Greetings from Koh Phi Phi, Thailand!
I cannot believe how good-looking this part of the country is. “Wow” is the word I’ve been using to describe it since arriving by boat. I didn’t take the picture above, but it gives you an idea of what I’m working with here. (Thanks to Sean for inspiring me to add Thailand to my itinerary back in November, which quickly lead me to booking my crazy $418 trip).
A quick update on what I’ve been up to – after flying into Bangkok, my friend Cash and I made our way over to Cambodia to spend a few days in Siem Reap and explore Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples.
I’ll be discussing my Angkor Wat trip in far more detail on Thursday, as I’m saving for a special post that I didn’t expect to have to write so soon.
You’ll understand on Thursday.
Travel misadventures in Thailand
To say I’ve had a hectic and eventful past 72 hours would be an understatement. We left our hotel in Cambodia with almost ten hours to spare for our flight from Bangkok to Phuket… apparently affording ten hours for what should have been only six hours of travel time wasn’t NEARLY enough time), so we had to eat the cost of our nonrefundable plane ticket and figure out a different way to get down here.
And when I say missed our flight, I mean we weren’t even CLOSE.
Because we missed our flight, we spent yesterday exploring Bangkok’s Royal Palace (which we had been told was closed by no less than eight VERY convincing scam-artists who were working together – luckily we ignored them), and then took a 14-hour overnight bus down to Phuket…
Needless to say, the past few days have been exhausting and somewhat frustrating. Fortunately, Koh Phi Phi has absolutely been worth the chaos – this place is right up there with Waiheke Island, New Zealand, and Harbour Island, Bahamas, as one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen.
While all of this crazy travel nonsense is going down, we also have some big things happening with NF and the Rebellion…
Halfway through the 6 week challenge
We are officially three weeks into the greatest contest in the history of the world (or whatever ridiculous name I gave it back then)…if you picked up the Rebel Strength Guide in that first week and are in the contest, Vic and I would love to hear from you! We set up a special email address at help@rebelstrengthguide.com specifically for this reason, so shoot us an update and let us know how things are going: which workout and diet plan you’re following, what your progress is, and if you’re having any issues that we can help with.
Keep pushing yourself – we’re halfway there! WOOOAHHH…ahem, sorry.
(Get it? Bon Jovi Edition? I know, I’m hilarious.)
If you’re not in the contest but doing the 6-week challenge on the message boards (or the HILARIOUS Zombie Apocalypse Challenge – check out Dawsy’s thread if you want to laugh your ass off), I’d still love to hear from you – let me know what you’re up to and how I can help.
Speaking of the message boards…
The Rebellion grows stronger
We just passed 1,600 members on the Nerd Fitness message boards!
I know I’ve said this a few times before, but I honestly could not be more proud to be part of such a cool group of people. Whenever I’m in a bad mood or am in need of some motivation and inspiration, I just hop on those boards and within 15 minutes I’m fired up.
A good community is a powerful force to be reckoned with, and we have a great one.
I received an email recently from a reader asking me how I find the motivation to exercise while traveling. I replied, “I exercise because I know there is a community of people doing the same thing while facing their own challenges. If other rebels can stay in shape while working full time jobs, raising kids, hanging out with friends, and having a life, there’s no reason I can’t do the same while traveling. They inspire me and I want to inspire them.”
If you’re already posting on the message boards and interacting with other rebels, thank you – you inspire me more than you know. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but you’re molding the future of Nerd Fitness, quickly turning our small rebellion into a massive worldwide revolution.
If you’re not posting on there yet, come join us! It’s free, incredibly inspirational, and a great place to connect with like-minded individuals facing the same challenges as you.
We’d love to have you.
Google and a San Fran Meetup?
30 days from today, I’ll officially be a “guest lecturer at Google.”
Holy crap.
I finished the first draft of my presentation last night, and I’m excited to see it start to come together. Because this is my first presentation EVER for Nerd Fitness, I need to make sure that I absolutely nail it – Google will be recording my talk and putting it online for the world to see.
I want to give a presentation that makes the Nerd Fitness community proud, so my post frequency over the next four weeks might be a little sparse as I devote most of my free time to the presentation in between planes, trains, automobiles, and adventures. Traveling and working has proven to be quite challenging and this presentation has to take top priority.
Thank you for your understanding!
Speaking of San Francisco, I know there are quite a few rebels from there (Endorphin Dude, I’m looking in your direction…), so I’d love to do a NF meet up during my time in town! I’ll be there from May 26th to June 2nd (Google talk is on the 1st), so maybe we can pick a day/evening in there to do something fun.
If you live in the San Francisco area and want to meet up, shoot me an email at Steve@nerdfitness.com with San Fran in the subject line so I can gauge interest. If you have any interest in helping me find a place to meet up and organize the thing, let me know that too – I need all the help I can get when it comes to organization skills, and being out of the country only makes it harder to coordinate stuff.
Cutting my trip short
I have some sad news – due to some extra time spent in other countries, an ebook launch that absolutely took over my life, and a few unexpected travel delays here and there, I have to cut either Japan or China out of my trip.
At the moment, I’m going to have only enough time to spend 10 days in one country or the other. Rather than trying to cram tons of stuff into 5 days in each place, I’d rather spend the full 10 days (which still isn’t enough) in one and then book a separate flight to come back to the country I miss somewhere down the line.
If I didn’t have prior commitments back in the states for the month of June, I could easily push back my plans to fit both in, but honestly I’ll be ready to come home at the end of the month. This trip has been so incredibly amazing and rewarding, but it has also been exhausting and an incredibly challenging “business trip.” I have so many cool things that I want to accomplish with Nerd Fitness so I’m looking forward to dedicating a few months to the Rebellion before heading back out on the road to Europe.
I have a few days to decide which country to cut out…I will most likely cut out Japan due to its recent catastrophes but I haven’t fully decided one way or the other yet.
26 days til I come home
That’s all for today! Don’t forget to let us know how you’re doing on your 6-week to awesome transformation if you’re participating, we’d love to hear from you. And if you’re not doing the contest, shoot me an email anyways – I’d love to hear what you’re up to and how I can help. It’s going to take me a while to get back to every email, but I’ll do it as soon as humanly possible.
Can’t believe I’ve been traveling for over three and a half months and I only have one month left…I’ll be back soon, U.S.A.!
I guess it’s time to go find a tree on the beach so that I can do some pull ups…
-Steve
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