Contrasting Reviews of Nine Countries

We are a pair of globetrotting glamour hobos who are also ACX readers. So when we saw the Not-A-Book-Review contest, we pondered what to write about. Math? Abstract concepts?

No. Countries. Those wonderfully illegible places that we get to experience a lot of. Here's where we lived, and what we think.

United Kingdom: Wife

I'll start with this one, because it's where I grew up and where I know the most about.

There are many good things that the UK has going for it, such as being close to the sea and the locals having a fucking wicked sense of humour. At their best, British people are kind and fiercely close to their good friends and treat laughter as the best medicine.

Unfortunately, the UK is also just...depressing. It's further north than any part of the contiguous United States. In the winter, the sun rises at 8 in the morning and sets at 3 in the afternoon. The sea air means that there's a damp that chills your bones unless you put on about 4 different fuzzy sweaters.

The worst thing, though, is that almost the entire country seems to be trapped in a pit of pessimism. To the British, nothing can ever get better. What's worse, thinking that it might get better is crazy talk for crazy people.

Any kind of deviation from this institutional pessimism is ambition and individualist thinking. Things that disrupt the fabric of British society. At their worst the British can be like crabs in a bucket - noticing any time you start crawling towards freedom and pulling you back in, in case you get ideas above your station.

So, if you grow up in the UK and you're ambitious and individualistic and nonconformist, it can feel like there's no place for you in a country content to complain and not actually do anything.

In that case, where do you go?

United Kingdom: Husband

Britain was the first country I ever went to outside of North America (I’d been to Mexico and Canada) and I went there because I married a British person – I should specify, a British immigrant. Not an English person. A British person. A person with no genetic connection to Britain whatsoever. We didn’t stay beyond the 6 month length of my tourist visa. My father in-law was so very surprised by this, despite us telling him repeatedly.

The food really isn’t as bad as people claim that it is. When made properly, it’s got a sort of comforting subtlety to it, with soft and warm and rich flavors. It’s comforting.

Some things are exactly as bad as you think. This country is a weird soft-and-cuddly-authoritarian nightmare where nothing quite works anymore and it’s illegal to make bad social media posts. I was once hit by a car and didn’t receive an ambulance when I called emergency services because my case was judged as not being bad enough.

Some things are just weird. They’re actually incredibly incredibly violent as people. People will just start punching each other in public over mild disagreements. You can get in a fistfight by looking too hard at the wrong sort of person – all of the guys I’m thinking of were white, this isn’t an immigrant thing, British people are just awful – and people barely react to fights happening in front of them on the street. It just doesn’t show up in statistics because people don’t even bother to report it, and no one can so much as carry around a screwdriver so no one actually gets killed in this. It’s just regularized low-stakes violence.

Your speech is policed, and you might get punched at any time – Britain is a bit like being in highschool again. Speaking of childishness, British people are actually a LOT more vulgar and a lot more emotional than Americans. I’m not sure where the idea came from that it was the reverse. British people are much more willing to get emotional over even tiny problems, and their newspaper headlines all read like things a shitty teenage boy would write. The subtext of every America ad is that this product will make you sexy. The subtext of every British ad is that this product will allow you to embrace the pure and innocent joy of a retarded child. I get the sense that every real adult immigrated to America, and something is missing from the basic genepool of England.

As an aside, I have figured out why Britain is so damned weird about trans women. It’s because genetically English women look like men. It is so easy to be a passing English trans woman. The native English cis woman can’t just smile and nod at trans women – there’s a real threat of the categories of cis women and trans women being mixed up, here. I can see how that might cause somewhat more panic than trans women do in more attractive countries.

Yes, the immigrants. The inevitable paragraph about the immigrants. It’s required, isn’t it. Here’s the thing about London. You have a very clear image of London in your head. Or maybe a fuzzy one. But either way, it’s a London that is English. This is not an accurate mental image. Maybe in 1950 it was accurate. But in 2025? No. London is 40% White English. This is very jarring, even if you are not a racist, even if you are not even particularly fond of the English, for the simple reason that anything being not what you had always imagined it to be your whole life is jarring.

Large parts of London are very very clearly immigrant – the shops have non-English labeling, the people aren’t white, etc., etc.. Large parts of London are sort of… international-feeling. Like they could be in any city in the world – if you look carefully, there’s clear signs in the little details of the buildings and such that you are in fact in Britain, but in some universal sense a McDonald’s is a McDonald’s and a Starbucks is a Starbucks and a McDonald’s analogue that serves Korean food instead is that, and a Starbucks analogue that has a different name is that as well. A few isolated parts of London are very distinctly and intentionally English. These are my least favorite parts of England.

