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In this episode of The World Wanderers, we are talking with Becky Gillespie from Tokyo Becky and The School of Travels podcast!
If you’ve listened to the podcast for a while you’ve met Becky before! This is the 4th time she’s been on the podcast.
We’ve talked with her before about life as an ex-pat in Japan and about how she created a nomadic career (on The World Wanderers Insider). This time we’re talking today about what life has been like living through the pandemic as a nomad (In Japan, Portugal, and Mexico) and Becky’s plans to become a resident of Portugal!
In this episode:
- Catching up with Becky’s adventures since the last time we talked, from Mexico to the Mediterranean to Japan
- What was Becky’s experience with the start of the pandemic in 2020
- What it was like in Japan in 2020 as a nomad
- Starting to set up a home base in Portugal
- Why Becky thinks Portugal is a great home base for a nomad
- Becky’s experience travelling from Japan to Portugal during travel restrictions
- What was Portugal like in 2020?
- Coming to Querétaro, Mexico and why it is a great place for nomads
- Breaking down how getting residency in Portugal works and what Becky’s long-term plans are in Portugal
- Listen now
Check out Becky’s Previous Appearances:
- Life in Japan with Becky Gillespie
- Our Favorite Cities: Tokyo!
- Living Abroad and Proofreading (TWW Insider)
Connect with Becky:
If you would get access to the past and future episodes of our nomad series as a World Wanderers Insider, head on over to Patreon.com/theworldwanderers. Thank you so much for your continued support!
Digital Nomad Life: Portuguese Residency and Living Through 2020 as a Nomad with Becky Gillespie
Welcome to the World Wanderers! We’re Ryan and Amanda, a traveling couple and digital nomads taking you on our adventures as we explore locations, destinations, and careers.
We are super excited to be joined (or rejoined) on today’s podcast by Becky Gillespie. She joins us for the fourth time on The World Wanderers, and we cannot wait to hear what Becky has been up to since the last time we talked and how traveling around the world and remote work went for her during the COVID 19 global crisis.
It seems that she kept the same spirit; despite the circumstances, she continued traveling and meeting new people, experiencing many different scenarios during COVID on opposite ends of the world.
Japan was a real home to Becky for a while, but then she felt the need for comfort and for a solid base. Her 9 to 5 job also made it difficult to catch up with friends as often as she felt the need. That’s the beginning of her new nomad life chapter far away from Asia.
Catching up with Becky’s adventures since the last time we talked, from Mexico to the Mediterranean to Japan
We caught up with Becky last year for Dia de Los Muertos in Mexico City. She spent some time in Ohio in October 2019 with friends and family, followed by a trip to New Orleans just on time to feel the Halloween spirit there.
She went on her first Nomad Cruise; little did she know that it would probably last for a while. Becky flew to Athens, Greece, from the US, to embark on a 17-day long adventure with other fellow nomads on the cruise.
We ended up in Dubai, but we stopped in Oman. And, we were meant to go to Egypt, but we couldn’t go there because of security at that time. But we did get to go through the Suez canal, and that was an amazing experience. And the best thing was just seeing all of these nomads together. There were about 220 or so.
And it was an alumni cruise, but I’d never been on one. So all these people knew each other, and I was shy at first, but then I met some amazing people and had so much fun. We ended in Dubai, and then, from there, I went on to Thailand. I got a little bit of time in Thailand and then went to Japan in January, actually for work. And I planned after that to go to Kyoto for a month. – Becky.
She was lucky to obtain a permanent residency from Japan a few years before, and she figured out that she may use it now, as the pandemic started to shift things around.
It was not long before she decided it was time to move from Japan, head to Portugal, and then here, to Mexico, where we all reunited again.
What was Becky’s experience with the start of the pandemic in 2020
It is inevitable to talk with digital nomads about how working remotely around the world was affected during the COVID 19 spread. Some digital nomads had to change their agendas completely. Still, like Becky, some used the favorable circumstances to stay in a relatively safe country during the first wave.
But at the time, Becky didn’t think that things would escalate as much as they did.
Yeah, so I really thought it was going to be like the SARS virus or Ebola and that it would end up being contained within a certain part of the world. And I thought, once again, it’s going to be like that. So at first, I didn’t take it too seriously. And this was around February, but already in February, you had the Diamond Princess cruise incident that actually happened off the coast of Japan.
They were keeping people right in the Yokohama Bay, you know, and I’m like, that’s weird. This is kind of sounding like it’s really starting to spread. But in Japan, things never locked down, and people, because of the Olympics coming to Tokyo in what was meant to be July 2020, weren’t reporting all the cases that I think really were there because they wanted to make it seem like it was going to be okay for people to come to the Olympics.- Becky.
What it was like in Japan in 2020 as a nomad
As time went by for Becky in Japan, the cases started to rise more by the day. That’s when she realized that it probably wouldn’t be over by the end of the summer, as she had initially thought. So things started to change for her in mid-March of 2020 in Japan.
She exchanged opinions with other digital nomads on their plans and where they were heading next since only a few countries opened their borders for US citizens.
