It’s not being Vagabond! It’s kind of the opposite actually. A vagabond is person who moves from place to place without a permanent home and often without a regular means of support, and a nomad is another type who has no fixed home and moves from place to place in search of food, water, and grazing land. They are both people who roam about – wanderers. The definition denotes a poor type of person who travels around – probably without much style. However, both may not miss out on as much as we think… Except for maybe the ‘finer things’ of life. “Belly-up” is a word used in business when you are bankrupt and lose everything. Another example would be if you came home from shopping one day and checked your fish tank, you would not want to find a fish belly-up.
People can travel broke and on a very small budget, however, this blog and soon-to-be available book is about how I traveled around the word in one long vacation, I continued East and planned it all in style with a liberal budget. So in a sense I did it not belly-up but belly-down or “on my belly”. I wanted my trip of a lifetime to include and African safari, gorilla trekking, scuba diving, a lavish hotel in Abu-Dhabi, but also experience down to earth things such as staying in a hostile. If you are considering one day of doing the same, I suggest you keep reading to find many great travel stories coupled with great information which may assist you when you decide to go.
The ‘finer things’ of life maybe defined differently by each person. For example, one person may consider roaming around without many physical possessions to be a life with liberation, which could actually constitute one of the ‘finer things’ of life. However, in main stream society today when we say ‘the finer things of life’ we are usually referring to first class indulgences, and finer experiences without struggle.
At the very least, the modern day vagabond probably gets to see many areas
of their country or maybe even the world. They get to see cities and mountains,
and meet many different people. Some may have been “belly-up” at some point and lost everything, and then decided to withdraw from the world’s 9-to-5’ers and live the simple life, never attempting to make any sort of comeback. Or, possibly they never really made it in the big city to begin with, and never really had much to lose by choosing the nomad path. Again, there is definitely simplicity and liberation in not owning much and being free to roam around the globe – it is a constant struggle though.
In the year 2019, while at a laundry mat in Paris, France near Boulevard Saint-Germain,
I had a glass of wine with a homeless man who spoke to me in French describing how his life was happy, and he had discovered all of France over the years basically by being “belly-up”. He was adamant he was ‘living his best life’ and experienced what most people only dream of. Hillsides with flowers and breathtaking views is some of what I remember him translating from French to English on his phone app.
I met another man years ago in the year 2000 who was a 60 year old couch surfer. I bounced around living in San Diego for a few years renting rooms and eventually secured an upper level room near Pacific Beach in an area known as Clairemont. This man lived downstairs on the couch, and from his silvery long hair, looked as if he probably surfed waves too, though he defiantly did not choose to afford a surf board – he just surfed the couch instead. The different roommates there in the big house all kind of gathered together around dinner time on various nights to bar-b-que and chat. I remember the ‘couch surfer’ telling me how he gave up his life back in some other state where he was originally from, to move back to San Diego… even though it cost him everything, he was happy because San Diego was his “home”. Then, he asked me “Where are you from originally?”
“Riverside, California,” I said. “But I spent 10 years in North Carolina with my dad. I visited my mom in summers and every Christmas season,” I continued.
It’s hard to remember the exact words since it was years ago but I’ve always pretty much said the same thing my whole life when people ask me where I am from. I’m kind of from two places originally. Anyway, the conversation went something like that, but I always remembered what he asked next.
“Yeah, but where is your home?” He asked slowly with a soft philosophical emphasis on the word home.
I was only 20 years old at the time, so that question was a little too deep for me. I was just getting started and just left my dad’s house about 18 months prior. I responded light heartedly that ‘home’ for me was in San Diego, but then he became a little argumentative about how he knew where his ‘home’ was and I didn’t know where mine was yet, so I changed the subject and left it at that. I can’t comment on whether or not he was truly happy living on that couch, but I can say he was defiantly liberated. As I remember, Vic the landlord who also lived at the residence in the master bedroom was his long-time pal, and let him live on the couch.