The immigrant parts are simply what they are. A family-owned Lebanese grocery store doesn’t have some plan to be a family-owned Lebanese or Kurdish or whatever grocery store. It’s family-owned because a guy started a grocery store and he needed his kids to work there. His brother is a butcher at the back counter. His other brother ended up baking the fresh naan. It’s Lebanese because he’s Lebanese, or it’s Kurdish because he’s Kurdish. It serves naan and samosas without a second thought, because he doesn’t really care if it’s “truly Lebanese” or not. He wants to sell these, and his customers want to buy them. It’s organic. It’s honest. Their prices are low, their products are good, and they smile at you obligingly. So, you shop there all the time.

The English parts are planned down to the smallest detail. There’s a committee, probably government, that’s designed around making sure that it’s perfectly and properly English, whatever they decide that that means. Obviously, deciding that it’s Perfectly And Properly English means attaching everything to some imagined glorious past – what is English is a moving target. Obviously, some things are, and some things aren’t, it’s not a meaningless term – but just as obviously, it changes over time. What was English in 1025 is not what is English in 2025. So these committee buildings – restaurants or museums or apartment blocks or neighborhoods – feel inorganic and planned and tacky and fake.

The English parts of England are when England is least itself, which raises the obvious question of what exactly an England is or what an Englishman is. I don’t know. I don’t think that Britain knows anymore either. That’s one of the reasons that their politics is so weird these past 20 or so years. They're trying to fix something, and they don’t even know what it is or how it operates under ideal conditions or what it’s supposed to do if they do somehow fix it.

London is not the worst city in the world. But it is a dirty violent nothing-vibe of a place and it’s incredibly expensive. It is not the worst city in the world, but it might be the worst value-for-money city in the world.

United States: Husband

I’m from here.

If I’m smart enough and lucky enough I’ll never ever have to go back here.

Nothing good ever happened to me in America, in retrospect, other than marrying my wife. This happened after she was in America for perhaps 2 months. We had known each other online for quite some time before this, and now travel the world together. I now realize that this sounds like I am getting duped or taken advantage of. She is richer than me. I just have a cooler, more interesting life than you, probably.  

I used to not feel like an American, when I lived in America. I didn’t think much of American ideals. Now I feel differently. It turns out that when I am the only American in the room, “being American” is the most important fact about me, and when I am faced with non-American ideals, or lack thereof, I think quite highly of American ideals.

America is a great idea, but it is an expensive dirty place with ugly cities and it is impossible to walk anywhere.

It’s only really by leaving your home country that you learn anything about it, I suppose.

United States: Wife

I wanted to lead into this section not just because of American ideas about individualism and self-reliance, but also because...well...my husband is American. So, when we started dating, the US was the first place I headed.

It feels a bit dishonest to try and write a review of the entire United States, given that it's a huge country and I only saw a tiny part of it, but it also feels dishonest not to talk about the massive culture shock I experienced.

The first thing that struck me is that everything really is bigger in America. Of course portion sizes are pretty big and cars are pretty big, but there's so much more. Everything in Portland felt so much more spread out compared to growing up in the dense mass of things and people that is London. Just to get to the gas station to pick up groceries I had to walk several blocks. And I was shocked by how much bigger houses and apartments are in America than in Britain; in Manchester, I thought I was hot shit for being able to afford to rent a 450 sqft apartment. My now-husband's poky little apartment was maybe twice that size, and he even had his own window AC unit whereas I had to ration heating. It made me a little anxious. Nothing felt me-sized; everything felt like it was designed for a different person.

The second thing that struck me is that Portland felt terribly lonely. Granted, I was there in 2021 so nothing really felt quite real or normal, but to get anywhere you had to go from your home-bubble and drive in your car-bubble to anywhere you wanted to go, and then you had to get back into your car-bubble to drive back to your home-bubble. The overall effect was that I felt horribly isolated in a new country, even when I would have considered myself to have a strong support system. I learned later that many Americans think of friendship differently from British people, and that displays of emotion or affection I would consider normal are frowned upon as inappropriate.

Still, there is much to recommend the American people, who can be more honest and direct than the British and who seem to truly value being exceptional. I am a strange person, and while the British largely seem put off by this the Americans seem to find my strangeness charming.

There is also much to recommend American landscapes. Their mountain ranges are some of the most impressive I have ever seen. For my bachelorette party I went to Mount St Helens and it absolutely blew my mind.

Unfortunately, I spent about half of my time in the States laid up with terrible stomach pain. I have IBS. Something about the food in the US just disagrees with me.

