Friends
Nomads Unite!
By Tony on February 9, 2010 | 2 Comments »
The Beverly has landed! And she’s made her way to Angkor Wat, just like Angelina in “Tomb Raider” (except sexier).
Yes, the Nomads of the world are uniting as ContemporaryNomad.com joins forces with NomadicNarrative.com to take on Southeast Asia. Our blogs, and Asia, may never be the same.
TnT – the Documentary
By Tony on February 4, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Our friends, Lisa and Garrett, have joined us in Phnom Penh for the rather unique purpose of making a documentary on our lives. Lisa, a professor of sociology at the University of San Diego, has been following us for eight years documenting our lives in San Diego, Berlin, and now on the road. Lisa is studying the ways that current legal and cultural limitations on gay binational couples » Continue reading this post »
Is Nomadic Life Lonely?
By Thomas on January 31, 2010 | 4 Comments »
One of our biggest challenges being nomadic is maintaining a community. Sure, you can keep yourself busy visiting holy temples, sampling exotic foods or snorkeling colorful coral reefs, but it’s no substitute for hanging out with family and friends.
Michaela, Stephan and Tony on Rabbit Island
We used to have a big community while living in San Diego. There were “happy hours” with co-workers, dinners with friends, and Survivor and Amazing Race nights with our family. After moving to Berlin, we had to start over, and our community was reduced to a handful of new friends. Now that we have gone completely nomadic, building and maintaining a community has become one of our greatest challenges. But that’s where social media comes into play. » Continue reading this post »
Michaela and Stephan
By Thomas on November 21, 2009 | No Comments »
In November 2008, we met German tourists Michaela and Stephan on vacation in Southern India. A few weeks ago in Bangkok, we reunited with Michaela and Stephan, now travelers and novice nomads traveling around Asia on a shoestring. Their short trip to India sparked their interest in doing the travel circuit full-time. So, taking a year off to explore the world, they said good-bye to Deutschland.
Just 2 weeks into their travels, we got together over green Thai curry and Shanga beer in Bangkok’s tourist hub Banglamphu. Still shell-shocked from » Continue reading this post »
Remembering Evelyn
By Tony and Thomas on November 10, 2009 | No Comments »
Fifteen years ago on this day, we lost a good friend.
In 1994, while traveling across Africa, we met Evelyn Molony in Khartoum, Sudan. Having just returned from a month-long journey to the remote Jebel Marra region of Darfur, she was clearly an adventurer in the truest sense of the word. Joining forces with her and her traveling companions Chris and Kathy, we made our way through Eastern Sudan and crossed what was then a wilderness border into Eritrea.
Traveling across such a remote, politically tense region was full of challenges. Evelyn, who had studied Arabic at Leeds University in the U.K., became our de facto guide and led us through a series of comical adventures that we treasure to this day. Evelyn was hilarious yet subtle, incredibly capable yet impressively modest. Best of all, she could be a goof-ball.
Our adventures with her continued months later, when we met once again in Kampala, Uganda. We traveled to the border of Zaire to visit the mountain gorillas and then on to the Ssesse Islands in Lake Victoria where we camped, explored the jungles, and kicked back on the isolated stretches of white sand. We still laugh about Evelyn running around shooing away a herd of massively horned Ankole-Watusi cattle that invaded our pristine beach. We celebrated the moonlit nights with fish fries and stories. For us, these were fantastic times, yet just across the border in Rwanda, genocide was coming to an end and the full extent of the atrocities was coming to light.
Evelyn and Chris, moved by the suffering of the Rwandan people, decided to travel to Rwanda and volunteer at an orphanage there. During her stay at the orphanage, Evelyn must have contracted cerebral malaria. Shortly thereafter in Nkata Bay, Malawi, Evelyn passed away due to complications related to the disease.
Our enduring image of Evelyn is of her with Chris laughing and goofing around with huge pieces of orange stuffed into their mouths. Those were really good times.
