I noticed that he had written an ebook and I was curious about it but not willing to shell out $27 to satisfy my curiosity. So when he offered the book to me for free in exchange for a review I was happy to oblige.

I’ll start off by saying that I was skeptical when I heard about Matt’s ebook. Having read his other blog, I knew he pulled it together in a pretty short period of time and I was also not sure how much he was actually making since, last I read in January, he didn’t seem to be earning much. But it is realisitic to jump up to $3000 in a matter of months if you know what you’re doing and if there’s anyone who knows what he is doing and is a student of this stuff, it is Matt. I would be curious to see if he can pull in $3000 in June and beyond or if May was a blip.

The Good Stuff

Matt is good at writing without fluff. He lays the book out well, tells you the sections and what you will learn in each, and delivers straight to the point information. He covers all the bases with information on deciding on the type of blog you want to start, carving out your niche, getting traffic, monotizing your blog and, most importantly and where I think his book excels, SEO. Matt is also very good at using social marketing tools like Twitter and StumbleUpon and writes about it in the ebook.

One of the things that could set his ebook aside is that Matt has promised to give contact details for some of his advertisers. As I didn’t see this extra bit, I can’t really say whether or not it’s worth the price. This would be great for people with already established websites and a link sale could potentially pay for the ebook and more in one hit. However this would probably only work for reasonably established sites.

I really think that Matt knows his stuff. He has come a long way since I met him in September and I think that’s because of a lot of reading, trial and error and just a passion for what he is working on. The advantage is that he has done all of this stuff fairly recently his success is proof that his advice works.

The Not So Good Stuff

Not much, really. There’s nothing in the ebook I don’t agree with. The only problem with the ebook, in my eyes, is that there’s nothing in here that you won’t be able to find for free elsewhere. Because of that, even if he is a web buddy of mine and even if I will get 50% of the sale price, I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it.

I also didn’t feel like there was much in the book that was targeted specifically towards travel bloggers. The advice is more general and can be applied to any type of website which is good but as the ebook is being marketed towards travel bloggers I would have expected the advice to be a bit more geared to them, although in what way I have no idea.

If you’ve got $27 to spare and want a concise introduction to this industry and a good guide on getting up and running then grab it and I am sure you will be happy with the purchase. But if you have the time to spare then you can find ebooks written by some of the biggest players in the game that go into far greater detail for free. John Chow is one good example. Or for less than $16 you can get a 220 page paperback book on the subject from Darren Rouse, one of the most successful guys in the business. Or check out the series I wrote over Location Independent for a guide for total beginners.

If you decide you want to buy the ebook and want to give me 50% cut then use this link to buy it. Otherwise click here to get it from Matt’s site.

Having been a member of Facebook for longer than five minutes, one thing I could explain was that the ‘People You Might Know’ thing displays people based on who you have as mutual friends. Right?

Well I checked my friend’s seven-person (and growing) friends list to find that there was nobody on there that I had ever been Facebook friends with. Odd, but no biggie and off I surfed.

Well just now I was in Facebook and a familiar face appeared in my sidebar. I was positive I had seen the face before but wasn’t sure where and opened up her friends list to see who we both know. The answer? Nobody! Then I remembered where I’d seen her face it was in a funny video about eating some crazy ice cream desert with corn in it in Asia, I think. Her face must have stuck in my mind because of her reaction to the bite she took… it was pretty funny. She was not impressed.

But this raises some questions… why did this person appear in the ‘People You Might Know’ sidebar? Why did I appear in my old friend’s friend suggester thing? I don’t have any mutual friends with either of these people. What does Facebook know and how the hell do they know it??

There’s just something creepy about this whole thing. Anyone know how ‘The FB Machine’ works on this matter?

Content

For the most part the site’s pages have been created and it’s just a matter of filling in the content either as I find time or as more information becomes available to me about things like venues and medal favourites. Adding this content isn’t a huge priority right now but I will be chipping away at it over the next couple of months and hope to be pretty much done by the fall.