Czechia: Husband

I first came here because my wife took me here for my first birthday I celebrated with her, my first birthday outside of America, my first birthday as an exile. She wanted me to see the sights and beauty of Prague. Prague was beautiful, like something out of a Wes Anderson movie or a fairy tale. It is where Hollywood goes to film London, because London itself does not look enough like London to Hollywood. It is everything that an American romanticizes Europe as being, which is to say, very unlike almost any part of Europe. The streets of the old town wind haphazardly past shops selling weed and candy and overpriced tourist tat, all decorated with the stucco and stone of hundreds upon hundreds of years of central European empire, the buildings shifting seamlessly between medieval masonry and 1920s Art Nouveau stone, statues of nymphs and generals leaping out into your vision unexpectedly as you turn out of random wanderings through a nonsense labyrinth and happen upon a plaza upon which many buildings face; and in these moments, it becomes clearer to you that you are walking into what was once some village’s square around which all the woodend huts were built, and what you have wandered along were desire paths carved through mud by human feet and wagon wheels and horse hooves over 1000 years ago; and it has all been built over and built over again, on and on again, and the weight of history rolls along under your feet in the cobblestones you can feel and you feel 10 feet tall knowing that you are in the center of something, even if on the surface no place could matter less than some post-communist country of no particular importance that will almost always be someone’s client state – next who knows, now Brussels, then Americas, before that Russia’s, before that Austria’s, and only before that was it free and clear to be the kingdom of Bohemia. You stroll on through, past statues of gold and jet and stone, past filigree, stumbling into a restaurant that was founded in 1880 and looks it, through crowds, gazing upon copper-green roofs and little details carved into the stone running along the bottoms of drug stores and lingerie shops, onto a perfect 1920s Art Nouveau street car that is inexplicably a major form of public transportation here – which takes you on past jazz clubs and brothels and coffee shops that proudly advertise that you can pay in bitcoin.

The city’s housing is 70% airbnbs, though. It is a theme park, designed to make tourists like me feel incredible so that we part with our money. I once talked with my Uber driver as he took me to the airport, and he told me that he had been on a police assault team there. He’d loved it; he’d loved the thrill, he’d loved the comradery, he’d loved protecting his community, he’d loved being a hero; he was a handsome and well-muscled man, and it was easy to imagine him as such. But, he said, he’d had to give all that up because Uber paid more than that. I was very upset by this, though tried not to show it, and probably expressed my condolences to him poorly.

The stereotypical Czech dish is in three parts – a fluffy yet rich egg-and-flour dumpling that’s white and full of visible sponge-like holes when it’s sliced up on your plate, which it always comes as already. Next to it is something of meat and roasted – pork, wild boar, venison, and rabbit have all made a showing on my plate. Sometimes it’s breaded before roasting, sometimes it comes to your plate bare, but always the meat is juicy and tender. Third, all across the plate, drowning dumpling and meat, is the sauce – a rich cream gravy flavored with paprika and vegetables and more things than I can name or am certain of. But it is thick and I could have a whole meal of nothing but that. Alongside this trinity is a massive glass of light high-noted richly acidic beer, at times literally sold for less than the price of water, and in my opinion the best in the world.

I returned to Czechia 2 times after this.

Once on a roadtrip with my boss to see a variety of Czech properties for her to put her company campus in; I found an income-generating property that fit all of her wildest requirements within a 45-minute train ride of Prague, for half of her budget. She fucked around for 6 months doing ketamine rather than buying it. She is a well-intentioned woman and I wish her the best, but she is not much in contact with reality; though, frankly, that’s probably why I even got to work with her in the first place; she hired me because I was her favorite blogger. I hadn’t made a post in over 18 months, at the time. The Czech countryside is not as magnificent as Prague – it is almost all a nearly-American pastoral highway-broken emptiness dotted with 900-year old villages with beautiful coble streets and gilded clocks on disused guildhalls, next to hardware stores that advertise paint with bare-breasted models. They are very sexually libertine.

The real estate agents were mostly liars and cheats and layabouts who knew nothing of their business or product, and the countryside often had that emptied-out feeling from hyperurbanization – in village after village it was hard not to notice that it was only the old left. The young had fled; perhaps to Prague, perhaps to Brno, perhaps westward into Germany and France and the Benelux, those economic giants of sclerotic Europe, Europe of the never-ending Great Recession, Europe who makes nothing, Europe sheltering under the American security umbrella while whining about American barbarousness, Europe of whiners and Europe the museum-continent. There were still some young people in only two villages, and interestingly, those two had two of the most promising properties – not that, in the end, it mattered at all. My boss spent 6 months doing ketamine rather than actually purchasing the place. She also never gave me a clear look at her own financials. I honestly don’t understand why she hired me.

The last time I returned (and perhaps for the final time) for a few hours with my wife to see it on a layover while we were transiting from Portugal to Cyprus at a deeply inopportune time in deeply disappointing circumstances that would later grow worse, though this is not the place or time for that story.

