We arrived back in England and finally had the chance to reorganise our bags and offload a lot of gear. Things that made sense while we had a car in France, but wouldn’t work for the next leg of the journey. From this point on, we were committing fully to backpacker mode.

After quite a bit of messing about, we managed to sell the car. We were running out of time and had to let it go for a bargain price. So my master plan of buying a car in the UK and selling it when we returned did not work quite as neatly as I had hoped. Still, even with that loss, it worked out far cheaper than renting a car for the whole time.

In true backpacker style, we took a taxi to the train station and stood waiting with all our possessions around us. Everything we would be carrying for the remainder of the journey, however long that might turn out to be.

From train to plane, a two-hour stop in Doha, and then on to Bangkok, the travel itself was smooth and uneventful. It was the first long-haul flight we’d taken since 2011 and the first that the girls could remember.

In Bangkok, we had booked two nights in a hotel near the airport so we could relax and recover from any jet lag. The hotel sent a minibus to collect us, and the girls were very impressed to find it fitted out with neon disco lights on the inside. It was a surprisingly cheerful welcome to Thailand.

After two lazy days near the airport, we were ready to head into central Bangkok, where we had booked a place for the week near a large green space called Lumphini Park.

It is about here that I should probably introduce a subplot involving Australia.

My wife and I met in Australia. I moved there in 2002, and she was travelling for a year with her cousin. We met through mutual friends and, to cut a long story short, ended up getting married and having our first two daughters there. Our third was born later, after we returned to the UK in 2011.

Because of that history, all of us except the youngest already had Australian citizenship. I was the only one with a current Australian passport though. While we were in France planning the Thailand part of the trip, we realised it would be nice to keep Australia as an option. Somewhere familiar for the kids, even if they barely remembered it, and potentially a place where we could slow the travel down for a while. Maybe even work for a bit and rebuild the travel funds.

As we arrived in Bangkok and watched the Bitcoin price heading south rather than the expected north, that Australia option started to feel more important.

We’d planned it so that our hotel, near Lumphini Park, was also very close to the Australian embassy. With all the paperwork we had thankfully brought with us, we booked appointments to renew the girls’ Australian passports.

After several back-and-forth visits over the following weeks, we got everything sorted. That meant all five of us could head to Australia if we wanted, with the youngest covered by a twelve-month multi-entry visa. More on that in future issues.

For now though, we were in Bangkok.

We spent our days and evenings exploring the many night markets that spring up across the city. An endless mix of food and things for sale. Some weird, like fried scorpions, and some far more familiar, like rice topped with minced meat and a fried egg. Night markets usually start around 4 or 5 pm and are incredibly cheap. Meat kebab sticks might be 10 or 20 baht, around 24p to 48p. Add a small bag of rice for 15 baht, about 36p, and you have a meal for well under a pound. If you really want to treat yourself, throw in a fruit smoothie for another 35 baht, roughly 84p.

The shopping malls in Bangkok are also something else entirely, the best I’ve ever been to. Our favourite was one called Terminal 21. Each level is themed around a different country, and the food hall on the top floor, Pier 21, turned out to be one of the cheapest places we found to eat anywhere in the city.-

Some of our regular choices there, with prices converted from Thai baht:

• Mango sticky rice: 84p

• Pork and rice: about £1

• Pad Thai: about £1

• Coconut water: 84p

• Fruit juices and smoothies: 48p to 84p

We could comfortably feed all five of us, often with two or three dishes each, for around £12 to £14. We went there more times than I can remember.

A Day Trip to the Siam Museum

We visited the Siam Museum, which I would highly recommend to anyone visiting Bangkok. It is an excellent introduction to Thai history and culture. You are given an audio headset on entry that guides you through each room, and the whole place is very interactive. It helped explain a lot of the things we had already seen around the city and gave useful context for the rest of our time in Thailand.

We had planned to visit the Royal Palace as well, but it was closed on the day we went, due to ongoing mourning following the death of the Queen Mother. Instead, we took a long walk back along the river before jumping in a taxi back to the hotel.

Off to Bang Saray

A friend of mine from England lives in Bangkok and has been recommending we visit a place called Bang Saray for quite some time. It is a small fishing town about two hours southeast of Bangkok and 30 minutes south of Pattaya. We finally took his advice and booked a villa there for five weeks.

