What I'm Doing Now
I'm writing this update from my apartment in Chiang Mai.
Chiang Mai is currently having its worst flood on record. For the past 2 days I've been stuck here with no water and power, which also means no aircon or internet.
It's a challenge, to say the least.
My nomad adventure, which I set out on 8 months ago, has been full of surprises, but this one wins the award for the biggest. Fun fact: it's also the second flood in the 3 weeks I've been here.
The amusing irony is that I left Vietnam to avoid its rainy season. Nice timing, Martin.
The plan in Chiang Mai was to spend the month hunkering down, getting into some deep work on an exciting new project. The past 3 weeks have made that quite difficult, though I have made some minor progress.
On the other hand, choosing to stay in this building and wait out the floods has been a great reset, reminding me every day (including today, day 3) that nothing is for granted in life. Not running water, not electricity or internet. Not even food.
I have 2-3 more days of food, and a decent appetite for fasting. I have at least 1 week of bottled water. I'm grateful I was able to prepare by keeping my eye on the data following the first flood.
The past few days have been unique. The 1000+ person condo I'm staying at has been completely abandoned, except for about 6 of us who decided to stay. Suddenly anything with a battery has become insanely valuable, and we're all conserving power every way we can.
Yesterday I discovered that the two exercise bikes in the gym have USB ports. I can comfortably cycle long enough (around 2 hours, 800 kcal) to charge my phone by about +20%. I'm literally converting my body's energy into phone battery. That's how I'm able to post this update.
PS: it occurs to me that if we all had to generate our own power for our phones, our social media habits would dramatically improve. I'm suddenly terrified of Instagram.
It's currently day 3 and the water levels have finally started to fall, but there's a long way still to go. I'm hoping that it's only another 2 days until the power returns.
In the meantime, I'm doing a lot more reading and working out, and feeling very grateful for the people I'm sharing this experience with. I'm glad we're safe and dry.
I'm looking forward to being on the other side of this, and being able to get back to the exciting work that I want to be doing while here. However, for now, nature has decided there's more important things to do and I'm happy for the lessons.
If you're reading this from Chiang Mai, I hope you're dry and safe, and that we're all free of this ASAP.
PS: I share most of my day-to-day via Instagram.