The Tux in the Backpack

Allow me to insert a more personal post on this Flashpacking Blog. It has to do with Flashpacking as well, of course.
The thing is.. maybe I don’t want to be a Digital Nomad. I know I am a nomad and that is not too likely to change, but maybe I want to be a slower, employed nomad instead of a digital one.

maybe it takes more effort...

There’s a lot of blogs and websites out there telling you how to “live your life making money online”:

How not to be location dependent; how to be an expert in social media, blogging, viral stuff, ebooks; how to be the ultimate digital nomad.

Many of them are very well done, and sure their authors make a very decent living out of it. But I’ve also seen a lot of bad ones, the “make a trillion online in a month” ones, where they show you proudly some Adsense receipt and ask you to give them your email address (if not also some of your money).

Well all this made me think that maybe a lot of what we see online is just a more advanced, refined version of the old crappy MLM and affiliate sites. I’m not saying this out of disillusion because I’ve tried and didn’t work for me. After all I’m living in a very affordable place at the moment (Budapest) and I’m making some little income. I could continue doing this is some place that I love and that’s even cheaper (like Thailand or Indonesia).

But as I’m trying to find out my next destination (and occupation) my thoughts go more or less like this:

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Popularity: 100% [?]

Is Flashpacking wrong?

To start with, the term itself has some kind of negative connotation: Flash, as in ostentation, or acting pretentiously.

Many sources in fact define Flashpacking as Backpacking on a bigger budget; the money being the one making the difference as it allows Flashpackers to afford traveling for a long time, but mainly to afford good quality (if not luxurious) accommodations.

Reading a comment on a Vagabondish article we discovered how some “unconscious” Flashpacker even felt bad in having more money than the average Backpacker and upgrading for a single room instead of a dorm: “My wife and I are flashpackers and we didn’t even know it. We felt a little guilty or even ostracized for having a bigger budget than backpackers, and it’s great to see that we have nothing to be ashamed about and we’re not alone.”

In the news you can find some bad stories of wealthy flashpackers bribing farmers in Australia in order to get holiday Visa extensions.

So is Flashpacking just a richer, sometime more incorrect, version of Backpacking?

Fair Flashpacking

You have both the cash and the ideas to actually help out a bit.

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Popularity: 14% [?]

In the maze of Flashpacking definitions found online is refreshing to read something that doesn’t define the Flashpacker simply as someone backpacking on a bigger budget or with tech gadgets. While exploring the relationship between Thailand and Flashpacking the Thailand Musing post throws more light on the figure of the Flashpacker.

New elements appear, like for example the “fair trade” one: “Another inheritance from the backpacker ethos is a sense of responsibility, especially ‘fair trade’. Flashpackers tend to favor community operators and independent hotels over corporate chains.”

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Popularity: 14% [?]