About Us

This site dates back to a foolish adventure that began some 6 years ago.

I am a marketing consultant for manufacturers of high-tech products. Stella, my wife, is a retired teacher. We are both Canadians and in our late-fifties.

In 2003, in audacious spirit of adventure, we sold our house, our cars (the ultimate key of your key chain), and almost everything else we had in order to start a new life traveling around the world.

It is difficult to explain the strange feeling experienced when you realize that you own nothing. But this uncomfortable sensation is quickly replaced by a new, thrilling one: an incredible sense of freedom. From now on, everything and anything is possible.

We then took a flight to Thailand

We rented a comfortable apartment near the beach in the Gulf of Thailand. Over the course of the following six months, we discovered this beautiful country and its smiling people. This new life was so exciting and rewarding that we decided then and there that we wanted to continue to live like that forever. Since I had not retired at that point, I had two ways to finance my new lifestyle: use my savings or try to earn some money while traveling.

During this extended holiday I also discovered some strange things. I realized that backpackers were paying more for a night in a little bamboo cabana with a shared bathroom than we were for our luxury apartment with a full marble bathroom, maid service, etc. My cost of living was lower that for one of the backpackers. Well. Things don't always appear as they seem.

But all was not perfect...

In 2003, it was not easy to earn a living from a distance. My Canadian clients were not comfortable with the idea that I was living thousand of miles away. At that time it was not so easy to send or receive money over the Internet and connections were slow and unreliable. But I managed to write some marketing plans and finally succeeded in sending these 1 meg files by email to my clients in Canada over a 28K dial-up connection. What an exploit!

The following year, in Ecuador, it was a bit better but not sufficiently so. By then, Paypal was available in the USA, Canada and later in Europe. But the problems with emails and SMTP servers persisted. Many times and without reason, the mail servers in Canada blocked our emails from abroad. We found out that this was protection against spam originating from overseas.

The third year in Panama was the perfect year

I found a solution to these email server problems. Money was now flowing easily between countries. You could deposit money in your home bank account using the Internet and minutes later, no matter where you are, Malaysia, Uruguay or Panama, you can make a withdrawal at any ATM machine to pay for your groceries. Nowadays, Internet communications can be protected with Virtual Private Networks. People are used to emails, websites, and ordering things over the web.

To ability to master the Internet from abroad was really the shutter release for our new Free as a Bird lifestyle. For us, the Permanent Vacation Lifestyle was born!

From that point, I knew that it was possible - for me and anyone else in fact - to earn a good living anywhere in the world, even in the jungles of Panama, with the Embreras, if you dare!

We are now in our sixth year of travel and continue to perfect the concept. Each and every day we enjoy a lifestyle that millions and millions of people don't even think about. But we are living proof that it is possible.

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Gilles Gauvin
President
Novaxo Inc.