Google SERP Rankings

I posted awhile ago that the site was ranking on page two of Google after only a week or two of existing and I was pretty pumped with the results. Unfortunately, it dropped off of the face of the earth shortly after that post. But it made a comeback and is currently getting traffic from Google for such popular search terms as ‘olympic trampoline’ and ‘great britain mens quadruple skulls’. It appeared once again on page two for my targeted keywords and stayed there for a wee while but has vanished again for the moment. I’m working on building one-way inbound links from sites about London, the Olympics or other sporting websites so I’m curious to see what effect this will have and how long it will take. Not that I pay much attention these days to PR, but the site was awarded a PR2 in the recent Google update.

Monetisation

When I started the site my only definite idea for monetisation was Adsense. Pretty lame. During my internet-free days in El Lagartillio I had a few brainwaves on how I could monetise the site more effectively. At both the Athens and Beijing Olympics the food was terrible. Absolute crap. Beyond crappy, actually. It was all chocolate bars, cookies or processed food with loads of packaging and it made me dread the thought of eating inside the venue. Unfortunately, I could never seem to find alternatives outside of the venues. So I’m thinking of offering cheap listings to restaurants along with an info bubble on my Google map to show where it is. Same goes for clubs and pubs… I will develop a page about partying at the Olympics and offer up spots for sale including a section for opening and closing ceremony parties. Will it work? No idea but it’s worth a shot. There are lots of London affiliates that I think could work with the site too and I will start to look into them more once I get home in August.

So that’s where I am so far with the site. I will continue to update on how things progress (or don’t progress) and any new ideas I come up with. As always my ears are open to suggestions so feel free to get in touch with any brainwaves!

The reason for my absence was another feeble attempt at studying Spanish. This time I jumped right in and landed in a tiny rural community called El Lagartillo about four hours north of Managua at a language school called Hijos Del Maiz. The whole community seems to be in on the Spanish teaching thing and it acts as a full immersion into both the language and life in rural Nicaragua. This meant homemade tortillas, rice and beans for every meal and it also meant composting toilets, getting up with the roosters, and no electricity. It was very cool.

The problem for me was that my Spanish is so crap that communicating was really difficult for me and I didn’t really feel like I connected with the people there. That sucks because they are all very interesting. There are no TVs which means the kids all seem to play instruments, draw and find other creative ways to entertain themselves which seems very foreign in itself these days. The adults are very focused on education and the arts as well which my teacher says is unusual for rural Nicaragua.

The community is hugely pro Sandinista and it was targeted during the Contra War. In 1984 the Contras came into the village and murdered 6 people, women and children among them. 1984! That’s so recent and so mind-boggling to me. I’ve spent a lot of time in communities ripped apart by natural disaster but never in one affected by war and it was eye opening. As a result, the community in El Lagartillio is really tight, very political and just a very interesting place to be. I want to go back when my Spanish is better so I can have conversations that go beyond ‘I like cats, do you like cats?’

Spending nearly a couple of weeks without internet left me with a lot of time to think and I’ve got a lot of new ideas in the pipeline that I will post about soon. I seem to get a lot of ideas when I’m away from the net and alone with my notebook which is a good thing to know.

So hello again, thanks for commenting and I am back!

Free Wifi Guru is his latest website offering and I like it. We thought it might be interesting to post a little interview to see what steps a successful web developer goes through when coming up with a new site. So here it is…

How did you come up with the idea?
Through personal experience. I was travelling round India and realised that despite it being such a powerhouse of IT, the places where you could get connected to the net for free were suprisingly few and far between. Even though there were a host of other wifi hotspot sites on the net, I’d found them to be variable in quality of information, not as informative as I’d have liked them to be, and lacking a global perspective. So on a bus journey to Bangalore I sketched out in my notebook the idea for a useful free wifi site initially pitched at budget travellers and fellow working nomads.

