A 120-page field guide for the tax forms, visa quirks, and quiet panics no one tells you about until you're already on the plane.
Three years in Da Nang, long stretches in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. A dozen wrong assumptions corrected. Two fully localized editions — pick your country, read what you need, skip what you don't.
You haven't booked the flight yet. You don't know where to go, how it works, or whether you're going to ruin your taxes forever. Start here.
You leave in eight weeks. You have a vague plan and a growing list of panicked sub-Googles. This is the checklist you need.
The honeymoon is over, the visa is messy, you're lonely, you're considering going home. Open chapter 7 first.
The two-month checklist. Passports, paperwork, breaking the lease, leaving without owing anyone an email.
How I picked Da Nang. What I'd pick now. The cities I'd avoid and why. A short frame for evaluating any new place in 72 hours.
The boring stuff no one Googles until it's too late. Written for Americans, useful for everyone. Updated yearly.
SIM, apartment, gym, coffee shop. The order to do them in. The phrases to learn. The first mistakes to skip.
Building a community from zero in a place where you know no one. How to spot the locals worth knowing. How to be the kind of person they want to know.
What I packed. What I shipped back. What I should have left. A short list of the apps and routines that actually held up.
When the honeymoon ends. The boredom, the loneliness, the second-guessing. What I do when it hits and what I'd do differently next time.
Going home isn't failing. How to know when. How to leave well. How to come back changed without making it the personality.
"I picked Da Nang because the coffee was good and the rent was cheap. Two reasons I'd still pick it for, but not the reasons that kept me here. The reasons that kept me here weren't on any blog post I read before I came."
— Excerpt · The Nomad Playbook
I moved to Da Nang in 2023 with three suitcases, two clients, and zero plan. I figured I'd write a few reels, drink the coffee, leave when it got hard.
It got hard. I'm still here. Most of the things that nearly sent me home in the first six months were things someone could have told me in twenty pages. No one had.
So I wrote them down. Not as a "live abroad in 30 days" pitch — there are enough of those — but as the email I wish someone had sent me before I bought the ticket. Honest about what's hard, specific about what works, short on the parts you can Google in five minutes.
Yes — most of the playbook is universal. The chapter on taxes and banking has US-specific sections, but the framework around residency, visas, and money management applies anywhere. Readers from Canada, the UK, Australia, and Singapore have told me the bulk still landed.
No. The playbook covers freelancers, remote employees, sabbatical-takers, and travelers who haven't decided what they're doing yet. The financial chapter assumes you have an income source; the rest doesn't care what it is.
Once a year, usually January, after I've done my own tax season and visa renewal and remembered what changed. Past buyers get the new version free — same PDF download link refreshes.
14-day refund, no questions, no forms. Send me a WhatsApp and you get the money back. I'd rather have you not own it than own it resentfully.
It's a PDF designed to read well on both. There's no DRM, no app, no login. Download once, keep it on every device you own.
The country you're actually moving to. Both editions share the same eight-chapter structure, but the practical chapters — visas, banking, apartments, first week, the city picks — are fully localized: the Vietnam edition is written from Da Nang, the Thailand edition from the Bangkok–Chiang Mai corridor. If you're still torn between the two countries, that decision is exactly what chapter 2 walks you through — in either edition.
120 pages, 8 chapters, PDF, yearly updates. $29 once per edition, no subscription, refund anytime in the first 14 days. Checkout takes about a minute — the download link lands in your inbox right after.