First few months were nuts, working insane hours, but very quickly found a balance. After that, I managed to travel and be a sort of hybrid digital nomad, with a base in one country that I often returned to. I'd spend about six months in the Northern Hemisphere during late Spring and Summer, around four months in Southern Hemisphere for the their late spring/summer - and the other couple bouncing around the tropics.

Probably had a 12-24 month runway of cash if needed, but never actually touched any of it. No idea how to hustle for new work. But it kept coming in anyway. Stopped bouncing between hemispheres around 8 years later having settled in Australia.

Have now started a company with a co-founder and transitioning more to selling Saas products rather than contracting purely exchanging hours for cash. (I've never been able to get paid purely on value-based pricing)

So I left France, and while living on the money generated by this website, I tried to build a product

In the end, my website revenue dried up and I went back to France to work as a freelance developer, after a year of digital nomadism in SEA

It was one of my happiest time in life

It feels like it was decades ago, time flies

The moral of the story is, never lose your momentum, and always tell your clients how much you love them. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go get drunk and cry.

They cost about the same per month as living in a city and going to work, so it's really not a big deal, financially.

I do some freelance writing for magazines, I've written a few books, I do speaking engagements. I have less money than when I was slinging code, and I'm about 9000 times happier and can hardly remember work stress as a thing.

I'm just about to set off on my next major expedition, and at age 39 I couldn't be happier I decided to quit the rate race when I did! I wouldn't go back for all the money in the world.

I can't recommend it highly enough, it was surprisingly easy to do and definitely one of the best years of my life.

Made the arguable mistake of spending 9 months in Australia on my way to S.E. Asia and it ripped my pocketbook to shreds. That was when the AUD was almost 1:1 with the USD.

I've even met some of the guys coding on beaches in Thailand or Bali, they are quite laid back and zen. I'm not sure I could do it though, I'm still very much an American (meaning, puritan/work ethic roots), and would feel uncomfortable being out of the office for too long.

Of those first 12 months, I spent around 2 of them total working - spread out across that time. Most of it contract work.

I found some interesting work in Bosnia installing POS software and accounting software. There was a new consumption tax coming in and the government required electronic logging and submission, and nobody there in the IT industry had any experience with how to handle this.

The entire country was migrating from old physical paper based systems to electronic systems with internet based tax collecting overnight. I met a number of people in local IT and software businesses and helped them out. Despite the local average salary being $300 per month, I was paid well for the time I spent explaining open source and other commercial accounting packages to them and helping them out on the larger rollouts.

There is always an opportunity like that wherever you go - there is a gap in knowledge between the western world and the skills available in the second and third worlds, and you can exploit that.

Otherwise you can work for US or western based clients while living wherever you are. Most of the work I did in South Africa was for London based clients.

Register a business and open a bank account in a low regulation neutral nation, such as the Channel Islands, so you can do business from anywhere to anybody and not have to be tied up in a ton of regulation. Just don't forget to pay taxes on any income your bring into any country where you are a resident for tax purposes (usually 180+ days in a single year).

I spend less then $400 a month, so maybe this lifestyle is not for everyone, and it's certainly not feasible with a family, but the move has totally changed my life. Before, I felt stuck and directionless. Now though, after a little less than a year of total freedom, I've finished two big projects that I'm proud of. I have a much wider range of skills and I'd be confident walking into an interview at a tech company. I hope I never have to though!

I would absolutely recommend a similar path for anyone struggling with the full-time work grind.

Of course, I sacrificed a lot of potential income as I was mainly doing remote contract work and compared to London rates I could get it was a bit lower.

But it paid my bills and allowed me to do this while keeping most of my savings intact.

I probably only make about $20-$25k a year off a few low maintenance projects, taking up random contracting gigs when I feel like.

The experience of seeing new places and meeting new people is priceless. No amount of money, equity or incentives can ever make up for that.

If I could change one thing, it would've been quitting my full time job even earlier.

Cambodia is developing rapidly, but somehow I doubt that the kleptocratic government here will manage to turn this place into the next Singapore or Korea :)