What design considerations did you have?
In terms of physical appearance, I wanted a clean “Web 2.0″ look; bright, colourful and modern. I also wanted to establish a ‘brand’ to make the site more memorable than the other wifi hotspot sites, and being influenced by my travels in India, the brand became a friendly, helpful ‘guru’. The site also needed to be quick and easy to use, especially the “add hotspot” page, because I eventually want users to drive the content by adding the majority of free wifi spots themselves.

What web technology did you use?
The site is written in PHP with a MySQL database to store the information, and it also uses some AJAX to update certain pages on the fly. PHP/MySQL is a simple yet powerful combination for a website and provides a wealth of opportunities over static HTML pages. For instance, I’ve coded the site so that if someone adds a hotspot for a country and/or city that’s not currently listed, when I moderate the submission, the web pages for that country and city are created automatically on the fly by PHP. This saves creating the new pages myself manually on my laptop each time and FTPing them up to the server.

What SEO considerations did you make?
This site is all about targeting the longtail - that is, targeting many non-specific, infrequently-searched phrases - and I was guided by the kind of search queries I was making myself in India, for instance, “free wifi in Bangalore”. For SEO purposes I ensured my title and headings were along those lines. I also had to consider how Google would spider my site effectively, so I added hyperlinks on the index page to each of my country pages, then city pages on each country page to ensure Google would be able to traverse all of my site. Apart from that, I haven’t made any special considerations. I will try to softly get the word out about the site via various channels, but I plan to rely on the quality and usefulness of the site to attract natural links to it to boost its search engine rankings.

How do you plan to monetise the site?
Curently I have Google Adsense blocks on the site which should eventually bring in some income, but I’m in no hurry to add any other income streams as yet. I want to build the reputation of the site with it looking clean and uncluttered; once it has taken off to some extent (and I fully expect this may not be until two to three years from now) I could try gadget/gizmo affiliate ads, or booking links for hotspots which are guesthouses/hotels. I realise that this affiliate lark is a slow game and you have to be in it for the long haul if you are going to get anywhere!

Any future plans?
The site isn’t as automated as I’d like; currently I have to look up the Google Map co-ordinates for each new country, city and hotspot and add them manually to the database. So somewhere down the line I plan to use the Google Maps API to automate the lookup of the City/Country co-ordinates, and perhaps provide a way for the user to pinpoint the wifi location on the map themselves. I also plan to add a means by which visitors can add comments on the hotspots currently listed. I can envisage the situation whereby someone has a different opinion of the hotspot, or they find the connection is no longer free and they want to tell the world about it!

Interview over, it’s me again. I love hearing how people come up with ideas and time and time again it is about feeling frustrated by what is currently available. This is a good example and I think Steve has done a great job creating a Web 2.0 feel along with a useful service. If you’ve got a free hotspot in mind, I’m sure he’d love to hear it so head to the submission page.

What do you guys think of the site? Any suggestions? Do you think it’s realistic to take on so many established sites in the free wifi game?

One of those cities that I love is New York. Spending some time living there is on my to do list and on July 22nd I will be making the move from rural Nicaragua into the chaos and wonderfulness (is that a word?) of the Big Apple.

I was sort of sitting on the fence about the move but then my friend has offered me her apartment in Manhattan for free while she heads home to Ireland for a couple of weeks. Score! This will give me time to look for an apartment, sort myself out and soak up city life while being able to escape to my own space.

The plan is to spend July 22nd until the first or second week in August in NYC before heading home to Southern Ontario for two or three weeks. My aunt and parent’s friends are visiting from Scotland so it’s perfect timing and I’ll be heading out with them on a houseboat for a week while I’m there. Spendig time with my family seems to be something that is gaining in importance for me so it will be great to have a week with them away from the usual daily grind of my hometown.

