Another successful Nomad year! We would like to summarize our favorite things we saw in 2025. A lot of the year was spent on the road and it is interesting to see our final numbers.
We are one of those nomad couples that aren’t technically nomads because we still own a house. But we have been renting it out so much that we are often not able to stay in it. Luckily we have the family beach house on Stretch Island that we can use. We still consider ourselves “Nomadic” although the proper term should probably be “Semi-Nomadic”. Now lets get to our best memories from the year….
Favorite New Country
Meg-Romania. We were able to stay in 3 different cities and like them all. We saw a bunch of castles, ate a lot of good food at reasonable prices. There is much more to see in the North of the country and we know we need to come back.
Bill-Taiwan We started the year here and were energetic enough to fill our time with a lot of day trips to some amazing places not far from the big city of Taipai. I also can’t forget the interesting food we had at both the restaurants and the street markets. We are planning to return here in 2027 to see some more of the nature areas of this country.
Honorable Mention is Albania. We stayed in the capital, Tirana, 2 different mountain towns (Berat and Gjirocaster) and a beach town and had a good time in all of them.
Favorite New City
Meg- Siem Reap, Cambodia We aren’t ever going to forget this place. The amount of amazing ruins of Ankor Wat blew us away, and the town of Siem Reap was a treat, as well.
Bill- Plovdiv, Bulgaria I’m still in awe of the history of this place. One of the oldest cities in Europe. The Roman ruins are underneath the whole town but it has even older stuff seemingly everywhere. There are even ruins in the basement of H&M on the main street.
Favorite Small Town Discovery
Meg- Castro Urdiales, Spain Meg can’t get enough of Spain. After this visit, I think we understand that smaller towns like Castro Urdiales might be even better than the big Spanish cities that we have been checking off our bucket list. You get the same Tapas but it in a more relaxed small Spanish town with great coastal paths.
Bill- Nong Khiaw, Laos We were really looking forward to this place and it didn’t disappoint. Southeast Asia can be tiring but this town gave us some renewed energy. We did some great hikes but also just enjoyed the vibes of this Laos river town.
Favorite Surprise Town
Bill- Huelva, Spain We try to break up our travel days and sometimes that means trying out a new town that we have never heard of before. This year we ended up at a Horse festival in Huelva that was one of our highlights for the year.
Meg- Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria Going from Romania to Bulgaria can be a little slow because of the slow Eastern Europe train network. If we are going to stop, we might as well find a town to spend a couple of days. This town was perfect to wander around some old castles and a historic mountain town with a picturesque river.
Honorable mention- Ohrid, N. Macedonia and Gjirokaster, Albania. We loved almost everywhere we went on our trip through Eastern Europe this year.
Favorite New Food
Sorry, we just can’t do it. We ate a lot of good food this year. We started out in Taipei and I’m still dreaming about all the cheap tasty food we ate in the street markets. In the Philippines, I can’t forget the sugary breakfast meats with my rice silog/Sinangag breakfast at the resorts every morning. Meg is still talking about the grilled romaine salads and the shopska salads in Eastern Europe. We also couldn’t get enough of the fried eggplant in Southern Spain with honey drizzled over it. But we also tried so many new Basque pintxos and Spanish Tapas that I can’t leave them out. How can we choose a favorite?
Favorite Festival
Yes, we were very happy to run into the Huelva, Spain horse festival, the San Sebastian rowing race, the Puerto Escondido fishing tournament, but we would be lying if we didn’t give the prize to Oaxaca Mexico. This is one of those experiences we won’t forget. We jumped right in to celebrate the Dia De Muertos in Oaxaca.
Favorite Sports Event
We were in Tirana for the World Cup Qualifying game for Albania and their arch rival Serbia. It was a fun night with everyone out in town dressed in red and showing their pride loudly all day on all the streets in Albania. But our favorite sports moment of the year attending a Benfica soccer game in Lisbon. We saw the Benfica team win a game in a packed stadium in Lisbon. The best part was squeezing into packed “tailgating” stands before the game and getting hyped up for the match with huge glasses of beer.
Favorite Snorkeling
Bill- Malapascua Island, Philippines. We had a beach resort right on the water that had some of the best snorkeling. We were able to see the rare thresher sharks right in the bay outside of our room.
Meg- Koh Kham, Thailand We also went to some more Thai islands this year and were able to snorkel on Koh Chang and Koh Mak. Our favorite spot was a day trip from Koh Mak to the little island of Koh Kham. Some fantastic snorkeling off a beautiful white sand beach.
Most Relaxing Stay
In our 4th year of nomad life, we are doing better at building some relaxing time into our travels so we don’t get burned out by the hustle and bustle of traveling. This year, had some great beach timeouts in Thailand, Laos, Turkeye, Albania, Greece, Spain, Portugal and finally in Mexico. The most extended stays and probably the most relaxing were in Mexico. We spent over 3 weeks in Puerto Escondido followed by almost a month in Bucerias to get our batteries charged for 2026. The prize for most relaxing stay has got to go to our fifth long term stay in Bucerias, Mexico.
Weirdest Town
We both agree this has got to go to Skopje, North Macedonia. The recent architecture was over the top classical stuff that didn’t really seem to fit the new vibe of their capital city. We enjoyed our time here but never really understood what this town was trying to be.
Most Expensive Town
Dublin, Ireland really surprised us. We were able to stay in a Home Exchange so our housing costs were “nothing” but the food and attractions was much higher than most of Europe and on par with our hometown of Seattle. We still had a great time but we just can’t imagine spending too much time in Ireland on our retirement budget.
Cheapest Town
Siem Reap, Cambodia I still can’t believe they are selling 50 cent beers! Food and beer was cheap and our tuk tuk tours of Ankor Wat were ridiculously inexpensive. I can’t believe a guy would drive us around all day for $10 (and he was delightful and charming, let us know if you want his contact info). Laos, Thailand and the Philippines were also cheap but I still don’t think anyone can beat the Cambodian 50 cent beers.
Worst Town
We had to go through Cebu, Philippines twice to travel to and from our island destinations of Malapascua and Bantayan. Transportation on this island is terrible. Streets are terrible; sidewalks are terrible; traffic is terrible. I really enjoyed our time on the Filipino islands but in order to get there you need to visit the terrible cities of Cebu and Manila. We want to do more in the Philippines but we are going to try to avoid the big towns strategically.
After looking at all these great times we had in the last year, I think you can realize that we are not ready to give up this traveling lifestyle. We are having fun and want more of it. Next year is going to be even more epic. Stay tuned!!!
PS. I’m not going to link to all the blogposts for the places I just mentioned. If you want to know more about our specific experiences for 2025, just search our blog using the field on the upper right