Above: Victor Lai visits the Earthship Todos Santos in Mexico. Earthships are green buildings designed by Earthship Biotecture a co-working space in Koh Lanta, Thailand. This page, bottom right: Leighton Prabhu, cofounder of Interstice Consulting, logs on


to Southeast Asia for two months. On that trip, he realized that he might be able to combine work and travel in the future. He launched his own IT consultancy in 2008 and worked on a mix of remote projects and short-term contracts before officially becoming a nomad in 2012. “My goal was always to live six months a year in a warm place,” he says. “Then someone said, ‘Well, you’re kind of doing that already, aren’t you?’” Since 2012, Lai has spent roughly half the year in his native


Vancouver and half on the road. He powers through the bulk of projects when he’s at home, reserving “maintenance work” for the time when he’s away. That way, he doesn’t have to worry about distractions or technical issues while travelling. As he


36 | CPA MAGAZINE | MAY 2016


explains, “There’s nothing worse than when someone asks you to hike a volcano and you have to say no.” The vast majority of nomads hail from North America or Europe. While there are no statistics available to chart their numbers, they are definitely in growth mode if you consider how many dedicated groups, resources and services are being cre- ated to support them. At the time of writing, Facebook groups such as Webworktravel had 12,000-plus members, while the “Digital Nomads” Reddit feed had at least 21,484 subscribers. Although Latin American countries such as Colombia are


becoming popular with the work-and-travel crowd, it’s South- east Asia — particularly Thailand and Indonesia, with their


Photography courtesy of Victor Lai, Daphnée Laforest, Leighton Prabhu and Josh Zweig


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