{"id":36368,"date":"2019-07-10T06:00:42","date_gmt":"2019-07-10T13:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wearetravelgirls.com\/?p=36368"},"modified":"2025-08-18T09:12:49","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T16:12:49","slug":"ladies-we-love-nora-dunn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wearetravelgirls.com\/ladies-we-love-nora-dunn\/","title":{"rendered":"LADIES WE LOVE – NORA DUNN OF THE PROFESSIONAL HOBO"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ladies We Love is a monthly interview series with women from around the world that provide us with inspiration through their travels and personal stories. This week we got to know traveller and journalist Nora Dunn of The Professional Hobo.<\/em><\/i><\/p>\n

Nora Dunn started travel blogging in 2006 when it wasn’t even an industry yet. Nora has traveled to over 55 countries over a 12 year period, documenting her experiences and adventures along the way. <\/p>\n

\"Ladies<\/p>\n

1) For our readers who haven’t visited your blog yet, please introduce yourself? Where are you from? What do you do?<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Hi! I\u2019m Nora Dunn, aka The Professional Hobo. In 2006 I sold everything I owned in Toronto Canada (including a busy financial planning practice) to embrace my dreams of long-term immersive world travel. I <\/span>traveled full-time for over 12 years, living in and <\/span>traveling through over 55 countries!<\/span><\/p>\n

Along the way, I\u2019ve earned my living as a travel writer, blogger, and vlogger. On my website, I teach people how to travel full-time in a financially sustainable way. While I now have a home base back in Toronto again, I continue to travel for about half of each year (give or take). <\/span><\/p>\n

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2) In 2006 you sold your financial planning practice and belongings to travel. What influenced you to do this?<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The call to travel long-term had been a long (long, long!) time in the making, dating back to childhood, when the seed was planted that grew into a dream to \u201ccrack the code\u201d of local cultures. As a child, I wanted to know how <\/span>children in other parts of the world played. As I grew up, the idea remained the same; only the context changed. In addition to wanting to know how the children played, I also wanted to know how the adults played! I wanted to know where people shopped, what they ate, how the family household worked, and what people talked about around the dinner table. <\/span><\/p>\n

Over the years as a young adult, I <\/span>traveled, but I was mainly relegated to short vacations that were little more than glorified opportunities to defrost from Canada\u2019s harsh winters for a week at a time. My last traditional vacation was a month in South Africa – a trip that I figured would be long enough to \u201ccrack the code\u201d on the place! Of course, I returned home with more questions than answers. Cue in a case of burnout and a few bouts of bronchitis that devolved into walking pneumonia, and I decided life was too short to keep putting off my dream. If I wanted to learn how the world ticked, I had to make travel a lifestyle. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"Ladies<\/p>\n

3) You were one of the original lifestyle travel bloggers, what influenced you to start your blog?<\/span><\/h3>\n

When I started travel blogging in 2006, travel blogging wasn\u2019t yet an industry. The terms \u201cdigital nomad\u201d and \u201clocation independent\u201d were years away from being coined, and travel blogs were little more than glorified online journals – which is exactly what mine was as well; simply a way to chronicle my travels for family and friends to follow along. In terms of income, at that time I was building a freelance writing portfolio to pay the bills; I wrote for travel publications about finance (as a former CFP), and I wrote for finance publications about travel. <\/span><\/p>\n

A couple of years later I found myself accidentally starting an international NGO in Thailand (!), and suddenly I had a growing international following of readers. It was at that point that I started getting serious about my website and I moved from a free blog to a self-hosted domain, and TheProfessionalHobo.com<\/a> was born! Travel blogging as a monetizable industry was still in its infancy, but as it grew up and around me, I was carried along with the wave as something of a pioneer in a burgeoning industry. (Which is funny, because I still don\u2019t feel like I actually know what I\u2019m doing)! <\/span><\/p>\n

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4) Recently you moved back home, what has been the hardest part of moving back home?<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

For years and years, one of the main questions people would ask me was \u201cwhen are you going to settle down\u201d. I hated that question. I railed against it, insisting that \u201csettle down\u201d was a bad word<\/a> and that it was entirely unnecessary. So one of my bigger challenges in moving back to my home town of Toronto (a place I never thought I would live in again, having decided that I preferred rural to urban locations), was a feeling that I was somehow going back on my own word. While I ultimately had nobody but me to be accountable to on this level, it still felt a bit like I was eating humble pie. <\/span><\/p>\n

But the reality is that my priorities changed. For 12 years of full-time travel, a victory would be if I achieved a sense of belonging in a foreign country; making local friends, being invited to weddings, and proverbially (and literally) breaking bread around dinner tables around the world. Meanwhile, I missed weddings, births, and deaths, of my own family and lifelong friends back in Canada. After a pretty severe case of burnout that started in 2017 and peaked in 2018, I returned to Toronto for a visit. Two things happened that made me realize it was time for a change: 1) My oldest friend\u2019s daughter didn\u2019t remember me (she was six years old at the time and it had been two years since she had last seen me, but it made me feel like a pretty crappy \u201cAunty Nora\u201d, and 2) My Dad said \u201cNora, I\u2019m getting old, I don\u2019t know how much longer I\u2019m going to be around, and I\u2019d like you to be closer\u201d. I realized that while I was busy searching for a sense of belonging elsewhere in the world, I\u2019d eschewed my own tribe of family and friends to whom I had always belonged! <\/span><\/p>\n

Also, as an only child of two (divorced) only children, if something happens to either one of my parents, no matter where I am in the world, I have to drop everything and return to Toronto. And I didn\u2019t have anywhere comfortable to stay in that event. So now, even if I travel half the year, having a modest apartment that I can come back to at any time, has given me an incredible sense of relief and comfort, and allows me to enjoy the proximity of family and friends with whom I share both history, and cultural ties. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"Ladies<\/p>\n

5) You have <\/span>traveled to over 55 countries, what are your top three destinations and why?<\/span><\/h3>\n

Travel is contextual, and our favourite places actually have very little to do with the actual destination; rather, it\u2019s about who we\u2019re with, what we\u2019re doing, and how we\u2019re feeling at the time. So, with that in mind, here are my top three (in no particular order): <\/span><\/p>\n