Being “on your belly” is what I refer to as the opposite of “belly-up”. It means we can wonder the world in style instead, and with a purpose, while still keeping the undefined, adventurous nature, of the vagabond. It means I can travel the world and stay in a hostile in Thailand, but then stay at the Ritz Carleton in London. No matter how rich an adventurer can be, the true adventurer wants the whole adventure (say that three times, haha). So even if I am well established financially, what good is a vacation if I stay in the resort the whole time? I like to hang with the local crowd a bit and kind of live like they live, to experience the real vibe and culture in places I travel. For example I’ve had the pleasure of eating bar-b-que Alligator on a stick in Thailand, frog soup in China, and salsa danced at a local dive bar and dance club in London. Also though, I like to spend some cash to experience ‘finer things’ like scuba diving in Quepos, Costa Rica, for example. Or deep sea fishing in Phuket, Thailand, and well – just hanging out in the bar at the Ritz Carlton Hotel.
Amazing things to me can be simple things like walking the streets of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, I like to keep it real – the experiences real. If you are just always poolside all day at your resort or hotel, you haven’t really visited the destination. The point is, even if you are on-your-belly and have money – to travel with, you can still absorb the common vagabond experience, for me it’s been life changing.
Once I am beat up though, sweaty shoes and blisters on my feet, and dirty clothes, or eaten up my mosquitos, sometimes I need to book a few nights at a nicer hotel. This way I can really freshen up, relax comfortably, eat the mint from my pillow, and lick some wounds before swinging the pendulum again toward another extreme expedition.
At one point, in 2008, I was actually “belly-up” from the United States financial crisis that year, it was hard on so many people, and I was no exception. I sold about everything off in garage sales every weekend so I could make ends meet. It was actually very liberating to get rid of almost everything I owned. It was defiantly a new start, I couch surfed for about a year with friends (not staying on the actual couch, but staying rent free) while I was trying to develop a product I invented, in hopes to make a great comeback and put my recent chapter 7 bankruptcy out of my memory. I was 28 years old, and after a few business trips to mainland China already, and watching my company float away to an investor, I decided to move to Maui, Hawaii with about $2,800.00 US dollars in my pocket and my army style duffle bag. With no job, two home foreclosures, two car repossessions, a divorce, about $18,000.00 in back child support, multiple ‘charge offs’, and a 480 credit score, I headed off to the islands, intending to stay permanently. I wanted to enjoy the best things the world had to offer, which weren’t monetary things. This defiantly included my two daughters though, so filing necessary custody motions was in order as well. I’ll share the whole story later about my 3 month trip to Hawaii and and catch you up on places I visited before my trip around the world. Nevertheless, I was a young broken man and probably an actual vagabond at this point, but soon after I began to pursue one of the greatest ‘comebacks’ ever, over the next 10 years. I went from belly-up to belly-down or “on my belly” and during the process discovered my incredible passion for traveling and conquering fear.
I began to travel all over the United States and also to many other countries during my comeback, and as my career flourished my adventures where greater, longer, more frequent, and more extreme. I realized traveling made me feel alive – like I was “living” – and life was not passing me by. I wanted more every time. I remember the unforgettable vacation to the beautiful country of Colombia where I fell in love at first sight with a girl who a year later became my second wife. Though the marriage only lasted three years, the ending of the marriage was the pivotal preface to me dancing in Reno, Nevada – in front of a thousand people, sky diving in Las Vegas, trekking through the Andes Mountains with a group shamans from the Shuar Tribe in Ecuador, and later scuba diving in Costa Rica, and much more. I will tell you all about it in the blogs to come.
When returning from vacations, rebalanced I would beat the pavement at work even harder with a clearer perception and laser focus. Eventually, I decided to plan a trip around the entire globe going east with the jet stream. The idea was to do the whole thing in one shot. To actually take a trip around the world. I sure wasn’t “belly-up” anymore, but instead I was “on my belly” ready for the ultimate trip, and ready to do it right.
While planning my trip around the world I figured I could not possibly visit every place I wanted on a 6 month journey, which is the time frame I allotted due to other desires and obligations with work and family. The many countries I had visited already, would naturally need to be skipped over this time. Although many of those prior places, and possibly all of those prior places, I would love to visit again, but this vacation was about circling the globe in 6 months or less, and seeing as many new new places as possible.
Around the World - On Your Belly! 