I’m a global vagabond.

Over the past 29 years, I have been working in 35 different countries. That is of the 75 countries i have visited so far. While I also love to travel through a country purely as a visitor. Working in a foreign country gives you a whole different insight to a place.  

I have been working as a hotel receptionist in London. A tour guide in Syria. I picked grapes in Canada and have organised shopping trips for tourists to Paraguay. worked in a hardware store in Germany. On a desert farm in Israel. In a hostel in Athens. And been paid to teach Brazilian students danish. I have also been volunteering at a festival in Finland. At the beach handball world cup in Brazil. And helped an old guy to restore a water mill in Albania.

I was happy to be a volunteer at the beach handball world cup in Brazil.

And I have done many other jobs around the world over the past 27 years. I have been working my way around the world for the past 27 years and because of the experience I have earned from this. I can actually make a living from my knowledge today and I am not short of work.

Helping out at the grape harvest on Saltspring Island in Canada.

If you grab globalisation by the balls, then you can benefit from it.

It’s a global world and I love it.

I have decided NOT to sit down and moan about the world of today. And tell everyone some silly story that things were much better in the good old days.(The so called good old days were not good for people who were not born rich). I am flexible with my job hunt. And will take a job anywhere on the planet, if I find it interesting. When I work it’s more the experience than the money that drives me. Sure, I have to be able to pay my bills. But I rate adventure higher than material goods and I do not have a house and a car for instance. Cause I am quite happy living out of a backpack.

Most of my jobs are tourism related.

Me and a cambodian work college in Phnom Penh/Cambodia.

If you want to work around the globe and do not have a specialised degree. ( I have no formal education myself). Then tourism is the best field to look in. I have worked many years as a tour guide around the world. It’s a good job if you have the drive and the diplomatic skills. I have put down a few words about being a tour guide on this Link

I was a broke vagabond when I was young.

Chilling out after a day of work in Wadi Rum, Jordan.

In my younger years. Before I decided to make tourism my main way of earning money. I did several odd jobs around the world. These jobs were a little harder to come by, as there is more competition. But I always found something in the end. And I was never living on my parents money when I was roaming the globe. I was washing dishes, picking fruit, collecting shopping carts in supermarkets and sometimes sleeping in the park when I had no job. But I was young and wild. And I never felt more alive than when I was vagabonding around Europe and the Middle East as a 19 year old boy.

Now I’m a vagabond with two credit cards, who reads the Economist.

Commuting on Lao Airlines.

I’m still a vagabond these days. I have just used the experience I have to get some fairly well paid tour leading jobs that allows me to work roughly 150 days a year. I travel around the world for fun, the rest of the year. This is partly thanks to what I have learned over the years. And partly thanks to the digital revolution we have had over the past two decades. So now I can organise my work from my laptop while I am on the road. Instead of having to meet every potential employer in person like in the old days. The internet is in my opinion, the single best thing that has ever happened to people who want to live a nomadic lifestyle. So you better embrace that if you want to thrive as a nomad. I have no need to live high life with lot’s of money. But by embracing modern technology and staying in touch with the whole world daily, I can quite easily make a comfortable living as a nomad with no steady job or no permanent 9 to 5 job.

Some advice if you want to live a global vagabond.

Working as a trekking guide in Switzerland.

I get a lot of mails from young energetic people who wants to make a living from traveling the globe. I love these mails and always try to help and encourage people to get out there and travel the globe and meet the people who inhabit it. But you guys have to understand that there is no such thing as a free lunch. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to do this. You have to really want it and be ready to take the hardships that comes with it. When you run out of money and sleep in a park for 3 days without anything to eat for instance. Or when you are told by company number 27 of the week that they have no vacancies. But if you can keep going, then you grow strong. Just don’t expect it to be easy. But if you look at almost all people who have been successful with a startup. Then they have almost all suffered some real uphill struggles too. So learn how to grow stronger from the struggles and hardships you encounter.

I will work my way around the world for as long as I live.

Volunteering in Albania.

One of the greatest things about working around the world is to see that it’s perfectly possible to work with people from different cultural backgrounds. That is as long as we all are respectful and flexible towards each other. It’s all the international friendships that I have made over the years that really makes me tick and keeps me going. Even if I’m a middle aged 48 year old guy these days. I’m writing these lines on an island in the Atlantic ocean, while I am looking in to a bicycle trip through Sri Lanka. I might be getting old, but I’m not anywhere close to getting grumpy 🙂

I love working at wine harvests around the world.

Cat sitting in Paris is something I also do.

This was my local cafe, when I was working in Damascus, Syria.