Then I’m hoping to head to Boston for the weekend at the end of August and back to NYC to (hopefully) move into a sublet for a month or two and really blow my budget to smithereens. I’m hoping to get a lot of website work done, host a few people with Couchsurfing, have a few friends and family members visit, maybe take some art or music lessons.
So! If any New Yorkers want to meet up and show me what their city has to offer I would love it so get in touch. Or if anyone is, like me, passing through and wants to head out for a drink , drop me a line. Same goes for Niagara/Toronto in August or Boston at the end of August.

Might see you then!

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t seen some beautiful places in my travels. The places that really strike a chord with me most are the ones where I feel totally at ease, completely chilled and make me say ‘wow… this is what it’s all about’.

Here are my top five most peaceful places so far:

The Nile, Egypt

Lying on a felucca as it drifts down the Nile is one of the most relaxing things I’ve ever done. The sunsets and stars are stunning and the whole experience is capped off with the calls to prayer coming from the darkness of the banks as you chill out on what is essentially a floating bed. Beer and sheisha were both plentiful and I was surrounded by good friends which made the experience even better.

Noosa River, Australia

Noosa River snakes up to the Cooloolah National Park where tea trees line a narrow, still river. The tea trees put oil into the water that makes it black and, combined with the stillness, it makes a perfect reflection. It’s amazing to float down the river in a canoe with all of the trees and even the clouds being reflected on the water. The best part is taking the canoe out on a clear night. The reflection of the starry sky makes it feels like you’re floating in space and it is one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced.

Ometepe, Nicaragua

[ awesome photo coming soon ]

I am currently living on a farm on the side of Madera volcano and it’s one of the most stunning places I’ve been. There are plenty of opportunities to kick back and enjoy the views but my favourite spot is the hammock in a treehouse watching the sun set behind Conception Volcano. Once the sun goes down things are still amazing with fireflies lighting up the ground, frogs making crazy noises and the stars filling the sky on a clear night. Last night was spent in the treehouse watching an electrical storm which wasn’t quite as relaxing but pretty amazing in a semi-scary kind of way.

Dragon’s Backbone Rice Terraces, China

Rice terraces have been built into the hills in this area and rise up from the small town of Dazhai. I was staying an hour’s hike up into the hills and the view looking back down on them was surreal, especially on a misty day.

Middle of Nowhere, Bangladesh

Bangladesh is super flat and you can see a long way across the countryside which makes for some huge starry skies and fantastic sunsets. I spent some time there living in a cyclone shelter in an extremely rural community spending each night on the roof staring at the stars, attempting to listen to music over the call to prayer and laughing with friends. By day we were building a playground too so overall it was a pretty amazing week.

So those are five of my most peaceful places. Spots where I remember being totally in awe of everything around me, loving life and enjoying the moment. I would love to hear about other people’s experiences… what places have had this sort of effect on you?

Earnings Breakdown:

• Google Adsense - $284 - Adsense is creeping up slowly from some pitiful months I’ve had recently and, as usual, I have no idea why. I’m hoping to keep earning at least $300 or around there for the next wee while until my newer sites start to show up in Google and hopefully add to the total.
• Affiliate Sales - $673 - Same ol’, same ol’.
• Linkworth - $10 - Not much to say… one advertiser cancelled. I might just  nix these guys altogether.
• Private Link Sales - $370 - Links sales totaled $370 with most of the money coming from people who contacted me early in the month. A few people cancelled their links
• Writing - $90 - I wrote up four articles for another blog and raked in a bit of extra cash which was pretty helpful.

On Friday I’m leaving the sweet-ass farm that I’ve been on for a month and heading off into the middle of nowhere in the north of Nicaragua to study Spanish for a few more weeks. No electricity at all there… should be very interesting. At $130 a week for food, accommodation and four hours of one-on-one Spanish lessons, it will be another pretty cheap stint. I think it will be tough for me to be away from the net for a couple of weeks and I’m curious to see how I cope.

Sorry this post is a bit short and crap but I’m having some electricity problems at the moment and have a lot of work to do with very little battery charge and no way to recharge it today. Ah the challenges of working on the road!

