I started my digital nomad journey in Seoul more than five years ago and never looked back. Since life has a magical way of tending to your dreams, I turned my lifestyle into something solid by becoming a European and Singaporean resident.
When I started my digital nomad journey I thought I would stay in Airbnbs. I thought this would give me stability and allow me to travel most weekends and/or move somewhere new every three or so months. Like many frequent travels, quality problems combined with bad service led me back into the arms of hotels again.
I started the hotel journey with the utmost excitement.
One of my guilty pleasure anthems was (and still is) Lil’ Yachty’s 1 Night. When I started my hotel journey, I kept yell-singing his luxury hotel lyric to myself in my head:
“We spent four seasons at the Four Seasons twice.”
Lil’ Yachty
I didn’t stay at the Four Seasons four seasons twice, but I had the honor and pleasure of resting my head in some wonderful places. My mental map of Singapore is anchored by hotels.
Most of the time I would stay in one hotel for a week, move a short distance to the next hotel, and then do it again the next week.
It’s glorious to have someone restock your body wash and make your bed every morning, but after awhile I started missing things like speakers that reverberate through the house and homemade pancakes on slow Sunday mornings. And obviously I missed shopping for things without having to regret the fact that you have shlep it around for the foreseeable future.
And so I decided to move back to NYC.
The process of repatriating in the US is surprisingly complicated from a logistics standpoint. And so I bring you my most meaningful takeaway from leaving the US and returning again.
