Welcome to Never Ending Voyage

Simon and Erin in the Cook Islands

Simon and Erin in the Cook Islands

We are Simon Fairbairn and Erin McNeaney, a couple who have sold everything to travel the world indefinitely.

In 2008 we spent a year travelling around India, South East Asia, Australia, the South Pacific and the US and we experienced more in that year than we had in the previous ten. We met some wonderful people, saw some amazing places and did some incredible things. It was awe-inspiring and beautiful and frustrating and scary and exciting – it was everything but dull.

On our return to the UK, we found it very difficult to get back into the routine that we’d left. The mortgage, the bills, the car, our accumulated junk, the tedious repetitiveness of the nine to five – having experienced the vastness of the world and all of the opportunity out there, we struggled to fit back into business as usual.

So we decided to head off again, but this time we left for good. We sold everything we own, quit our jobs, rented out our house and headed out to play dice with destiny.

The Journey So Far

We left the UK on 1st March 2010 and spent a year in South America travelling to Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia.

In 2011 we continued onwards to Panama and Costa Rica before heading to the USA, Canada, a visit back to England and on to Asia – Hong Kong, Japan and now Thailand.

Along the way we are working towards becoming fully fledged Digital Nomads with the Line-In web design and development business, making a living as we travel on our Never Ending Voyage.

About Simon

Picture of SimonSimon is a modern day renaissance man. He is a multi-instrumentalist, designer, web developer and writer who loves making stuff happen. He plays guitar, piano and sings, but his first love is the drums. Unable to fit a full kit in his backpack, he has settled for a Martin Backpacker acoustic and can often be found on beaches or around fires singing softly to himself.

He met Erin at 16 and it was love at first sight. He spent the best part of two years doggedly pursuing her until she gave in, and they have now been together for over ten years. After school, he moved up to Manchester where he studied music at University. He joined a band that took him all the way to the Other Stage and a packed out Acoustic Tent at Glastonbury Festival 2005 before leaving the UK to travel for a year.

On his return, he decided it was time to try something new and got a job as a web designer. He believes that design and development are not mutually exclusive, and is equally at home tweaking designs in Photoshop as he is writing code and forming complex SQL queries. Since liberating himself from the security of regular employment, he has been working as a freelance web designer and developer (plug: check out his Line In portfolio here).

When he gets a spare minute, he enjoys snowboarding and writing and is about 80 pages in to his first screenplay.

About Erin

Photo of ErinErin has had the wanderlust from a young age and always dreamed of travelling the world. After she finished her English degree at Liverpool University, she spent a month in Florence studying Italian, then volunteered as an English teacher and worked at an elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka. In 2008 she convinced Simon to follow her around the world, but a year wasn’t enough and has only made her want to see and experience more.

When she wasn’t travelling, she worked as a refugee arts coordinator and set up and ran the successful Exodus project, an arts programme that works with refugee communities in Greater Manchester. Her crowning achievement is the annual Exodus Festival, a huge day-long festival of music, dance and food that celebrates the diverse cultures within refugee communities and regularly attracts crowds of over 10,000 people.

Erin has a passion for languages and can speak Spanish and Italian. She enjoys photography and published her first book of photos.

Erin also runs the highly regarded Kerala India Travel, a blog all about our favourite Indian state.

Getting Started

If you are new to Never Ending Voyage a good place to start is Our Most Popular Posts in 2010 and in 2011 which include tips on long term travel, language learning, becoming a digital nomad and destinations we’ve visited. You can also see the most popular posts of the last 30 days in the sidebar on the right hand side.

If you are interested in world food then check out our Food section where we share the best vegetarian food we’ve discovered on our travels including our popular Vegetarian Survival Guide series.

To show we aren’t the only ones living this crazy nomadic life each month we interview another digital nomad in our Nomadic Interviews series.

Follow Our Journey

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