That time, it was hard not to see it as a tourist trap, the crowds swelled with late December and the air biting at us – we had our delicious meal and our delicious beer, we had our wander through the streets. Overall, the experience was as magical as always, but by that time, I was aware of the synthetic nature of that magic even as I found it enchanting. That sort of double-consciousness creates something of a struggle within oneself, and while it does not prevent my enjoying the city, it does keep me from relaxing fully into that enjoyment.

Czechia: Wife

I've only really been to Prague and the surrounding areas, but they're beautiful. Prague is one of the loveliest cities I've ever seen, particularly the facades of the buildings.

I am well aware that what I'm seeing is a theme park of a city, unfortunately. But what a lovely theme park it is. Good beer, too.

Georgia: Wife

Now we're getting out of Western Europe and - somewhat entertainingly - past the Iron Curtain. In the West, Georgia is probably best known for getting itself confused with the US state of the same name. To digital nomads, Georgia is known as that one place where you can just turn up and stay for a year without a visa.

I think Georgia has some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen in my life. In our flat in Tbilisi, we could wake up every day and see the great hills that rise on either side of the city. I also think Georgia has, hands down, the best wine in the world. I love the total and utter lack of bureaucracy, where you can just do anything - so different from the stifling dystopia of rules that the UK can be. I also miss our adopted cat very much. He died of kidney failure about a year after we took him in. Georgia has some very sweet cats and dogs.

Unfortunately, Georgia is a political tinderbox and I would say it's simply increasingly unsafe to be there. It is a shame. The people of Georgia deserve better.

Georgia: Husband

Living in Georgia is how I found out that if you just straightforwardly describe places you’ve been to, people who have never left America will accuse you of being a racist for saying that people outside of America aren’t very much like Americans.

I lived in Georgia for two years. This is the longest I’ve lived anywhere in the world other than America. I lived in Tbilisi, though, this is obvious if you know what living in these sorts of countries are like. Many countries are just a city with a country attached.

Georgia had cheap medical care, but unhealthy enough food and drink that I found myself needing it often. Georgia was cheap in general, at least by the standards of the Black Sea, at least when not considering anything imported, but got more expensive and more xenophobic as Russians flooded in to dodge the draft – we moved there a month before Putin declared his war.

We had moved there because it was the one place both me and my wife could get a 1-year-long infinite-renewable visa-waiver just by showing up. When your visa is running out, you can just visit somewhere else for a few days – I traveled often enough, naturally, that I always found a reason to be out of Georgia for a few days long before the time limit was up.

Georgia is a run-down little ex-Soviet place, but to a degree, that is its charm.

Georgians are incredibly aggressive, often violent, often stupid, and generally exist in a sort of blind malaise. It is important to note that they had a long period of high levels of childhood lead exposure, which they eventually fixed.

Georgians are obsessed with the idea of joining the EU, which will never happen for them, for like 12 different incredibly obvious answers. They mostly want to join the EU because they believe that it is the club for white countries and they want proof that they are a white country.

If you tell them that they’re not going to join the EU, they’ll threaten to rape your wife and mother.

Still, it’s an incredibly beautiful country, and it’s nice to not visually stand out there, in comparison to how I come off in most cheap countries.

Portugal: Husband

My parents live here, now. When they moved to there, I still lived in Georgia – the country. They were obsessed with the idea that they were going to see me all the time, because we lived “so close”. I would repeatedly tell them that it wasn’t that close. They would insist that both Georgia and Portugal were in Europe, so it’s all close together. I would explain that the Caucasus were the southern boundary between east Europe and west Asia. They would ask why Georgia kept saying it was in Europe, then. I would explain that it was because they were very racist. We had this conversation about 5 to 9 times.

They visited me once in two years, and I visited them twice; it was unpleasant both times. I tried to visit them a third time when I was leaving Georgia for southeast Asia, and they refused to let me; I was told, a year or so later, that this was because my dad thought that he wouldn’t be able to accept my lifestyle, and it would be a bad visit. I had just had a house fire and my cat was dead (these were unrelated; my cat died of kidney failure) and I wanted my mommy and daddy, damnit if I was 29. I visited them a fourth time, for Christmas 2024, and they convinced themselves that I had lice and worms that I’d already been treated for (my mom tried to shave my wife to expunge her own anxieties over dead lice eggs, which my wife was so wonderful as to put up with, but that I could not abide and did not allow; she’s been growing that out since she was 12) and did not let me into their house except one night that I got locked out, and even then I was strictly corralled into one room and left as early as possible; after flying from Portugal to Cambodia to see them, I was not allowed into their house for Christmas dinner. We ate it with her parents instead. We stayed in two separate airbnbs booked a week in advance when the trip was planned 6 months ahead of time, rather than my parents’ house. Me and my wife privately agreed to never return to Portugal after this, which I did not tell my parents about, because I do not think that they are good enough at international trip planning to bring it up on their own.