I have had a lot of time to think about this sort of this lately and I’ve come up with a couple of grand plans that may or may not end up working out. My main idea right now is to spend two or three months living in NYC, maybe taking a painting or photography course or maybe just being a bum. I love NYC  and spending some time living there is definitely something I want to do at some point. Now seems as good a time as any, especially since I have a few friends living there and it’s so close to home so I can pop in and see my family a few times before heading further afield.

After doing a bit of research I confirmed the obvious – NYC is expensive. Given the unhealthy condition of my bank account a few months ago, I wouldn’t have even considered a move to New York, no matter how short. But now, having spent a couple months living super cheaply and with at least another month ahead of more of the same, I will be a bit more set up for spending some time in one of the world’s most expensive cities.

This new set of sort of plans has sort of got me thinking about how I approach my travel splurges. I spent a couple of months spending next to nothing in Bangladesh and then lived it up in Beijing in a great apartment and spent money like a crazy person at the Olympics. I hung around Thailand and Burma spending very little and then gave up a deposit on a course and bought an expensive plane ticket to Haiti. I lived cheaply in Haiti for three months and then flew to Australia for two weeks for a wedding. Now, after a few months of cheap living in Nicaragua, I’m ready for a life of painting courses, good food, baseball games and generally living it up in the Big Apple.

If I wanted to (or if I were smart…) I could stick with the cheap living which I enjoy just as much, pad the bank account and give myself more options in the future but I things always tend to balance out in this way where I will spend nothing and then spend loads. I’m not sure it’s on purpose but it seems like it’s becoming a pattern.

So as of right now my super rough plan is to hang around Nicaragua and maybe Costa Rica for another couple of months of farm work and Spanish lessons before heading to New York City for no reason in particular. Afterwards… well I’m not sure but you can bet whatever I end up doing it will be cheap!

Here’s why:

• Food - I had fears that the mostly beans and rice diet of Nicaragua would be too much to bear after 4.5 months of it in Haiti but it turns out that the food here is amazing. Because the farm grows a lot of its own food, it means that meals are diverse and we can even make our own peanut butter, pesto and chocolate which is great.
• Work - I like having something to do each day beyond a bit of internet work and a bit of reading. The day here means getting up at 7am to do an hour of work, having breakfast, and continuing with work until noon when lunch is served. The work is really diverse but mostly physical which gets the heart pumping and it’s a great way to start each day.
• Education - I have wanted to learn about sustainable living/permaculture/farmy type stuff for awhile and this place is very conducive to learning. The people who run the place and the staff are all very patient and totally willing to answer questions about the work which means I can really get whatever out of this experience that I want to.
• People - I was worried that the farm would be full of hippy do-gooder types but, as it turns out, everyone here is really down to earth, laid back and fun. It’s an interesting dynamic because you have interns and long term volunteers who stay several months mixed in with people or groups on shorter stints of a week or two which keeps things exciting.
• Location - The farm is located on Ometepe which feels remote but is only a half day’s worth of travel from Granada which is a major tourist hub and a place where I can escape to if I need a break or need to buy things.
• Scenery - Ometepe has to be seen to be believed. It’s an island formed of two volcanoes, one dormant and one active, and attached by a small piece of land between the two. It’s located on the bottom part of the smaller volcano and has a great view of the larger one and Lake Nicaragua. The sunsets are unreal and it’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve been to in my travels.
• Cost - I am a volunteer but because the farm is a non-profit they have us cover our living costs. This means $10 per day for short term volunteers (under a month) and $200 per month for long termers. So for me it means food and accommodation for $200 per month plus $6 for internet. Bargain.
• Flexibility - They are used to having volunteers come and go and I don’t really need to have my plans set in stone. Obviously it’s better for everyone if I keep them informed of my plans, but if something came up and I had to leave giving short notice, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
• Language - I want to learn Spanish and this is a great place to do it. Most of the employees are locals and they’re used to hearing terrible Spanish as volunteers attempt to communicate. So far the people I’ve spoken to have been very willing to help me learn new things and also correct me when I attempt to cobble together some random phrase. Plus one of the interns here is fluent and is giving Spanish courses to a group of Canadian students and I’ve been sitting in on them which has helped.
• Community - The farm is very involved in the community and run a lot of programs from women’s groups to seed exchanges to library hours to child nutrition programs. They actually founded the community centre and fund it as well which means there are a lot of opportunities for me to help out and get involved in a lot of interesting ways.
• Good cause - The farm is a non-profit and have lots of great programs on the go (see above). I enjoy doing this sort of work but it’s even better knowing I am supporting something that has long term goals that will benefit the community as a while.
• Time to myself - After finishing work at noon each weekday I can pretty much do what I want. I also have weekends off which means I get a lot of time to myself to read, paint, work on web stuff, swim, bike, hike, cook, chat or whatever. I love my ‘me’ time so this suits me.
• Nature - The island is peaceful and full of nature and it’s just a great feling to be amongst it and away from the hustle bustle of a city. I like cities and tend to spend most of my time in them but I love nature too and I appreciate the time spent in places like this.
• Opportunity to take on responsibility - The farm is a bit strapped for longer term volunteers at the moment with only two interns (staying around 6 months each) and two long term vounteers leaving on Saturday. This means that if I want to, I am able to take on a bit more responsibility to help take the burden off of the interns.

