Meet the Traveler …

Greetings! My name is Matthew. I created this site as a way to document my adventures as a leisure traveler across the world. At present my location is Lagos, Portugal – as of August 29th, 2024. I am originally from the USA with 15 years of servitude living in New York City (Upper East Side and Brooklyn). I then decided to spread my wings and travel full-time, FOREVER. I have been gone since December of 2019 – 49 months of continuous travel exploring 50 countries and territories. As of August 29th, 2024 this puts me gone well over 4 years, and the time really has opened up a Pandoras Box of new experiences.

Formerly, I was employed in the data analysis/IT side of corporate America. Lately ive been tracking some statistics on my travels (via spreadsheets of course). Heres a few stats that I just recently updated. Presently, ive been gone 1724 days since December 10th, 2019. I’ve switched cities 110 times in 50 countries, but this includes cities differentiated by year, so for example I visited Bangkok in 2019, 2022, and 2024 on separate occasions (counted as 3). Ive also switched accommodations 249 times, this includes campsites, hotels, Airbnb’s, and nights spent on planes and in airports. This means ive switched hotels every 6.92 nights or roughly every week (sometimes spending time in a monthly rental, and sometimes only 1 night)/

Here are a few of my categories and interests as a travel blogger: beginner international travel, budget travel, backpacking, solo travel, slow travel/digital nomading, through hiking, ultra-light travel gear, photography and drones, Cycling, Watersports (packrafting). I utilize a mix of transportation and lodging including, via trains, buses, ferries, airlines, through-hiking, and rarely hitchhiking. For lodging I use couch surfing, free/paid camping, hotels, guesthouses, Airbnb, temp apartments, as well as hostels. See more below the photo…

Some recent destinations: Aarhus, Denmark, 1 day, Tallin, Estonia, 2 days, Riga, Latvia, 14 days, Nha Trang, Vietnam, 11 days, Da Nang, Vietnam, 7 days, Ninh Binh Vietnam, 5 days, Sapa, Vietnam, 10 days, Hanoi, Vietnam, 36 days, Osaka, Japan, 30 days, Kobe, Japan, 1 day, Kyoto, Japan , 1 day, Gurugram India, 30 days, Agra, India, 2 days, New Delhi, India, 7 days, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 1 day, Bucharest, Romania, 5 days (second time), Athens, Greece, 14 days, Tirana, Albania (30 days).

A few more details about my plan. I originally was considering moving to various countries as an expat but this seemed too boring!, I changed the plan and decided to keep moving around the world to experience a new places every 1 to 3 months. Of course, coronavirus interrupted mine and everyone else’s travel plans for 2020, but in the year 2021 I was able to resume my travels away from Cambodia, moving from the country of Cambodia to the continent of Europe. I plan on continuing to travel for the long term after 2023 and beyond.

Make sure to check out my other social media. Here’s my Youtube, I have about 474 videos all over the world. I’m still adding to my Instagram here (take 28,000 photos but only added about 380), and finally a new Facebook and, Linkedin specifically for this journey. Total social media followers is about 4000 people on my personal plus Solo Vagabond accounts.

and lastly, links to fellow bloggers for inspiration here blogs list.