My name is Arthur Hanson and I’m the guy behind WorldNomad. Travel and travel photography are my passions in life and my intention is to dedicate this site to the pursuit of traveling, especially budget and backpack traveling.

As for me, I’m not going to bore you with a bunch of useless personal details. However, it is probably valuable to know something about the author of these journals to better understand the perspective from which they were written, so let me take a moment to give you a bit of a glimpse of who is behind this.

I’m a 40′ish!!! (when did I get that OLD!) American currently spending most of my time in Thailand and SE Asia. The tag-line for this site “A geek, a digital camera, and a laptop travel around the world” - should probably give you a good idea of my hobbies, and after 20+ years as a software programmer I definately qualify as a geek.

I grew up in the small town of Bend, Oregon and eventually after working at a variety of small software companies, I wound up working 11 years at Microsoft as a software Engineer. One wet and rainy Seattle day in 1999, sitting at my desk I woke up and realized “there must be more to life then this!”. So, I put all my worldly belongings into storage, strapped on my backpack and have been living overseas ever since!

My grandfather was a world-traveler and I guess I inherited his wanderlust. 1995 Introduced me to the wonders of international travel. First with a trip to Europe, then Mexico and exotic Asia. Since 1999 I have been living abroad (mostly in and around Thailand) and traveling around the world.

Whever I say I used to work at Microsoft, everyone seems to jump to the conclusion that I have endless financial resources (I don’t). I simply had a dream of traveling and decided to pursue it (and life) to the fullest. You only have one life, so if you have a dream go after it – in my case, it helps that living in SE Asia is amazingly cheap.

Travel opens your eyes and is one of life’s great educators. There is no better way to learn about people, the world and our place within it then traveling. I have walked along the French riviera and seen slums in Cambodia – the more you travel, the more you realize how little you’ve seen.

So here I am sitting at my computer typing this in. I realize I have many more journeys and many more life lessons ahead of me and my journeys have just begun.