So I think I’ve got a pretty good setup and at the moment I plan on sticking around for a couple of months at least. After only a week I feel really comfortable here not only with the work and day to day activites but I also feel like I’ve clicked with the people here pretty quickly. So far I’m really loving it but rainy season will be upon us in a couple weeks so I might have changed my tune by then. But as of right now, for all of the reasons above, I think I will be here for the long haul and I’m looking forward to the next few months soaking up some farm life.

Earnings Breakdown:

• Google Adsense - $251 - Adsense rebounded from the month before when my main site was on a brief ban for bad behaviour. I really feel like Adsense is underperforming though. I am hoping my two new sites will push this up but it won’t be for several months at least.
• Affiliate Sales - $425 - Once again this was mostly my main affiliate program. The other one that had been doing well a few months ago has been crap for three months in a row now and I’m not sure how to fine tune things. I will try to tweak some links, add a few new affiliates and hope for the best.
• Linkworth - $25 - The same two links are chugging along and pulling in a small amount each month.
• Private Link Sales - $204 - I had my three $10 links renewed once again. These have been going since August 2007 so, while it’s not much each month, it has definitely added up over the years and none of them seem to be in any hurry to cancel. I had another last minute link sale for nearly $150 which was a relief.

I’m currently paying $200 per month to cover my food and living expenses plus an extra $6 for internet (bargain!) It’s a really sweet setup and I’ll write a post about it soon but, long story short, it’s in the middle of nowhere and I have nowhere to spend money so I should come out way ahead this month. Plus I only work in the mornings which gives me loads of time for web work. Hopefully I can crank out a couple of cheap living and productive months.

When I wasn’t doing this I could be found either at a four hour Spanish lesson, lounging in a hammock reading my book, soaking up air-conditioning during longs walks around the supermarket or painfully sitting on a wooden stool attempting to do internet work.

I couldn’t handle walks around the city for much longer than a half hour and I’m pretty sure that cycling would have been deadly. So after all of this sitting around, I am ready for a bit of swimming, biking and farm work and have decided to head to Ometepe to take advantage of some nature under the watchful eyes of two volcanoes, one active and one dormant.

There are a lot of organic/sustainable farm type places on the island and I’ve arranged to volunteer with one of them at the end of May. I’m here a month early though because of a change of plans and am hoping to move my work stint up. If I can’t though, I’m quite happy to work a bit, pedal a bit, paint a bit, read a bit and swim a bit and might even try to hunt down another weekly Spanish course.

