This is Not a Vacation

This is not a vacation – this is life. It’s freeing and exhilarating, but also something we have to remind ourselves pretty often. We have to remember that when we select places for our next adventure. Not every place we want to visit has solid cellular reception and WIFI, which would leave us unable to work. 

Here are our top 5 favorite places we’ve visited that have allowed us to stay connected:

5. St. Lucia

Out of the Caribbean islands we’ve visited, St. Lucia provided the most stable, consistent WIFI and cell service. The country code is +1, and the language is English – so communicating back home with clients, as well as with locals was easy.

4. Gili T, Indonesia

Gili T is the smallest island we’ve ever visited. There are no motorized vehicles, so people ride bicycles or in horse-drawn carriages. The entire island can be walked from top to bottom in an hour, so we were pleasantly surprised to find that we had cell reception and that WIFI was prevalent. There are a few cafes that have stable WIFI that were right across from the beach – which made for a fantastic home office. The hotels were hit or miss with WIFI, so it was nice to have the cafes to fall back on if there was an outage, or it was working slow at home.

3. Malta 

Malta is a diver’s (& history buff’s) paradise. There are so many wrecks and so much history to be explored under the sea. Not only was WIFI and cell service so easily attained – there was also a DRYER in the condo we rented. That was the first dryer we had encountered in our travels, outside of professional facilities. We can’t tell you how many times we’ve gone to wear something only to realize it wasn’t fully dry (even the following day) – so this was a pleasant surprise. We will say though that we think our clothes are fading slower from line drying – so ya win some and lose some. 

2. Italy

Italy is amazing, we wouldn’t recommend going for the SCUBA diving, though. Other than that, it was ideal. It was one of the easiest places in terms of connectedness. Our three months of Google Fi had lapsed by this time, so we bought Vodafone sim cards which worked perfectly. A word to the wise, though, don’t throw away the package the sim card comes in. It has a pin number on it that you will need to reenter on your phone every time your phone restarts. We may or may not know this from experience (two times over). The sim card was around €60 and included 50 GBs of data, it’s really nice if you get to use it all. 

1. Phuket, Thailand

Phuket was our absolute favorite. The conditions were perfect for work – excellent WIFI, cute cafes to work in, and perfect cellular reception. The kindness and welcoming nature of the Thai people kicked it up a notch and the food, wow, it was the cherry on top. Not to mention how beautiful the endless number of beaches were. There was always something beautiful to see and experience when we weren’t working. Existing in Phuket was seamless and easily our favorite destination so far.