About Destination Unpacked

Destination Unpacked is a travel guide built for people who want honest, practical information — not travel writing that reads like a tourism brochure.

We write for digital nomads, remote workers, and long-term travellers who are making real decisions: where to base themselves, how much it’ll actually cost, which visa to get, whether the healthcare is decent enough to rely on. The kind of information that matters when you’re actually living somewhere, not just passing through.

We’re currently focused on Bali, with Southeast Asia expansion coming next.

Who We Are

Destination Unpacked is written by a team of long-term travellers and expats who’ve lived the nomad life across Southeast Asia, Europe, and beyond.

Marcus Webb

Marcus is a British travel writer and digital nomad who’s been based across Southeast Asia for the past six years. He’s lived in Canggu, Chiang Mai, and Lisbon, and writes about the practical side of nomad life — coworking, connectivity, and making a place work as a long-term base rather than a holiday destination.

Priya Nair

Priya is an Indian-born travel writer who grew up between Mumbai and Singapore before spending her twenties moving between Bali, Vietnam, and Portugal. She covers cost of living, neighbourhoods, and what it’s actually like to live somewhere as a foreigner rather than a tourist.

Daniel Osei

Daniel is a Ghanaian-British writer and former NHS doctor who left clinical medicine to travel full-time. He covers healthcare, travel insurance, and the practical health considerations for long-term travellers — areas most travel sites gloss over.

Sophie Marchetti

Sophie is a French-Italian travel writer who’s spent the past four years moving between Southeast Asia and Southern Europe. She covers food, restaurants, and the cultural side of settling into a new place.

Our Approach

We don’t accept payment for positive coverage. We don’t write about places we haven’t spent real time in. When we recommend something, it’s because we think it’s genuinely useful — and when something isn’t worth it, we say so.

Some links on this site are affiliate links, which means we earn a small commission if you book or buy through them, at no extra cost to you. This helps us keep the site running. We only link to things we’d recommend anyway.

Get in Touch

You can reach us at hello@destinationunpacked.com.

James Okafor

Lagos-born travel writer and former investment banker. Spent a decade across Lagos, London, and Singapore before going full-time travel writing. Covers the Gulf, West Africa, and Southeast Asia with a focus on the financial realities of expat life — banking, tax, cost of living, what they don’t tell you in the glossy guides.

Mei Lin Chen

Grew up between Hong Kong and Vancouver, has spent the last decade working remotely across Asia. Writes about urban living, the logistics of long-term travel, digital nomad visa programmes, and finding community in cities where you don’t speak the language.

Luca Ferretti

Rome-raised freelance journalist who has lived in six countries and is currently based between Lisbon and Southeast Asia. Writes about food, slow travel, neighbourhoods, and the unglamorous details that actually matter when you move somewhere new.

Amara Diallo

Dakar-born writer and photographer currently based in Kuala Lumpur. Covers travel for families, sustainable tourism, and what it genuinely takes to relocate with children. Has three kids and has lived in four countries while doing it.

Tom Whitfield

British, eight years in finance across London and Singapore before going freelance. Writes about business travel, city guides for people who take their work with them, and what genuine luxury looks like outside the points-and-miles bubble.