Bangkok is great, but after a week, I like the idea of going at a slower pace. Constantly booking flights, hotels, taxis, train etc for the last 3-4 months, and we are starting to get travel fatigue. It’s starting to feel like we can’t relax; we constantly have to be researching the next part of the journey.

Looking back, this leg of the trip has felt like another process of letting go. Selling the car, shedding gear, and adjusting plans as reality nudged us in different directions. It has also been a reminder that flexibility beats prediction. Prices move, plans shift, and being able to adapt matters more than being right.

Bangkok has been bright, loud, crazy, cheap and full of energy, and quite a culture shock after France. We leave it lighter than when we arrived, both in what we are carrying and in how tightly we are holding the plan. Next, we head to Bang Saray for a longer stay, hoping for fewer decisions, a steadier rhythm, and a bit of breathing room.

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Mirepoix - Fête de la Pomme

We were staying for the most part near the beautiful medieval town of Mirepoix. Think Beauty and the Beast; throw in some coffee and postcard shops, and you’re pretty much there.

The area around Mirepoix grows a lot of apples, and Mirepoix hosts the annual Apple Festival (Fête de la Pomme) that marks the annual apple harvest and the end of the harvest season in general.

It was really nice to be there and witness an event that happens outside of the normal tourist season. We could tell it was mostly locals, as friends and family members were greeting each other, chatting and drinking together in the Place Maréchal Leclerc in the centre of Mirepoix. I could even tell my French was getting a bit better as I could understand a little more of the gist of conversations.

Local volunteers build large apple sculptures, and each year has a theme. It seems this year’s theme was music.

We stayed in Mirepoix itself for the weekend and had a great time at the festival and the regular Monday morning market, which we also went to most Mondays to stock up on locally made produce.

Grotte de Niaux

The area just south of us is famous for, amongst other things, prehistoric cave paintings, and it has some incredible examples.

We picked out one that seemed to be good and open for us to visit. Unfortunately, as it wasn’t peak tourist season, there weren’t any English-speaking tours, so we just booked a French tour and off we went.

Grotte de Niaux was rediscovered in the 1700s, and as we walked through the dark cave passages, we could see graffiti where people had written their names and the date. I remember one with a date of 1660.

The cave doesn’t have perfectly cut tourist paths through the stone and still retains its natural layout. You actually have to clamber up and down slippery rocks, and there’s no lighting other than the torches we carried. That was part of the experience, and we really got a feeling of what it would be like to explore the caves for the first time.

The cave network spans over 14km in total, but the Grotte de Niaux section we visited is an 800m stretch to the Salon Noir (Black Room), featuring many depictions of bison, horses, ibex, and other animals, outlined in black and drawn between 13,000 and 14,000 years ago.

The girls really enjoyed it, but probably not as much as I did. I’ve always been a sucker for any kind of history stuff.

Roses and Cadaqués

We took a 3-day trip to Spain to visit a place made famous as the home of Salvador Dalí.

We drove about 3 hours and stayed in a place called Roses. Dalí lived in nearby Portlligat, just outside Cadaqués.

Cadaqués was a really nice place to visit. We had a lovely day walking the streets of this little fishing town. At one point, daughter number 2 said, ‘hang on a minute, this spot was in a movie I watched last week’. Sure enough, we looked up the scene in question from the movie ‘The Map That Leads to You’, and it was the exact same spot. I can see why. It’s very picturesque. You can see it below in the bottom right picture.

We went to Dali’s house, but couldn’t get into the museum as it was fully booked. It didn’t matter as we walked around the grounds and had a coffee. It’s a beautiful spot and would be an amazing place to have a house. You can see it in this clip below.

Roses is one of the oldest towns in Catalonia and was founded by Greek settlers from Rhodes between the 8th and 5th century BC. The ruined Ciutadella (the old walled part of the town) still shows traces of the original Greek colony, Rhode. We spent the morning walking around the ruins on the last day before we left.

And That Was Mostly It for France

We had an amazing time in France during the starting leg of this journey. Massive thanks to our friends who hosted the five of us for what turned out to be six weeks in the end.

We didn’t get out and around Europe as much as we originally thought. We really needed the downtime that their hospitality allowed us to enjoy, though. So, two months after leaving, we set off back to England in a much more relaxed state than we left in.

