Early Retirement Month Three: Bali and Your Burning Questions

Welcome back to my monthly series recounting what I’ve been up to since I retired. I have officially been retired for 105 days! In this series I cover where I am in the world, what I’ve been up to, and how I’m feeling about early retirement.

When I reflect on my month in Bali, I mostly reminisce about resplendent jungles. The monkeys that casually dotted the roads and scream-played in the water. Becoming confident driving a scooter on narrow paths paved through rice paddies. Snacking on rice, meat, noodles and sambal wrapped in banana leaves for 50¢. Private pools in villas, and catching COVID after avoiding it for nearly three years. Sunrises on mountain tops, cooking eggs in the steaming mouth of a volcano, and islands where turtles snooze underwater.

Bali was my first stop on my indefinite travel through South East Asia, and I get why books have been set there, why there are so many expats, and why it’s a repeat destination for travelers. I did so much in a month that it feels impossible to cram it into one post. I am going to cover some of the highlights, then move on and answer reader questions. If you have a question about early retirement that I don’t get to in this post, leave it in the comment section!

Bali & Lombok

Ubud, Gili Islands, Lembongan, Nusa Penida

After surfing in Canggu, we headed to the famous Ubud for its jungles and monkey sanctuary. In the morning we rose at 3am to start a sunrise hike. Steam rose from the mountain top as our guide told us the history of the lands below, affected by eruptions over time.

Temples freckle Bali everywhere; earning it the nickname “Island of the Gods.” Some are nested in caves and others have you wade into them to dunk yourself in holy water. We ducked into the caves, eye-level with bats, and prayed under gushing statues.

I wanted to stay longer in Ubud, where everything felt grander, bigger, and older than me. I wanted to sit at the feet of an elderly storyteller and keep learning the stories carved into the rocks hundreds of years ago. Yet there were only 30 days on my visa, and it was time to sail on– so we took a boat over to our next stops: the Gili Islands and Nusa Penida.

We rented a scooter straight off the boat and drove all over the island of Nusa Penida. One of the highlights is Kelingking Beach, where the sea scraped away rock until it began to look like a T-Rex. Monkeys darted around at the top of the trail, I watched one clever baby gnaw the bottom out of a water bottle but subsequently dump it all over herself. By the time we descended to the beach below, I was so hot that I wanted to dump water over my head too.

The gorgeous Dinosaur Rock in Nusa Penida. It took me a few minutes of squinting to see the T-Rex. Do you see it?

To get around in Bali, you can hire a driver, hop on the back of taxi-scooters, or rent your own. Renting a scooter felt way outside my comfort zone at first. I have a rehabilitation therapist in the family who frequently brings home stories of patients with traumatic brain injuries.

As I recalled these catastrophic crashes, I let my friend drive first. I tightened my helmet, and clung to the back of the bike like a monkey latching onto a tourist’s backpack. Eventually, I have gotten more comfortable with driving the scooter. Still, it’s not uncommon to see tourists with road rash wounds spotting their arms and legs. Just remember what the locals say: hati hati! Be careful!

Bye Bye Bali

Saying goodbye to Bali felt like waving to a wise-old sage, who mutters a prophecy: you will be back. You can’t help but feel like you’ve only just brushed the surface of what that Indonesian archipelago has to offer.

I said goodbye to Bali at the same time as I said goodbye to my friend, who actually has a job to do back in the States (ha ha. Sucker.) As for me, I took a quick flight over to Krabi, Thailand to continue my island-hopping adventure. More on that in the next post!

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Questions from Readers – How Is Early Retirement Going So Far?

I solicited questions from Twitter to see what people were curious about early retirement so far. Here’s what people wanted to know:

Do you feel any anxiety? Do you feel like you need to get up and go to work?

I did feel a bit strange in the first couple weeks after I quit my job, and wrote about it in this post. However, one benefit of jumping straight into travel from my 9-to-5 is that I’m not simply doing my normal routine with a giant gap where work used to be. Being abroad so far has felt more like a vacation, but with no time squeeze. I can spend a week where I used to spend a day. There’s a lot less anxiety because I don’t have the dread of returning to constant deadlines. I don’t have homework. I don’t have looming launches. I wake up and decide what to do as I go along.

Any guilt for not being “productive”?

No, no guilt.

So far my days have been full; I meet new people, read books, swim in the sea, and island hop. I’ve been learning bits of new languages, how to stay neutrally buoyant in the water, and how to drive on the left side of the road. Productivity isn’t hitting my Q4 targets, I’m successful if I am content where I am.

In fact, I feel more guilt for the opposite reason. Sometimes I wonder if I’m not resting enough. Shouldn’t retirement mean swinging the day away in a hammock with my latest read? So why am I blundering through a jungle to get to a beach on the other side of the island, where instead of sunbathing I ask a captain to borrow a snorkel for a while, only to get nibbled by overexcited fish? Why can’t I sit still to watch the sun go down? In the end, I’m still figuring out what a “productive” day looks like for me.

It is going to take a while to recalibrate a balance between rest and action. Early retirement and sabbaticals are just a couple of methods to attempt to get this balance right, but it doesn’t happen right away. I need more time before any of this feels real or normal.

Do you feel alone traveling alone?

While I travelled with a friend for Month 2 in Bali, for the last couple of weeks I have been traveling on my own. However, traveling solo is not as solo as it sounds. There are so many people traveling “alone” that you don’t stay that way for long. I don’t feel any more alone than I did moving to a new country during the pandemic, that’s for sure.

