Nomadic Notes Update (November 2024)

Site news and latest posts at Nomadic Notes.

Welcome to the Nomadic Notes Newsletter, a summary of the latest posts, site updates, and other unblogged ramblings. A reminder that the Nomadic Notes Newsletter is now monthly(ish) and the weekly travel reads is at The Travel Wire.

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Greetings from Phan Thiet on the South Central Coast of Vietnam.

I mentioned in the last newsletter that the Nomadic Notes Newsletter is now monthly(ish). Sticking to that loose time frame, I didn’t post a newsletter in October.

I’m happy with the format of the new travel newsletter at The Travel Wire, but I’ve been wondering what to do with Nomadic Notes. I read a blog post by Ribbonfarm which has given me some clarity. No I’m not retiring, but the author (Venkat) has the same issue as me of having two main sites. Venkat has retired his Ribbonfoamr blog (which is an ancient site in internet years) to focus on his new site.

My conundrum has been how to split my time between Nomadic Notes and Future Southeast Asia. Traffic at Nomadic Notes has been declining due to Google updates and possibly from AI answers that Google now serves.

Meanwhile, Future Southeast Asia continues to grow. I’m working on a mapping project which is taking up more time than I thought. After focussing on railways for so long, I am working on the airports category, starting with airports of Cambodia. I need to give myself more hours in the week to grow this site.

My new strategy is to allow myself to work more on Future Southeast Asia, without feeling pressure to post every week at Nomadic Notes.

I might get to the point where I use the newsletter function as a travel blog. It makes more sense to use the newsletter as a blog, as Google doesn’t know what to do with general travel blogs.

[At the office in Phan Thiet (via @nomadicnotes).]

Latest posts at Nomadic Notes

I posted one new article since the last newsletter:

• Padang Besar Station: crossing the Malaysia-Thailand border by train

A guide to the Padang Besar Railway Station border crossing between Malaysia and Thailand.

• Ho Chi Minh City to Vung Tau by ferry (updated)

In addition to new posts, I am updating old posts.

Follow me on Bluesky

I wrote about leaving Twitter in 2022. At that point I was trying out Mastodon, and I have since been on Threads. It now looks like Bluesky is emerging as the best Twitter alternative. My account is at @nomadicnotes.bsky.social.

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James Clark – Phan Thiet, Vietnam.