Welcome to All About the Après!

Hello, and welcome to All About the Après! I’m Hannah, and I’ve been vagabonding around the world for over three years. My blog is primarily an outlet where I share personal stories from the road and chat about location independence, freelancing and the whole nomadic lifestyle.

Before you start exploring, here is a little bit about myself and this blog that you’ve stumbled upon. 

Prior to leaving my home country, England, I worked in book publishing. Which was pleasant enough but that whole 9-5 lifestyle was making me feel anxious, claustrophobic and uninspired.

Now, I’m fortunate enough to work as a freelance content writer which means I can work from anywhere and live a different sort of lifestyle. I travel slowly and as responsibly as I possibly can. 

All About the Après has been in the pipeline for a while, although it’s fair to say it’s been subject to neglect…

All About the Après:

a chequered history

My little long term travel blog began whilst I lived in Hoi An. However, whilst juggling my Workaway placement, dipping my toes into the freelance world, and stuffing my face with banh mi, it didn’t get a whole lot of love. Afterwards, I spent a month in Thailand where I got sidetracked with learning to drive a motorbike and eating Pad Thai that I totally forgot about my slice of online real estate.

Once in Malaysia, I spent just short of two months in Kuala Lumpur on my first house sitting assignment. It was there that I purchased an uber fancy blog theme that I didn’t understand how to turn into a blog. Many evenings I sat, tapping away on my balcony with a gin and tonic as the cats watched on. I devoured tutorials about how to use the theme, started writing posts, and tinkered around with the design.

But then…?

But then I was on the road again. And, to be honest, the next few months were a blur of travel.

My ‘digital nomad’ lifestyle was ticking away but whenever I wasn’t on my laptop working, I threw myself into exploring. Roaming temples in Myanmar, hanging out with orangutans in Sumatra, walking dogs in Singapore and chasing volcanoes in Java. I didn’t check in on my poor old blog once. 

Next up was New Zealand. I arrived poised to spend a year travelling on my working holiday visa whilst living in a van. Whilst house sitting in Auckland, I hopped on and posted a couple of blogs. After that, I fell into the abyss that is the Long White Cloud. The following year was split between working a whole lot of backpacker jobs and craning my neck at mountains. 

Excuses, excuses, I know – but yet again, the poor blog floundered. However, my various fees (domain, themes, hosting, bla bla bla) have been devoutly consistent. Thanks, guys, love you back.

All About the Après: Round Two, Three, Four

Once my time in New Zealand was up, fate intervened (in the best possible way) and sent me back to Southeast Asia. This time, utterly broke. My trusty camper car conked out on me a month before my departure.

Throwing myself into finding freelance clients so I could fill my bank with shiny new pennies to fund my future adventures, the blog lapsed into further decay. 

Six months later, I’m sitting in my flat in Georgia-the-country-not-the-state and giving All About the Après a big old audit. To be honest, I hadn’t really had the time to put much proper thought into the blog until now. I made a whole heap of blogger newbie mistakes, my content was rushed. I didn’t (and still don’t totally) gel with SEO and the word ‘optimise’ makes my stomach curdle.

So if you’ve found this blog post, either you’re a digital ninja, my lovely mum, or I’ve finally learnt something. 

Now here I am, using the COVID-19 lockdown to spruce up my blog posts, rectify my previous errors and, yes, (yawn) optimise. Stay tuned, and who knows? Perhaps this time around I’ll be better.

Start your journey

Make yourself at home and let me show you around. 

Over on my travel blog, you’ll find stories from countries that I’ve personally visited and written about. If the country you’re after doesn’t appear, I’ve not been there. Yet. Maybe I don’t want to go there. You’ll hear me say countless times that I’m not here to tick countries off a list. 

Meanwhile, head over to the location independence archives to find some of my dreadful digital nomad faux pas. More usefully, there are some tips on how you might be able to live abroad and travel as a digital nomad.  

Sadly, my photography leaves a lot to be desired. My cracked Android has seen its share of winters but I refuse to replace anything until it’s totally unfunctionable. So run yourself a Google image search to see glorious photos of places mentioned. And don’t troll me for any blurry photos.

Also, I feel vastly under-qualified to give real, proper advice about anything so please tread with caution. 

Happy reading, happy travelling!