For example, I took a boat from one island to another, and on the boat I met a woman from the UK. Later, I waved to her on the beach, and she and her friend (whom she met in the dorm room of her hostel) joined me. Then the friend’s diving instructor walked by, chatted with us, and we all decided to go for dinner. One of his friends tagged along, and suddenly we had five people all sharing their recent adventures over a huge meal.

I have met so many people already, all with their own timelines, adventures, and work-life balances. Each person shares their social media, and now I have a web of friends whose adventures I can follow online. It feels like I’m in a pinball machine with twenty loose balls bouncing into each other, pinging across the country. Thanks to modern technology, I’m also connected to my family and friends from home. As a bonus, the locals in Indonesia and Thailand positively beam as they yell out cheery hellos. It’s hard to feel lonely for long.

However, I do think it will be a bit strange to spend the holiday season alone in the tropics. I hope I meet some nice people to spend it with!

Does this year’s stock market bother you?

No. It is fruitless to time the market, and just as fruitless to worry about it. I quit my job even as my portfolio plummeted. The market is doing what the market does. Worrying about a down market would be like worrying that my cat is going to push a full glass of water off the table. I prepare for the eventuality rather than letting it bother me.

Are you going through money faster/slower/on pace with what you expected?

In my last post Do I Have Enough Money To Travel The World? I calculated that I should try to stick to a budget of $74/day.

Tracking my expenses in the U.S. and The Netherlands was simple because I went almost completely cashless. I could access every transaction with a click of a button. Now, nearly all purchases are made in cash, so it’s trickier to track. Instead, I can count up my ATM withdrawals to approximate my overall spending levels.

In Bali, my friend and I split everything, but we haven’t gotten around to fully settling up. So, for the purposes of checking whether I am spending money faster, slower, or on pace to what I expect, I will calculate for the time while I’ve been solo: 18 days.

Expense	Euros	Dollars	Notes
PADI Open Water Diving Certification + 1 fun dive	€483	$514	Including 5 dives, housing for 3 nights, lunches, and lifetime certification.
1st ATM Withdrawal	€84	$90
2nd ATM Withdrawal	€282	$300
3rd ATM Withdrawal	€279	$297
Hotels & Restaurants with Card	€190	$203
Gifts	€90	$96	Christmas gifts so far
Total	€1,408	$1,501
Total per day	€78	$83	Over my planned expenses of $74/day

I seem to be barreling through my budget rather quickly. According to this breakdown, in the last 2.5 weeks, I am over budget. However, if I exclude the diving certification, then I’m nicely within my expected expenses at ~$55 per day.

‘Diving’ into my expenses

I got my scuba diving certification in the second cheapest place in Thailand to get it: Koh Lipe. One of the cheapest places in the world to get certified is Koh Tao, which is located on the other side of the mainland. I deliberated hard about whether or not to go to Koh Tao instead, like Kristy and Bryce from Millennial Revolution. They paid $250 per person when they went in 2017, but prices have risen significantly since then.

I spent a few days trying to make up my mind. I talked to several people and decided that the cost difference of actually getting to Koh Tao would outweigh the savings. Plus, I read glowing recommendations about diving in this area. Two people told me they had dove in both spots recently, and their recommendation was to do the certification in Koh Lipe. With that, I signed up for the course. I was glad I did, because I ended up getting great one-on-one diving instruction from an (extremely patient) dive master.

What are my main costs?

It would be nice to dismiss the certification as one of those ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ costs, since that would mean I am nicely within budget. However, it is still important to factor in larger line items like these. “One-time” expenses are often not as rare as we’d like to think– consider flights, “must-see” attractions, etc. The fact that I am over budget means it would be prudent for me to address my spending and try to bring it down a notch.

I have been staying in hostels for $10-$20 a night which is great, but I eat out frequently, sign up for snorkel tours and activities, and have not been particularly frugal overall (mango smoothies every day, no regrets). On top of my day-to-day expenses, I have noticed that in the last couple of years my gift budget has ballooned. I won’t be home for Christmas this year, so I’ve ordered gifts from abroad. I keep saying this, but it is a category I should reign in a bit. Overall, I will need to keep an eye on my spending, but I don’t have enough data yet to really sound the alarm. Hopefully my spending averages out over time!

Just keep swimming

I know I sound a little blasé about going over budget. I’m not sure if you’ve picked up on this theme: I’m not anxious. I’m not bothered. I’m not worried. I’m not guilty. One key takeaway from the diving course is that panic won’t serve you. The most important skill is to keep breathing continuously. I have money, time, and marketable skills. I’ll monitor as I go, adjust, and make changes as needed.

Does the adventure of it all wear off and start to feel like a routine?

I’ll let you know when I’ve been traveling for a year. At least now, only a few months into my adventure, it certainly doesn’t feel routine. The journey has barely begun!

I’m very interested in learning more about managing long-term travel life versus a two week holiday. Some digital nomads clearly have a routine down. I am still in the early days, so I’m bound to make some mistakes and figure it out as I go. I’ll report back as time goes on.

Do you know what’s next for you?

I keep extending my time on the gorgeous Thai island of Koh Lipe (more on that in next month’s post), and plan to head up to Northern Thailand to Chang Mai.

If the question means after travel: no, I don’t know what’s next! I plan on traveling for the foreseeable future. Nothing “productive” is in the pipeline, and that is okay with me.

That’s it!

What questions do you have about early retirement?

Would you ride a scooter in a new country on the other side of the road?

How’s my travel budgeting so far?

Share in the comments below!