My parents would like it if I talked about how sunny Portugal is. They always tell me so. They have only ever invited me there in November and December, so to me it is just relentlessly gray and wet. I don’t believe that my mom genuinely thinks that Portugal is sunny. Porto is 7 degrees of latitude north of LA, where she grew up. I think that she just thinks that that’s a nice thing to say about a place. Europe is much further north than North America. People like to forget this. “Blah blah blah Gulf Stream blah blah blah”, fuck off. Latitude and altitude determine hours of daylight. And Porto is a dark, dark city in December. Not only is it dark, it’s cold. In temperature, it’s above 30 degrees Freedomheight at all times, but everything is set up to make every building and street as cold as possible, because for most of the year it is quite warm (I am told) and Europeans are generally too poor to afford air conditioning; or, I should specify, a swamp cooler costs 400 dollars in Europe for some goddamn reason and Europeans are poor. It’s a combo effect.

My parents would like it if I talked about how cheap Portugal is. It’s… kinda mid-range for Europe. I find it pretty expensive – it’s certainly more expensive than most of the countries on this list.

Portugal isn’t easy to get a visa to be in, nor is it particularly more easy than you’d expect it to be to get to given its geographical position, nor is it a good place to start a business or invest in any way – it is absolutely choked with bureaucracy and laziness and anyone ambitious and young leaves to go do anything, anything at all, in France or Germany or the Benelux. But my parents have disagreed with me about all of those things.

At the time of this writing, my parents’ visa is currently about 6 months expired and the Portuguese government knows that it is their fault, which is why it has given them about a 6 month extension. Which is itself about to run out, but my parents assume that they’ll just get another one.

The food is bland; they are a people that act like a strong flavor will, if it makes it into their mouth, possess them like a dark god, ancient and malevolent, and force them to ritualistically and sacrificially murder their own children as they watch on, prisoners in their own body, helpless to intervene against the bloody work of their own hands. When I ate Nepalese food there, it wasn’t even spicy. That’s insane.

Portugal is cobblestones and gentle hills and great public transit and has many beautiful colors and forms and etc. and so on and oh my god I cannot do this. There is no fair review I could possibly give to Portugal. My thoughts on Portugal are my thoughts on my parents. I think that if I was a different person who had been in Portugal for different reasons under different circumstances I would give a totally different review.

Portugal

Ah, Portugal, the wet dream of every digital nomad and wannabe retiree. Cultured, European, and cheap...right?

Uh, maybe?

I used to fantasise about moving to Portugal and buying up land to start an intentional community there - and I was so excited when my in-laws moved.

It turned out that I like Portugal far less than I thought I would. This is less to do with Portugal itself and more to do with the image that I built up in my head.

I had imagined somewhere warm and affordable - a place where I could get away from the stifling pessimism of the UK and relax for a bit. What I actually got was a damp country that reminded me of the UK, but where my SIM card worked less well. It made me miss British food. It made me think that British food had better texture and was spicier. This is impressive, because British food is legendarily awful.

Like my husband, I wish I could give Portugal a fairer review. I cannot.

Vietnam: Wife

We headed to Vietnam soon after leaving Georgia for good, having been told by other expats that it was cheap and amazing.

I have to say, the food and coffee in Vietnam are the best I've ever had. I still dream about them. Unfortunately, almost everything else sucked. We ended up moving five times in two weeks because of noise pollution, cockroaches, and being unable to breathe because Hanoi broke the world record for most polluted city while we were there. It’s the only place where I've ever had to wear a respirator to bed. Never again.

On the plus side, I did learn exactly how much I enjoy breathing clean air.

Vietnam: Husband

This is the worst country I have ever been to. It is so bad that I no longer feel bad about America’s involvement in the Vietnam war. The people are trying to scam you, and each other, at all times. They eat stray cats and even each other’s pet cats if they can catch them – yes, really, look it up, they call it “little tiger” and they have restaurants where they serve cat meat, I not just being racist, this is a real thing – and as a consequence the country is absolutely swarmed with rats and cockroaches. Everyone always thinks that they eat cats because they’re starving. Regionally, this is a rich country with a booming industrial sector. They’re not starving to death. Cat is a luxury meat to them. They just like eating cat. They just like eating each other’s cats. It’s not a desperation thing.

