bucks to find a manageable amount of options to choose from.

In Cusco, $350 works. Philippines, $250, France, $600:

That's for entire houses/condos. If you are okay with a furnished room, prices go down. Without maintenance or repair fees, living in Europe, Asia or anywhere is very affordable while traveling.

State fish of Hawai'i, very into baing photographed.

Tested out the underwater camera yesterday!

State fish: humuhumunukunukuapua'a

1. Urban camping and public camping is legal and culturally accepted across Japan, just be respectful and non-obtrusive.

2. High-quality, inexpensive food can be had at every convenience store, which are ubiquitous, and handmade sushi/ramen are only a few dollars more.

3. Clean, relaxing public baths and laundromats are present in every town so you can stay clean.

4. Beautiful, well-preserved and maintained forests and hiking trails.

5. Weather, transportation, like a hundred other reasons I talk about in this episode.

I loved hammock camping across Japan and would be happy to backpack there again.

By far the most expensive part of Japan is their housing, so take that out of the equation and Japan is affordable to even shoestring-budget travelers.

I spent about $300-400 a month for 3 months backpacking in the hammock above from Tokyo to Osaka.

There was one slug every 10 or 20 ft on the sand for a a while, they were different colors, dark red, green, blue, and were all still alive. I thought I snapped a picture of several of them, but I can only find this one.

North shore, Oahu

IRS form 2555 qualifies you for the IRS Foreign Earned Income Exclusion(FEIE), and is a simple form to fill out with the rest of your taxes, takes 5-20 minutes depending on how many countries you lived in that year.

IRS instructions for form 2555.

This is the official language of the IRS form 2555 physical presence test:

“You meet the physical presence test if you are physically present in a foreign country or countries 330 full days during any period of 12 consecutive months including some part of the year at issue. The 330 qualifying days do not have to be consecutive.”

Plainly, it doesn’t matter if you were absent from the United States between January 1st and December 31st to qualify, it only matters that you were not present in the United States for 330 of 365 consecutive days that include, in some part, the current tax year you are applying the exemption to.

You could have been in the US until april, and then outside the US from May until the following april, and that’s fine to claim the FEIE and exclude a variable amount of your earned income tax as determined each year by the IRS (currently at $130,000 annually).

By tax year(Jan. 1 - Dec. 31) you were only out of the country for 270 days, but out of 365 calendar days, you were not physically present in the US for 330+ days from May to April, and so you pass the physical presence test, which qualifies you for the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion.

It can be a US or non-US company that employs and pays you, you just have to be physically outside the US.

This IRS exemption is for earned income, so self-employment tax, capital gains, dividends and other excluded "unearned" incomes can still be taxed.

Ask any questions below, I'm happy to answer.

I did not buy enough.

The rainbows in Hawaii are so vibrant it feels like they have weight.

Brisket, ribs, chicken, pork sticks, lomi salmon, pound of white crab, kaarie, kaiea and shrimp poke, a couple diced cascaron and some butter mochi. Some crackers and Brie.

Waialua general store on Oahu, best place I've been to on the island, no second place.

Monk seal at the north shore on Oahu.

I was swimming and then quickly stopped swimming and got out of the water.

Hi, I’ve been traveling for about 15 years.

You can access quality housing, food security, health care, education, transportation and other basic civil amenities abroad that may be otherwise unaffordable or inaccessible to you.

If you have a remote job that pays over $500 USD a month, there are over a hundred countries you can be living in. If you make over $1000 USD a month remotely, the world is wide open.

If you don’t have a remote job yet, teaching English on or offline pays $1600-10,000 a month.

You can use the extra time and money to figure out how to get closer to your dream job, dream country or chill out and watch movies or play video games all day.

Stay out of the US 11 out of 12 months(calendar year, not tax year) and you don’t pay federal income tax on your first ~$126,500 USD that year.

Ask questions here and feel free to post in the community.

Cusco, Peru

Turt took a breath right before i managed to snap a pic.