How it all started
My turning point happened on a Monday morning, stuck in traffic on Jalan Tun Razak; one of Kuala Lumpur’s most reliably gridlocked roads, somewhere between my second coffee and a Vampire Weekend song. I was a product development manager at a multinational insurance group, and I remember thinking very clearly: I haven’t seen enough of the world, and I’m running out of reasons to wait.
That was 2016. Twelve months later, after going through my finances with the kind of scrutiny I previously reserved for quarterly reports, I landed in Okinawa with a backpack, a HP laptop, and an iPhone 6S. Three weeks, solo, completely from scratch. I had no idea what I was doing. I’ve been doing it ever since.