The three-day drive back to the UK passed without any drama. We drove onto the Eurotunnel train again (now called Le Shuttle), and we were back in Old Blighty.

We had lots of jobs to get done in England while we were there. The hardest job turned out to be selling the car we’d bought for the trip to France. We got it sold, though, just in time for our next big adventure, which this time takes us to…

…Thailand!!

more soon.

Stay free.

Simon.

It’s been a while, all I can say is that I’m still getting used to this new life and the lack of routine that comes with it.

We’re staying with our friends, who have very generously let us use their apartment next to their main house in the Ariège area in the south of France. It’s been a perfect opportunity to wind down after our hectic time in the UK before we left.

We spent the first few weeks enjoying the sun, working on our French and exploring the local area, with not much to report, and not much French learnt by me. In the last couple of weeks, we’ve gone on a few more adventures, and I’ll do my best to summarise them below.

Horse Riding

One of my daughters had a birthday and wanted to go horse riding, so we found a local riding school and booked an hour-long trek. I’ve ridden a few times before, including a week on a farm stay in Australia when I was 24, but that was probably the last time. I thought it would feel like starting from scratch, but it’s surprising how quickly it comes back. After being shown how to brush the horse down and saddle up, we set off and had a really nice ride through the French countryside.

Climbing Pic de Saint-Barthélemy

My friend James, who we’re staying with, fancied a hike up a mountain. He’s a fit guy and suggested Saint-Barthélemy, which we can see in the distance from the house. He’s climbed it a few times before and guessed it would take about five hours in total.

Two of my daughters, the eldest’s boyfriend, and I had climbed the Diamond in Ireland about a month earlier. We figured this one would be about 25% tougher. We were wrong, it was a lot harder, it took us about 7.5 hours and we didn’t make it to the top! I looked it up afterwards (something I should have done before starting), and here are some stats.

It’s 7 km from the starting point to the peak, which doesn’t sound far, but it’s steep in places and gets even steeper on the final stretch. Saint-Barthélemy is roughly equivalent to climbing Ben Nevis in Scotland in total ascent and effort needed, although Saint-Barthélemy is 1000 m higher in total.

It’s the second-highest peak in the Tabe Massif in the Ariège Pyrenees at 2,348 m (behind the Pic de Soularac at 2,368 m). It’s the best known for historical, mystical, and religious reasons, and it’s named after the apostle Saint Barthélemy.

The climb is 1,130 m from the car park, which is already halfway up after a long, winding drive. To cut a long story short, James made it to the peak, but the rest of us didn’t. We ran out of time and had to turn back before dark. These teenagers need to work on their fitness!

We enjoyed it, though, and I’m definitely going to look for more hikes on our travels now that I’ve discovered the AllTrails app. With that and a bit more preparation, we’ll do better next time.

Trip to Andorra

A new country to add to our list, and the first that was new to all of us. We drove down to Andorra for a two-day trip. It didn’t exactly fit our theme of visiting warm countries, as it was noticeably cooler than France because of its altitude in the Pyrenees.

We stayed in a place called El Pas de la Casa, which is part ski resort and part duty-free shopping town. Andorra is outside the EU, so it sets its own tax policies, including low or no duties on products like alcohol, tobacco, and electronics. Walking the streets, we saw shop windows stacked with cartons of cigarettes and giant bottles of spirits. It’s a great place for bargains, and we picked up a few ourselves.

There was no snow on the slopes, and the town was empty of tourists. I think the locals were wondering what this foreign family was doing there in the off-season with their kids not in school!

We then drove to Soldeu, another ski resort without the duty-free shops, and had a look around. It was lovely but completely quiet. It felt odd walking through a place clearly built for crowds, yet the streets and shops were empty. It didn’t take away from the beauty of the mountains, though, and overall it was a really nice few days.

That’s it for now. We’ve done a few more things, but I’ll save that for the next post.

Stay free.

Simon

It has been a little while since the last update. Things got hectic before we left, but now the adventure has begun. I will share some lessons from the run-up to leaving in another post, but for now, this is where we are.

We are in the south of France, at Le Sérignan Plage. It is a EuroCamp resort, and we booked in for eight nights as our first stop. Our youngest wanted water slides, we found this place, and here we are.

