Digital Nomads in Sri Lanka Reveal the Realities of Filming a Documentary Series

hey guys and welcome to the final episode of series four we've just spent four weeks driving a to choke all around Riga and it has been crazy it's been one of the most insane adventures that we've had as a trio but for this final a little bit differently than we usually do yeah that's right each year after we finished filming we all separate and go back to our homes our careers and our daily lives however in this series here in Sri Lanka we have actually allocated two extra weeks after the filming process to work on post-production and the editing process as

a trio for the first time ever we have a lot of issues and problems to overcome first including finding a place to work from a place to stay and we have to fix our gear that has unfortunately broken during this series so yeah we have a lot to figure out and this is all new to us as we have never dipped our toes into the digital nomad lifestyle before in about a minute you're gonna see us use our beloved Sita for the last time to help us figure out all of these things that were so unsure about figure out what's gonna happen these next two weeks so ties one last time

after driving around the entire island of Sri Lanka we had made it full circle back to Colombo and it certainly was a shock to the system to be back in the busy traffic but at least this time we were much more experienced on the roads sadly this is the end of our budget we spent nine hundred and eighty seven dollars in the past four weeks whilst we were on the road that's per person and that also means that it's the end of our fantastic travel series here in Sri Lanka but we wanted to give you this bonus episode and show you a sneak peak into how

we produce this show after the filming is finished so instead of going back home to our regular jobs we have scheduled another ten days together but this time we need to find a place where we can get some serious work done luckily we have been sponsored this series by Wanda go Hoos specifically cater for digital nomads and remote workers and when we told them that we were keen to try out this lifestyle they told us that their app would be a great tool for us to help figure this all out the app is great for finding places to work from places to stay

and how to connect with other digital nomads instantly after opening the app we could see some cool co-working spaces nearby so we jumped in our little Zita and headed to liquid the nearest workspace listed on the app and somewhere that looked like it might be really cool Monisha was really welcoming and showed us around the entire workspace their rates were really reasonable and even though it was the first workspace we'd seen we were really impressed definitely a big step up from our last three series post-production it

was pretty awesome to work here but we're gonna check out a few more before we could visit the next workspace though Patti had an issue with this MacBook that we really needed to resolve patty had given his laptop to amar after we did the safaris together in the hopes that he could get it fixed but Colombo had come up short and so patty took it upon himself to drag us around the entire city looking for some sort of solution somehow his screen had completely corrupted and if we didn't get this fixed then post-production for the next two weeks was going

to be a complete nightmare okay sounds like I love that's broken yes maybe not a huge deal for other people but for us all of our money is in our laptops we actually are any closer to digital know as that we think likely terrible lives are on these laptops and even but Betty about this laptop second hands all the savings into this laptop and me and I also invested in new laptops which I and I use mine solely for work so I'm feeling very stressed to get this thing going don't know any other shops warranty we don't have time as well we want to

start editing gonna start anything is fast as possible and we don't have money to buy a new laptop seriously guys and you don't have money here we see a lot of other youtubers and just buy a brand new camera buy a brand new themself just when they're one broke we wish to use guys and will purchase it for a reason in its goodness the way we spend the next four hours searching through the boiling streets of colombo going from shop to shop but either no one had two parts or they wanted an extortionate amount of money for it in the end i came up with

an idea for patty I told him the most realistic option was to actually buy a cheap monitor and connect that screen to the laptop at least this way he could start using his Mac to edit on this entire process took pretty much the whole day and as you can see the sweltering heat and the stress of this expensive problem was taking its toll on our positive energy it's a baby cozy but we mustered up our last gasp of energy to check out one last workspace on the way home as we really wanted a better idea of our Coloma had to offer in terms of workspaces we have arrived

at our next workspace that we're gonna check out it only took us what four hours yeah it's been a really long day nothing has gone right it's been an absolute nightmare of a day but we're here now at catalyst I have nine I'm ready to check it out see what it's like see it BAM this is where we want to spend the next 10 days working catalyst was another awesome looking workspace and to be fair we were really pleased at how all of these were looking all right hello we're back so we just were a little dead so we just saw the second at working space it was really

nice they have really nice options like private rooms nice again the free coffee 24-hour access to the workspace which is really awesome however today's been a nightmare we initially left our hostel this morning to do a few errands yeah it's now we're loose it's now like sunset and we have done nothing half the errand we saw two workspaces we got a screen for the map lena passed out twice it's really gotten us thinking we don't know if the Lumbo is the best space to sit down and do such a creative process together we're just we're not feeling it and we're

