About

Marco Nicola Messina

I am Marco. Italian, and I have been living out of one suitcase since 2023, one place at a time. This is the diary of those places: what each one costs, what it is like to actually live there, and which ones I would not go back to.

The short version of how I got here

I grew up in Barletta, a small city in the south of Italy. Shy kid, far too much time on the computer, deep into videogames. At twenty-three I left for England and worked there until 2020, first in Oxford, then in London. The travelling I did on my days off is what broke something open: I realized I did not want to spend twelve hours a day in the same building for the rest of my life. I wanted to move.

So I handed in my notice and got back to Barletta right as Covid arrived. Those were three dark years. No job, no money, my whole life poured into teaching myself how to earn from a laptop, and losing plenty while I learned. When I finally saved a little, I flew to Tenerife. After all that dark it felt like paradise, and that is where I actually became a nomad. I have been moving ever since.

How I pay for it

I run small online businesses from a laptop. That is the boring part and it is not what this site is about: it just means I can work from a room in Ao Nang or Vlore as easily as from Barletta, and that the numbers you read here are the ones I actually paid.

How I pick the next place

I look for what I call second-stage places: somewhere already livable, with wifi and a supermarket and a doctor, but not yet turned into a theme park. The first stage is too rough, the third is Canggu in August. The whole map, by tier, is in Second-Stage Paradises, and the list of everywhere I have actually been based is on the travels page.

Why this site exists

My parents and most of my friends do not really understand what I do. It is hard to explain, so I get it. One day I would like them to look at all of this and just say: ok, Marco figured it out. This diary is part of that. Every entry is a place I really lived in, written while I was there, with the real bill attached: useful to the next person searching for the same answer, and a record for me of where the years went.

Recent bases

Vlore, Thailand, Bali, Malta, Tenerife, Luxembourg, Prague, and Bucharest. The full timeline, with dates and notes from each place, is on the travels page.

Find me

Instagram, where most of the build-in-public lives.