The island is stunning and I’m looking forward to a bit of exploring!

Here are my totals after my last week:

• UK funds: £2142 (about US$3160)
• US funds: $1223 (bank account and Paypal)
• Cash: US$340

I had a few smallish payments come in and, to be honest I have completely lost track of my spending. I have realised that while I might be ok at keeping my costs low, I’m garbage at actually keeping track of it. Ah well. My best guess is that I spent about $200 during my last week including Spanish lessons at $105 and a massive bottle of rum ($15) as a thank you for my free accommodation. That means for the other stuff I spent just over $10 a day which is about what I expected given that I ate out and went out a bit more this week.
I had been hoping to come out ahead after a month in Nicaragua but I’m waiting on a couple of payments to come through. When they do finally make their way to my accounts in the next few days, I should be up about $300 from the US$5085 I arrived with at the beginning of April.

I’m off to Ometepe tomorrow, an island made up of two volcanoes that is in Lake Nicaragua. It’s got a lot of farmy type places that accept volunteers so my hope is to get up to some sort of work on one of them, learn some new things, meet some nice people and hang around for as long as I’m enjoying it.

I might be out of touch for the next wee while but I will try to tee up a couple of posts in case I am. If you don’t hear from me for a bit, rest assured that I am hunting down a net connection… in betweek kayaking, cycling, painting, horse riding etc etc. Ah island life… bring it on.

Here’s a list:

• Friendly’s Hostel, Manila, Philippines - This place has to be one of the best I’ve come across for working. There are plenty of tables on a balcony to get work done on with a great view to boot. Single rooms are cheap soI didn’t feel too guilty about treating myself and the net connection worked in my room which meant I could hide away and work if I wanted to. The hostel is very social but pretty quiet during the day which meant I always had options for socialising after a hard day’s work. Plus the guy who runs the place had me improve his website and I scored free accommodation out of it.
• Frendz Resort, Boracay, Philippines - This hostel is located down a path away from the beach in a quiet area. I had a massive cabin all to myself complete with a nice balcony where I would work from while sipping fresh juice from the small cafe. The hostel was pretty quiet when I was there but the owner is a friendly Aussie guy and there are loads of places to go out or activities to get up to. If you’re into kite surfing, this is a great place to come.
• Bingo Hostel, Fenghuang, China - This place doesn’t seem to be listed anywhere online but my Chinese travel buddy stumbled onto it and it was a great find. The net connection was pretty decent by Chinese standards and the signal reached up to the room which happened to have a huge table and a comfy chair. I spent five days here working most of the time because it was such a great setup. The hostel was pretty empty but the town is lively so if you want to you should be able to find things to do. I was only interested in working and I accomplished loads of stuff I had been putting off for ages.
• Matahari Lodge, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - This place was brand new when I was there in mid 2008 and you could tell. It was spotless and the owners were really attentive, helpful and friendly. The net connection was fast and it leaked down to my room where I did most of my work. In the main lobby though there were plenty of tables where I could have worked more comfortably including two on a balcony.
• Managua Backpackers Inn, Managua, Nicaragua - This place is spread across two houses on nearby streets. The main house is a bit small and crammed but the net connection is very good. The second house has huge amounts of space and great tables and chairs but the connection while I was there was down and I could only get online on some random signal I picked up. If they sort out the connection for the second house, this is a great place to get some serious amounts of work done. Most people hate Managua but the hostel is in an area with some good nightlife and the first house has a pool. Plus there are lots of hammocks. I love hammocks.

I’ve worked in plenty of cafes and resaurants in m travels as well with Starbucks usually providing a reliable, comfortable setting to work in. Mix, a smoothie chain in Hong Kong, was awesome work, drink and food wise. I also found a bunch of good places in Chiang Mai to get things done. I prefer working at my accommodation but having a good place to go as a change of scenery is good for productivity.

Can anyone suggest hostels or other cheap accommodation that have great setups for getting work done?