especially not feeling it because we're not gonna have the tooktook so like today was a nightmare I mean yeah we had the freedom to get around the city but tomorrow we have to hand back the tuk-tuk we don't know what other options we have but we're exhausted right now so we're gonna do what we do best we're gonna go get beers have a talk have a thing think about it take a rest and yeah we'll come up with a always do we always do even just getting back to the hostel turned into another nightmare as we now hit the gridlock of the evening rush hour traffic yeah this is what the

traffic in Colombo is like rush hour their webs over there and we need to get on the main road over there to get to our new hostel two kilometers away where zach bed looks at stands though finally we made it back to the hostel and cracked open those much-needed beers as we needed to make some really important and potentially risky decisions we really needed to use these next two weeks to not only get a lot of work done but also to have a place where we can have fun and unwind as well so we reached for the one to go up again and we found a brand new area on the

app called dick Weller and it turned out there were some cool workspaces in that area we had actually visited dick Walla very briefly in the last episode and so we knew it was gorgeous so it seemed we had found a solution and we all agreed that it would be worth the risk to head south tomorrow to check it out but first it was time to say goodbye to someone very special to our hearts this is the moment guys last few minutes with EDA we have to bring her back to the rental it's been an amazing for me Leena the other drive the last

I can't there's no anything our last illegal traffic saying goodbye to our partner in crime Zita was really tough and after we said our goodbyes we popped into the tuk-tuk rental office to say one final thank-you for all of their support

and guidance throughout our entire road trip plus we did have to get the inspected before we could get our deposit back thankfully she passed and so we made our way to the local bus station via the tiniest taxi that we'd ever seen we were excited to just get back to the quieter and more natural surroundings of the southern coast but we were also kind of nervous to see if de cuello was going to be the right choice for us after all well where we saw the other co-working space hopefully the decision is worth there arriving in de Cuellar with all of our bags and with Paddy's giant monitor was kind of exhausting so the first

thing we did of course was refuel with a delicious rice and curry buffet and then we started to walk down to the co-working space until just up the road Patti noticed something kind of familiar so we just finished that lunch and we're stuffed i luckily verse the co-working space is just down the end we can see the beach so that's pretty nice but because we were looking through the coal living spaces as well yesterday on the app we saw a place called the social and just by looking you can see that this is the place I think it's this one so we're having a little nosy because it looks

really nice so we haven't booked this or anything obviously but it's nice to see it in real life and it's always an option and it's so close to the food and the co-working space it's really nice we've already seen this obviously before but now remembering and that it especially in comparison we didn't waste any time beer is cheaper than coffee here so you know what we choose we just had to look around at birth here and saw the workspaces pretty impressive it's a little bit better than Columbo yeah um but I still love you what we feel like start work on the edit this is gonna require a lot of great power Mike Tyson we've checked out

the space we check out the rooms and I think we all collectively agree that although the rooms are really nice here we just feel that it might be better for us to have a separate living space than where we're working you know we want to be able to like go home and escape the editing process and like have a lap have a beer but also have it a second creative space you know like be able to like go home and like still do some work there if we need to but like just a change of ambience and space and you know we saw that house over there literally across to the road and we saw it on the

app in the home spaces so I think we're gonna try to book it this is kind of like what the digital nomad life was sold to us like on Instagram and we kind of saw now that's not possible but here it should I think we've got this place on the beach and yeah like it's everything we're gonna book that place it's off there and we can walk over here in the mornings have a coffee edit get tired run in the seat and beer have beers have cheap local food well let's not jump to any conclusions we do need to check and see if that house over there it is available large buildings

that we're here because if it's not this was a complete waste of time I captain I Columbo we may be seeing you soon hopefully now thankfully this region of Sri Lanka was actually in low season and nowhere seemed to be fully booked in less than half an hour we had not only booked in the rooms but we were able to check in and meet the property manager we dumped our bags and started to settle in and we couldn't believe just how gorgeous this place was and that we could call this place home for the next ten days password please I come nigh I'm going to give you a tour

of the house we'll be staying in for the next ten days while we're here in DES gwella never done this before so I'm going to you know Center my inner Cara from Kearney we have some seating and it's even cooler because it's connected to the kitchen with this open bar so an open bar this is gonna be good for like this is a natural fit for me yeah night nights after working thank God we have a bartender on our team my captain so coming into the house I think this is gonna work it's an awesome evening space to work at because the three of us can sit here with our computers and maybe