By the end of the summer, I really thought things would be back to normal or what we all knew as normal. And so that’s been interesting. It’s just been a lot of communication with people and with other nomads. Like where are you? What are you doing? But really, with my American passport, it’s like, where can I go? -Becky.
She talks about Japan and what the country felt like without tourists:
It’s kind of amazing actually. I was very grateful to be there because everything was less busy. I can get a seat every time I go out apart from maybe one of the main trains, and that never happened.
I lived in Japan for 12 years. I knew what this place looked like without a pandemic, and here it was in this Twilight zone kind of situation, and yeah, I mean, I have to say, I was so lucky to be in Kyoto for a month when tourists couldn’t come over. And so it was much fewer people, and it felt amazing, but it was very cold.
So it wasn’t like, hey, I’m just going everywhere. Sometimes it got dark early, and you’re like, I don’t want to be out. You know, it gets dark and really cold, but it was really great. You know, people were a little uncertain. And a lot of the shops weren’t sure how long they could keep going, but I was grateful that we never locked down. The constitution doesn’t allow it in Japan.-Becky.
And even though Becky felt at home in Japan since it was such a familiar country to her, she also considered the tax implications she needed to pay as a tax resident and the accommodation cost. Becky felt the need for more comfort, and when it all started to add up, after living in Japan for seven months, she decided to hop to another country.
One problem in Japan is the cost of accommodation if you don’t have a long-term rental contract. So that was starting to add up for me. And I thought I could probably go somewhere where I get more space because of course, in Tokyo; all the places are very small as well. So after seven months of being in a small place, I was like, I want to try to get to another place.
And because I was in Japan and they had such a low number of cases, they appeared on a lot of lists where it was possible for Japanese people to travel, especially in the summer. So I started researching, and I actually started thinking during this whole pandemic experience that I needed to get a base again. I needed to find a way to set something up where I’d be allowed to be there. -Becky.
That’s how Becky’s digital nomad life shifted from Asia to Europe. But it was far from smooth the first time she landed there.
Starting to set up a home base in Portugal
So I wanted to go to Portugal. I had been there the last two years just traveling, and I really liked it. And I heard that Portugal had a visa that may be possible for me to get, and I had local friends there, and I thought maybe they could help me if something gets difficult with the process or they could give me guidance.
So that’s the only reason I went to Portugal from Japan. In August, I thought I could go there and get this visa and start that whole process. It turns out I didn’t mention you need to apply from your home country, which meant I was in this beautiful Portugal in the summer and they’re telling me you need to go to America right now, or as soon as possible to start this. -Becky.
She giggled as she recalled thinking, But that’s the ‘Corona country’ when she was told to go back to the US. She’d been trying to avoid it for the whole year and now had to go back. Eventually, she flew back to the US and stayed there for around three weeks while applying for a Portuguese visa. And luckily for her, it finally got approved.
Why Becky thinks Portugal is a great home base for a nomad
If you are wondering why Becky chose Portugal, we asked her the same question. What was the thing that made her choose this country, how does she feel about living there, and does Portugal have a good nomad community? It turns out it does!
One thing I really love about being a nomad, for the last three years is that they (Portugal) have a big nomad community there. They have people that really care about making events, and so nomads are really taken care of. When they come in, they can immediately start meeting other nomads. There are many coworking spaces for someone like me who loves to go to those spaces and meet people.
And I just thought I might be able to have the best of both worlds with my visa. I have to live there six months a year, but I plan to be in other places for those other six months. -Becky.
Becky had a choice to stay in Japan, but she needed more than just work, as she says. There was a need to create a hybrid of base and traveling while in Portugal.
And I just thought, okay, maybe the universe is telling me it’s time to do that again, but in a place where it’s, there’s more of a enjoy the moment culture, whereas Japan is work, work, work. And over time in Japan, I started wishing that my friends could also get off at 5:00 PM or could, you know, we could meet more times than just the weekend. And I think in Portugal, I’d be able to find that type of lifestyle and like-minded community. -Becky.
As the conversation unfolded, we wondered if Becky felt the need for a base before the pandemic happened. As digital nomads, we often do not think deeply of creating a safe and secure base. But this period of everyone’s lives was just so transforming. Many digital nomads changed the perspectives for settling a base, and that’s understandable. Remote workers were faced with challenges to travel around the world as each country had different restrictions.
I’d had moments where I was tired of lugging all of my luggage around, but actually, I wasn’t. So I thought I would just continue as I did in 2019. I thought I might travel slower than I did in 2019, but I already had all these plans set up through probably July, and I had to cancel them and just thought, okay, all right.
I’ve got to learn to stay in one place and be okay with that. Like we all have to this year, but, no, I was not thinking about settling down prior to the pandemic starting. -Becky.
It’s interesting how an event like this can shift your mindset. We went through similar thoughts as digital nomads living in Mexico for a year, with plans to stay in Panama longer than six months. Digital nomads were challenged to slow the pace a bit as the pandemic situation unfolded.