When I first flew into Da Nang, we had to change hotels four times before we found one with no cockroaches in it. Not just in the lobby or the hallways, to be clear, but the rooms. Crawling on our possessions. When we finally, finally, left for Hanoi – on the theory that it might be better – it was literally the most polluted city on earth while we were there. People burned their trash in front of their houses because they didn’t have trash collection services. Nothing had a catalytic converter on it. I think they had factories directly inside the city. Broke some sort of world record. It’s a real shithole of a country, is what I’m saying; this is the sort of thing not quite captured by GDP per capita figures – the things that make this place polluted are also the place that make it what a South-East Asian rice farmer would call rich.

However, it has arguably the best coffee and food in the world, brought to you in five minutes or less, as you eat in a tiny plastic chair at a table outside and watch the world and traffic scream past you. Like much of southeast Asia – Cambodia and Thailand sadly included – eating outside always means a chance of some beggar attempting to get you to give them food while you are eating. They always seem angry when you say no.

The general vibe of Vietnam is a weird combination of tropical tranquility, the bustling of developing country traffic, the smog and speed of a country that seems desperate to stop being referred to as a developing country, the easy sleaze of a Buddhist country with little compunction about selling sex and a well-earned reputation for doing so, the trash of a place with approximately the population density of Connecticut and approximately the trash collection facilities of Vietnam; it is a teeming mass of humanity, living in filth and running scams on every stranger they meet, not so much out of malice or even genuine greed, but simply because to them Running Scams On Every Stranger They Meet is simply what you are expected to do.

Every time I crossed the street I felt like I was going to die, and I am used to crossing the street in a developing country, while you are not. Hanoi has many alleyways that never cross at right angles forming a bewildering tangle in which you will get lost among shops and houses, upscale and downscale in no apparent reason or pattern. These were perhans built originally as footpaths though since paved over – or perhaps built in the modern era, on purpose, due to lack of planning – perhaps due simply to this being Vietnam, built in a Vietnamese manner, for Vietnamese reasons, serving Vietnamese purposes.

Never go here. It is beautiful and the food is great, and from abroad everything looks cheaper, but there are cheaper places that have none of these problems. I don’t want to hear about some story you heard about a beautiful Vietnamese vacation. You don’t know, man. You weren’t there.

Thailand: Husband

Thailand is wonderful. Great great food, legal weed, I love the general aesthetic, visiting Wat Arun was a genuine spiritual experience – go early in the morning, alone, the people are nice, it’s seemed safe except for the traffic accidents. Sometimes the streets are kind of dirty. During dry season it’s too smoggy in Bangkok, but wet season isn’t smoggy and I love the warm rains of Bangkok as I ride in a tuk-tuk along a kaleidoscope of humanity. It’s a city of like 10 million though, so sometimes the very cheap rideshares (like a couple of dollars at most) get stuck in traffic. There’s also some trains that go over or under traffic, but there’s literally like two train lines. Look, it is what it is. It’s genuinely one of my favorite cities. Not in any sort of exceptional way, except for the food – which is perhaps a bit too sweet – but it does everything that I want a city of 10 million to do for me. Good cheap easy medical care. Were visas here easier, I’d probably live in Thailand.

Your rent will be as low as $400 for the month that the visa here lasts. I recommend Sitara Place.

Thailand reveals itself not through anything straightforward about it – it’s a tropical developing country with a mild version of every stereotype that a reasonably non-racist person might have about it – but through comparisons. In comparison to Cambodia it feels orderly and clean-streeted and smoggy and lacking in stray animals on the street and generally requiring far less mental adaptation to navigate through – in comparison to Vietnam it is honest and clean-aired – in comparison to most countries it is welcoming of tourists and has easily-accessible infrastructure for doing almost anything you might want to do. It is, basically, the neutral option of tropical developing countries. If you go to Thailand, you are almost certain to have a good time but will be unable to feel as though you’ve had an adventure – it does nothing exceptionally well beyond medical tourism and nothing exceptionally poorly beyond smog. You will walk on the beach at Pattya amongst the palms and look out at the vast sea and it will feel exactly like you would imagine that to feel. There is nothing in Thailand that is terribly surprising. Trying to review it is like trying to review the concept of a hamburger. Of course I love it. But could I write a love poem to it? I think not.

Thailand: Wife

We moved to Bangkok in a horrible hurry - we were just trying to get the first flight out of Hanoi and to somewhere with less shitty air. We'd both heard of Bangkok as some kind of weird paradise. It's not quite there, but it's close.

I grew up in London, one of the great global cities of the world, and it made me picky about cities forever. Bangkok makes me feel right at home with its cosmopolitan atmosphere. There's always something going on, something new to do or see or eat. Wet season is glorious.

There are two very good parks in Bangkok that I enjoy - Lumphini Park and Benchakitti Park. Most of my memories of Benchakitti Park are of trying to go on a walk through there and getting caught in one of those wonderful-but-also-chaotic rain storms that soak you through to the skin.