At first, we planned to fly. But once we added up flights, car hire, and logistics, it made more sense to buy a seven-seater and drive. We set off on a Friday morning and arrived Sunday night. We bought the car using a Bitcoin-backed loan, and I will explain more about how and why in another post.

The timing worked out perfectly. We left behind cold, grey England and a wet drive through France. Then, just 45 minutes from our destination, we went through a tunnel and came out into blazing sunshine. The temperature climbed steadily, and by the time we arrived, it was 30°C. Stepping out of the air-conditioned car felt like stepping off a plane into a hot country.

We have settled into our little apartment, chalet or static caravan, I’m not sure what to call it. It is compact but comfortable and has everything we need.

The cost of staying here

One of the many benefits of the kids not being in school is that we are no longer tied to school holidays. Prices here swing wildly depending on the time of year. From June to August, eight nights cost anywhere from £650 to £2,900. After the first week of September, the same stay dropped to around £350. Some apartments were as low as £300, but we chose a slightly nicer one.

I am sure it is packed in peak season, but right now it is 28°C, quiet, and close to perfect.

Some friends of ours who live a couple of hours away are joining us for the weekend. They have younger kids who are going to love the water park.

That is it for now. With the journey underway, I will aim to share updates more regularly.

I recorded a few vlogs as we drove through France and posted them on Nostr. This was the last one after we arrived. Follow us on Nostr for more vlog updates.

This week, I spoke with my friend Harry, a Bitcoiner who left the UK behind to start a new life on a farm in El Salvador. He’s part of a growing wave of people opting out, building on the ground, and living closer to the land, all powered by Bitcoin values.

Here’s our short Q&A on why he moved, what life is like now, and what he wishes more people knew.

📍 Where were you living before, and what made you decide to move to El Salvador?
Before buying the farm, I lived in Stoke-on-Trent, a rather miserable city in England. I’d been working on a project there that came to an end in 2023, so, with a vague idea of working in the coffee industry, I went to Mexico to study coffee agriculture. While there, I was made aware of an abandoned coffee farm for sale in El Salvador. Flights were cheap, so I went to check it out. At that point, I had no intention of moving to El Salvador.

🌱 Why a farm? Was that part of the plan from the start, or did it come later?
My plan in 2023 had transitioned from opening an oyster bar to opening a cafe. The oyster concept was put on ice while I explored ways of selling coffee; the one thing I knew for sure was that my business model was to incorporate Bitcoin. Buying a coffee farm was not a part of the plan simply because it wasn’t on my radar, so to speak. But having had the seed planted in my mind, the idea evolved and soon seemed like the most sensible way to begin a coffee brand.

⚡ How has being a Bitcoiner shaped your decisions, both in the move and in how you live day to day?
I think Bitcoin helped me identify value, primarily by stretching out my time horizon. This certainly played a role in my decision to buy the land in El Salvador. Speaking in Bitcoin terms: the land itself, where the fruits grow, represents the “base layer” of value, whereas a coffee shop or roastery could be seen as layer two (like the lightning network). So I decided to buy a piece of the base layer.

🚧 What’s been the biggest challenge you didn’t expect?
I started the project with no expectations. I didn’t know much about El Salvador, so I moved there with an open mind. It was far from my first time living as an expat (I have lived in France and, to a greater extent, Germany), so the typical practicalities of being away from my homeland didn’t faze me. I knew roughly where the pros and cons lay and more or less how to manage the subsequent highs and lows. That said, living in the jungle as the sole foreigner among Salvadorans, managing groups of farm workers and builders, none of whom spoke a word of English, was at first rather challenging, even daunting. And as the scale of my project started to dawn on me, I realised I could either worry about everything or worry about nothing, so I took each day as it came and tried not to get down when things went wrong.

☀️ What does a typical day look like for you now?
On a typical day, I would wake up between 4 am and 7 am, feed Bruno (dog), shower in my makeshift tree shower, make a coffee, and then discuss plans with the farm manager, Miguel. I sometimes drive into one of the local cities to run errands. On other occasions, there would be work to do on the farm, and some weeks I would have to be in the capital, which is about a 3-hour drive away, so I stay overnight. The sun sets at about 6 pm every day, meaning the evenings on the farm are particularly dark while we have such basic lighting. For food at La Cruz, we mostly cook meat on the barbecue and eat fruit from the trees.

