Nomadic Notes Newsletter (May 2026)

[Chiang Mai Edition] Travel gear update, terrible Google AI overviews, future travel plans.

Welcome to the Nomadic Notes Newsletter. This newsletter summarises the latest posts at nomadicnotes.com, site updates, and other unblogged ramblings.

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Hello from Chiang Mai! I’m back for another two months in Thailand, which includes 7 weeks in Chiang Mai and some travel on either side.

Thailand has been issuing two-month visas for many countries (including Australia), but the government is planning to revert this to one month. Before this change, there was also talk of only allowing two two-month visits per year. That was optimal for me, but if I want to stay longer in the future, I would need to go beyond the tourist visa. I could get the retirement visa (over 50 years of age) or the Destination Thailand Visa (DTV), which is a 5-year multiple-entry visa for digital nomads. I won’t need those options this year, but it is something I need to calculate for the future.

Travel gear upgrade

I’m a minimalist who tries to make do with my gear for as long as possible, so it’s been an unusual month of multiple upgrades.

First of all, I traded in my Kindle Paperwhite for a BOOX Palma 2. I had a 13-year run with the Kindle.

I then replaced my old Eagle Creek wheeled backpack with the latest version of a similar size. I don’t remember when I got the last Eagle Creek bag, but it was between 10 and 15 years ago.

Finally, I replaced my 2017 MacBook Air with the latest M5 MacBook Air. I had a 9-year run with that 2017 laptop, which is the longest I have ever owned a laptop.

I’m overdue for a travel gear review post, so I will post a write-up once I have gotten used to everything. In summary, I am happy to have abandoned the Amazon ship by moving off the Kindle system, the new Eagle Creek bag doesn’t feel as robust as the old, and my mind is still blown by how fast and how beautiful it is to use the latest MacBook. It usually takes some time to get used to new equipment, but this was love at first type.

Travel updates

On the travel front, I am in the middle of planning my travels for the rest of the year. In addition to some research trips for Future Southeast Asia, I’m planning a trip to Europe via Central Asia. I will be visiting some new (to me) countries and new places in familiar countries. I have the first flight booked, and I’m waiting for some train schedules and meeting confirmations before I book the rest.

Site news

I’m glad not to be travelling for the next two months, as Google is currently rolling out the awful AI overviews, and I need to spend time working out what is going on. I posted on my monthly update on Future Southeast Asia that I am experimenting with different browsers (such as Vivaldi) and different search engines (such as DuckDuckGo and Startpage).

I can’t abandon Google completely, considering that they bring more traffic than any other source combined. One thing I am testing is whether adding a website as a preferred source on Google is a ranking signal for Google.

If you are logged in on Google (which you are if you have Gmail), you can add websites as a preferred source. If you would like to add Nomadic Notes, you can click here:

https://www.google.com/preferences/source?q=nomadicnotes.com

Google says that the preferred sources will show up in your AI results, though I haven’t seen this yet in my limited testing.

As a travel publisher, AI replacing search results is disturbing. Up-to-date travel information from travel guides and blogs is a time-consuming and expensive business. To have AI copy this information and package it as their own is theft.

Here is a good article from a travel publisher: AI is killing All About Berlin.

Latest posts at Nomadic Notes

I am currently up to October 2025 in my chronological travel record, so I hope to get updated before my next round of travels.

• Notes on Nam Dinh – A chilled-out version of old Hanoi

Nam Dinh is a city in Ninh Binh province in the Red River Delta region of Vietnam. I visited Nam Dinh in October 2025 as part of a rail trip where I was stopping at lesser-visited cities. This was a research trip for my website, Rail Vietnam.

• Hanoi to Nanning by train

A review of the overnight sleeper train service from Hanoi (Vietnam) to Nanning (China).

• Nanning to Hong Kong by train

My review of the Nanning to Hong Kong high-speed railway service.

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James Clark – Chiang Mai, Thailand.