Lumphini Park is probably my second favourite place in Bangkok. You’re surrounded by lush lawns and beautiful blooming plants while the gleaming skyscrapers of the city rise up around you. The local cats loll around lazily and wait for you to pet them or bring them food. The local water monitors - lizards the size of dogs - don’t want you to pet them, but they do probably want food and are quite happy to have their photos taken. (Just don’t pet them. One tried to bite my husband.)

My favourite place in Bangkok is Wat Arun - the Temple of Dawn. Go very early in the morning, as the city is just starting to rise. See the sunlight glint fiercely off the porcelain tiles. Pet the cats that make their home in the temple. Respect this place of worship and find tranquility in one of the most gloriously chaotic cities in the world.

Cambodia: Husband

Cambodia is the country that I recommend as a starting place for all digital nomads.

You can go there for…indefinitely, and the visa costs less than $400 per year. It’s very easy to get. The food is basically Thai food but without the sugar, and the culture isn’t terribly different from Thai culture, either. Rent and services are cheaper than in Thailand, but goods are more expensive. My rent was $175 a month – the Hideout in Kampot, the best landlord I ever had. Canadian guy. I spent more on food than on rent. I lived there for 7 months, and found it intensely peaceful and relaxing. It was a good place to get some work done, I found the country beautiful, I very much enjoyed the people and their honest nature, and generally I found it pleasant but a bit dull.

I remember one time that I accidentally overpaid a Cambodian man by a dollar – they use American currency there as readily as the Khmer Real – and he gave it back. I tried to tell him most people would have just kept it – the Cambodian GDP per capita works out to just under $6.68 a day – but he seemed confused by the idea. “But I already have all the money that I have,” he said, in badly broken English. He wasn’t offended by my idea or anything – he was just confused. The idea of keeping the dollar was simply not one that naturally occurred to him as a thing that a person could do – he wasn’t stupid, either. I found myself awkwardly explaining it to him, and he did appear to get it. It’s just that no one had ever told him that this was a thing that he could do, before.

The beautiful thing about Cambodia is that rule of law, bureaucracy, and state capacity is about as limited there as you can get outside of an outright state of civil war. I never started a business there or did anything to truly advertise my wealth. But I was repeatedly told that if I did such a thing, I would find myself having to bribe every single local policeman and taxman.

Cambodia: Wife

We went to Cambodia on a visa run, thinking that we'd just go to Angkor Wat, do a visa run, and come back to Thailand. We ended up staying for nine months.

Cambodia has a horrible reputation as being dirty and seedy and full of the very worst kinds of sex tourism. It's actually one of the most peaceful and laid-back countries I've ever been to. Things are just terrifically easy to do - like Georgia, comparatively little bureaucracy is involved in anything. The people are also largely laid-back and just generally kind. Angkor Wat is not the best thing in Cambodia - the people and culture are. There's also a bizarrely good international food scene, with foreigners from all over the world coming to live and work in the country, and some very cool wildlife.

The two real drawbacks are the lack of good health care compared with Vietnam or Thailand, and the fact that you can do literally anything with enough money and connections. Still, Cambodia has a special place in my heart because of the atmosphere and people. I'm so glad to be going back.

Turkey: Husband

Turkey (I’m not calling it what Erdogan wants. Fuck him. And his new spelling is motivated by a 3rd world mindset misunderstanding of English and would be pronounced EXACTLY LIKE TURKEY IS by most native English speakers) is the 2nd worst country I’ve ever been to. Well. Istanbul is. It’s clogged with traffic, it’s dirty, I had to fistfight an Uber driver who tried to rob me and my wife, all the shopkeepers yell at you as you pass their shops, the prices are essentially random because their currency is so chaotic, they don’t reliably have western toilets, the food isn’t even THAT good, the city’s skyline is maddeningly flat and city-filled – there’s neither mountains nor forest nor skyscrapers from any height, and something about this simply causes me panic – there’s so many mosques that at one point I could see 5 of them while standing in one place, and it somehow speaks the least English out of every country on this list.

I have never been to parts of Turkey that aren’t Istanbul. For all I know they are perfectly nice.

Turkey: Wife

In contrast to Cambodia, Turkey - at least Istanbul - is not calm at all. Istanbul is a crazy, chaotic place full of tourists and people trying to buy more stable dollars or euros against the Turkish lira, which is doing…lira things. Nothing good. It’s also the only place where I’ve ever seen a fistfight over $3 take place (that was the Uber driver who tried to rob me and my husband). Never again.

The cats are very sweet, though.