have some dinner and we finish up anything we're editing and doing over here with kitchen which is really impressive we were all wondering how they did this cuz it's all cement and this would be the Nazi corner for people who haven't done their work today I think this will be for the our business partners that will come in we'll have a waiting area over here and then we'll meet them in our business the stray dog and the homeless man living down the road will be the hot secretary that will take them upstairs there's a bedroom over there but someone else is renting it at the moment apparently that's the master bedroom and

over this way are our rooms here's mine no this is not floating men I tested it just in their platform here it's aizen Patties all right so patio times are gonna share a room we're just trying to cut down on costs and we didn't all fit in one room so we just got two rooms maybe my favorite part look at this bathroom it has an open shower and this really decorative ladder for aesthetics so the best part about my room is it has a window to this balcony so I imagine a lot of evening beers here but before we crack open any beers I think we're gonna finish this night off with an evening swim at sunset this beautiful beach this

is a little bit different to editing in my mom's kitchen isn't it very different yeah lovely alright then swimsuit sunset yeah I captain and what a sunset we had and as we walked with the hundred meters to the beach we really couldn't believe just how beautiful this place was and that we have found our very own slice of Sri Lankan paradise to work for after this incredible sunset it was time to hit pay as we had an important first day of editing to begin

I'm gonna cut the least amount the first days or so we spent adjusting to our gorgeous new home and our new daily routines it certainly was strange not being squeezed inside of a tuk-tuk with three people for the first time these past five weeks good morning been up for a few hours I was doing some work send these emails don't get some coffee and maybe do a workout at that time really amazing living there well I say that lightly and so we actually spend a lot of the first days apart just doing our own thing

we really had a good routine within the first day or so which we pretty much repeated for the entire week each of us had our own things to crack on with and once or twice a day we would beat up for lunch or have a meeting at the house to share ideas as for creative advice on how an edit of an episode should flow or even just pop outside to shoot other videos for a new by size show and this small island in has 60 national parks and we were lucky enough to go to fourth all day we have been driving all around this island the past four weeks three-two-one hey guys welcome to the budgeteers and another episode of bite size yeah in this show

we deep dive into no episodes yeah that's nice we would mostly work from first as it had a really refreshing sea breeze to keep you cool and other remote workers to hang around and share ideas with as well as direct access to delicious food great coffee and of course called beers but from time to time we would also work from the house just to change up the scenery and also make use of its facilities one of the most important things I wanted to do during our post-production was to figure out a new and cooler way to show our map animations for our series and story very interested here's what I came up with

I don't understand asking this is a part that actually takes up a lot of time it's creating animations to show where we are in the series and this for example is the map of Sri Lanka and we want to show you guys all the places that we went to found a new solution and that is to film this map and then take the video and put it in after-effects and any makes our entire route of it digitally so as you can see we actually worked pretty hard during this part of the trip as we really wanted to get most of the work done here before heading back to our normal

lives and careers and whenever we weren't working we were certainly enjoying the house the beaches as well as just soaking up all the gorgeous Sri Lankan Beach vibes we could before our trip ended what was also really great about working from dick Wella was all of the social events and nights out available to us verse actually puts on a lot of live music events so sometimes after a long day of work we'd head over there to just enjoy some beers and listen to some pretty amazing artists performing there

we were even able to host an awesome barbecue at our house thanks to the Wonder Go app one of the really cool features on this app is the ability to post questions or information about events in the area so we just posted on the app that we were keen to host a barbecue at our place and a few people actually responded and word even got out so on our last night together we were actually able to have an awesome evening hosting a ton of people and we got to know loads of people living here in DES kwela other remote workers who were

also working from this area and even a few random travelers who were just keen for a fun night out lion came bastard and they something else some of our greatest memories from our sri lankan trip were made during this final week or so at dick walla beach and even though we did a lot of work during that time we

definitely enjoyed ourselves and celebrated not just our epic travels together but also our deep love for each other honestly traveling on top of each other in the ways that we do each year certainly tests our relationships but somehow after each series we just seem to get closer and closer together sure we bicker sometimes and we see things differently but that's because we are different and in this trip we celebrate that fact and we think that this trip has actually brought us closer together than we have ever been before and so sometimes it's

just nice to head to the beach and light a bunch of fireworks and to just enjoy moments like these together because who knows what the future holds and where our travels may take us next we love shall I you and finally we just want to leave you with this life is so precious and we are all so lucky to be able to travel in any shape or form so love each other and love the planets and share that love with the people that you meet on the

road we hope to see you again in series 5 wherever that may be but in the meantime thank you so much for watching series for safe travels and we'll see you again soon