💰 Are you actually using Bitcoin in daily life there?
Day to day, I can buy all my basic necessities with Bitcoin. My farm is situated close to Berlin, one of the world’s most developed Bitcoin circular economies, so I can quite easily live on Bitcoin there.

🌍 What do you wish more people understood about living in El Salvador?
Never take advice off anyone who refers to a place as “paradise”.

🧭 Any advice for someone considering a similar move?
Learn Spanish.

⚡ Quickfire Round

• Favourite part of the farm? — I created a small viewing area where I sit on a chair made out of a log and watch the sunset with Bruno. That is my favourite part of the farm.

• Go-to local food? — Chicken soup. They put everything in.

• Internet connection: 1–10? — The Internet isn’t bad. 6/10 overall.

• One thing you brought that you didn’t need? — My autumn coat.

Connect with Harry on Twitter/X and Instagram.

✉️ Know someone who’s exited the system and is living on their own terms? Hit reply or send me a DM, I’d love to share their story in a future issue.

We hear from every direction that the UK is in decline, that it’s a failed state, but that’s not why we’re leaving.

We hear how the place is overcrowded, you can’t see a doctor when you need to, it’s not safe to walk through the town centres, everything is ridiculously expensive or the potholes are constantly destroying your car, but that’s not it either.

To be honest, those things definitely helped the decision. But we’re leaving because, eventually, you have to live your life.

You can save, stack sats and work work work, but as Ferris Bueller very wisely said:

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Our three girls are currently teenagers, and we knew if we didn’t do this now, they’d soon be off, living their own lives; and the opportunity would be gone. They’d join the rat race, and we’d miss the chance to show them there’s a wider world outside of Northamptonshire.

From a completely personal point of view, there’s another reason. I’ve been working in a profession for over 30 years that I never really enjoyed. It just ‘brought in the money,’ so I carried on doing it. I wanted to rip the band-aid off and quit. It’s not something I can do remotely or from home, so I won’t have an easy way to make an income.

Perhaps Substack can fill the gap. 🤞

We don’t have it all figured out. Far from it. But we’ve got a window of time, a bit of courage, and each other. That feels like enough. Maybe it’ll be messy, maybe it’ll be magic; probably both. Either way, we’re stepping outside the system to see what life looks like, back on our own terms.

More soon

Stay free

Simon.

"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him." —Ezra Pound

A major new chapter in our family life is beginning, and I’m writing this newsletter to document the journey.

So, what are we doing, and why might you want to follow along?

In short: we’ve sold our house and plan to travel the world with our children, just backpacks, and two years ahead of us.

Maybe you’ve daydreamed about doing something similar. If so, you may want to consider subscribing.

Every now and then, we like shaking things up. Day to day, I enjoy routine, but over time, routine can grow stale. And when it does, we throw everything in the blender.

We’ve done it before. Life in the UK turned into ten years in Australia. Then, three years back in the UK. Then two years in Ireland. And now we’ve been back in the UK for nine.

After returning to the UK from Australia, I discovered Bitcoin. At first, it sparked a subtle mental shift, but over time, it completely changed how I see and interact with the world.

From 2022 onwards, we started meeting other Bitcoiners. We learned from them about homeschooling, worldschooling, and the adventures they’d had. We realised we didn’t need to stay tied to the rat race. Our wealth was now stored in a borderless, unconfiscatable asset.

This newsletter isn’t going to be about Bitcoin, but it exists because of Bitcoin and the freedom it has presented to us.

We realised the only thing preventing our freedom was a house, a mortgage and all the (mostly unnecessary) stuff inside it.

We listed the house for sale in late 2024, and by February this year, we had a buyer. The only thing keeping us grounded was now our possessions. Furniture, TVs, boxes of stuff! Over the past two weeks, we have sold, given away to charity or thrown out 90% of our possessions. We’ve kept the irreplaceable, the photos, memorabilia, etc.

We need to wait for our youngest to finish her current school year; freedom is just around the corner now.

I don’t know exactly where this journey will take us, but I hope you’ll come along for the ride. Let’s see what we learn along the way.

More soon, 

Stay free, 

Simon

P.S. You can follow along on X/Twitter and Nostr too.