Sweden: Husband

Sweden is like if the Midwest was beautiful. I enjoyed the food – moose, low-alcohol beer, lots of fish, pleasingly rich coffee, etc etc – and found the society to be well-ordered. The public transit worked well, and the buildings are warm. Because Sweden is so adapted to the cold, I felt warmer there in winter than I did in Cyprus. It is a place of beautiful nature and beautiful architecture. Despite the cost of living, I do sometimes consider buying a house there. There’s just a wonderful aesthetic to it. I was only there for a week and only in Stockholm.

Sweden: Wife

Sweden is perhaps the most aggressively pleasant country I've been to. While visiting friends, we arrived horribly late at night. The trains from the airport were still running in the small hours, and walking from the station to our aparthotel, soft warm lights were prettily strung up everywhere. Our friends' nice new apartment was beautifully insulated. Things just worked, everywhere we looked. It was such a relief. Yes, food could be expensive, but you could walk or take public transit basically everywhere and come back to a warm, toasty apartment and a comfy bed.

My overwhelming impression is that Sweden is a cosy, functional country. I can't wait to come back. Go Sweden!

Japan: Wife

I went here with my husband for his thirtieth birthday. We have both wanted to go to Japan for years. We made many jokes about things being “just like in our Japanese animes”.

They are not. They are quite possibly even better.

We spent most of our time in Tokyo, a city we had both very much looked forward to visiting for years. Visiting Tokyo is like visiting several different cities, all of which are smooshed into one big megacity called Tokyo and connected by a train system that plays happy little tunes whenever you call at a station. (Seriously. I loved those tunes. I loved the Tokyo Metro.)

What unites all of the mini-cities within Tokyo is that they’re bizarrely clean and quiet for a settlement of this size. I grew up in London, I’ve visited Paris, I’ve lived in Bangkok - Tokyo is by far the most orderly. It was actually quite unsettling to me. Tokyo is also quite grey; by the time I had spent my first week there, I was “revenge dressing” in bright colours and fixing my long, brown hair in place with gaudy hairpins just to make sure I got some colour in my day. On the plus side, the food is of course incredible. Everything from high-end meals to food out of a vending machine tasted wonderful.

We also rode the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto and back. Watching Japan streak by me at 200 mph has been a dream of mine since I was a little girl, and it did not disappoint. More than that - Kyoto is the most peaceful place I have ever visited. I felt such an overwhelming sense of calm there, surrounded by hills and mountains.

My husband and I are thinking of moving to Japan. I can’t wait to explore more of the country.

Japan: Husband

I have spent exactly two weeks in Japan (in Tokyo and Kyoto) and I would quite like to go back.

I feel like a bit of a basic bro for being a white guy who loves Japan. But you know what? It’s actually great. Tokyo is a city with zero trash on the streets, and it’s so smog-free that it actually smells good. The food is amazing, the general vibe is great, I would enjoy simply wandering around and existing in Japan. It was a fantastic time. I don’t know what to tell you. You’ve seen travel reviews of Japan. It is exactly like the travel reviews. It lives up to the hype. It’s a fantastic place.

I’m not even a weeb or anything. It’s just great. It is exactly as has been advertised to you.

Our Conclusion

As we finish writing this, we’ve been coming to terms with some bad health news that means we need to settle down in one place for a bit. Travelling from country to country is a massive privilege, but it also means forgoing a proper kitchen and a real exercise routine and consistent medical care and all the other things that catch up with you as you turn thirty.

The thing to consider, though, is that you might be preserving your body – you might be scrimping and saving and etc – all for nothing. You might get hit by a bus tomorrow. You might live to 100. You should probably do things that make sense with either. Working a job so you can rent an apartment so you can work a job isn’t a great use of your time. I’m not saying that seeing the world is the only thing worth doing, but I am saying that the only things worth doing are things that you think are worth doing.

I was thinking about the conclusion I want to write for this - the takeaway that I want readers to have. It’s hard because something as big as moving countries regularly feels like it shouldn’t have a conclusion. I don’t want to stop travelling. I’m not done learning.

It is crazy for there to be an entire world and for you to only see one part of it. That is a weird thing to do. You are given so many options and so little time, and you spend your time on just one of them. Why are you doing this to yourself?

But if there were anything - one thing - I had to say, I’d say this.

There’s a world beyond the Bay Area. Beyond the US even. It’s big and deeply weird and sometimes unpleasant but it’s always, always interesting and it reminds you that the map is not the territory. Frankly, the territory is not the territory, either. I can go to all these countries and still not really know most of them. This is what is addictive about travel – and I don’t mean addictive in a cute way; I mean addictive – that you are always intoxicated by the thought of going somewhere deeper, weirder, wilder. That there are always more places to go than there is time in a human life.