But there’s another reason, besides the home-feeling from the big community in Portugal, that Becky considered before she made her decision. And that was the health care system in Portugal.
The other reason I have to say that I want to go to Portugal is that they have healthcare there that’s going to be affordable for me, and right, right now, with being a freelancer, that’s very hard to get in the states. And so I’m like, okay, let’s plug into the EU.
And especially the Portuguese healthcare system. And also just feeling like, especially being an American, seeing how short that list was of places that I could go this year. I thought, wouldn’t it be great to have access to all of the EU if I could get it, if this ever happens again, which, as I said, I really hope it doesn’t. But I feel like now, in this new world we’re living in, we need some Plan Bs and Plan Cs. -Becky.
Every digital nomad could absolutely relate to this, as we did. We think no one assumed how far this would go, and having kind of a safety net when things don’t go as planned is our best bet.
The Eurozone offers so many benefits for remote workers and digital nomads. First, it’s the freedom to travel and work from almost any country in Europe, and secondly, the cost of living is not that high. Of course, specific laws need to be respected; however, it’s like a borderless land allowing for digital nomads to work one week from Portugal and then the other from France.
Usually, as an American, you can only go to what’s called the Schengen area, which I believe is 26 countries in Europe for 90 days maximum. And then you have to be out of the Schengen for 90 days, but now I don’t have that limitation anymore. -Becky.
Once Becky gets permanent residency in Portugal, she will be free to move without limitations.
Becky’s experience traveling from Japan to Portugal during travel restrictions
It was not easy for Becky to fly over from Japan amid all the different restrictions while holding a US passport to get to Portugal and set a base. So how did an American manage to enter Portugal?
So I will say that I thought that having a Japanese residency card and having been there for seven months was going to get me in. But it turns out that was not the case. So first, when I was leaving the airport, I went to, you can imagine, one of the busiest airports in the world, Narita in Tokyo.
I get there, and there are like two flights going out that night. And I did a trial run. I was so worried I wouldn’t be able to get into Portugal that I went two days before my flight. The airport is not close to the center of Tokyo, so it was a pretty big deal to do the trial run. But, at least, I felt that was good.
It gave me an understanding of how it was going to be two days later. And then, I went there, and they started making me sign all of these forms. Qatar Airways will not be responsible if you cannot get into Portugal. Then they called me again at the counter and made me sign another form.
I had to sign a form saying that I realized that I cannot come back to Japan for a while if I left now. And I was like, yes, yes. But then, when I got to Portugal, the first thing I did was I had to get in a line. Everybody is pulling out these papers, and I look over. It’s a negative COVID test, which I had been told through several phone calls in Tokyo that I wasn’t going to need because I was coming from Japan, but everybody had them, but I’m like, I don’t have one. -Becky.
Now here’s where it gets so interesting, yet a bit hectic. Everyone had a Covid 19 negative test, and Becky did not. For the past seven months, she was in Japan, which did not have a massive spike of cases at the time, making it sort of easier for Japan residency holders to travel. She also made sure through several phone calls in Japan that she wouldn’t need one. Luckily, everything unfolded well.
So I go up to the guy, and I just say: I don’t have a COVID test. I’ve been in Japan for the last seven months. I didn’t think I needed one. And he had me take my mask down, and he looked at me for a moment. And then he said, if you’ve been in Japan for seven months, you can come in. -Becky.
And I thought that was it.
Like I’m in. But then I got to the counter at immigration. And by the way, I had been another American who had gotten into Portugal a month before with a business purpose for entering Portugal. And I did have a friend there in Portugal with a company. -Becky.
Her friend from Portugal signed an actual business letter for her, which eased the whole situation. Becky was sure she would have no trouble using her Japan residency card, but it was a smart move to have a business letter signed as well.
But at the end, the man at the counter said, why are you here? And I said I’m actually coming to move here. And he gave me no response. My heart started pounding harder. He’s like, why are you here? And I’m like, um, I’m here as a tourist. I’m here to stay in Portugal, probably for two months. You can’t be here as a tourist, is what he said.
And I’m like, even from Japan? And he just looking right at my US passport, you know, that’s what he had. And I’m like, oh, I’ve come from Japan. And he’s like, why are you here? I’m here on business. And then I pulled out that letter, and he’s talking in Portuguese to the other woman sitting next to him.
And then I just hear him stamp my passport, and he lets me in, and I was like, is this for real? Am I here? It just felt like I was very close to an immigration jail. -Becky.
Recalling that experience is crazy to think about. We could relate to similar experiences where we’ve been to countries where we do not speak the language, at times when our passports have been taken (for no reason, just regular checkups). But at those moments, I think, we all feel the same panic. Once that airport saga was over, Becky was free to look at and breathe in her new “home” Lisbon.
What was Portugal like in 2020?
Becky mentions the differences in the summertime regulations and laws between Japan and Portugal.
Portugal was entirely different than what she was used to seeing in Japan. The government here had different rules and regulations regarding wearing face masks, and she felt pretty unusual wearing hers the whole time.
The first thing I noticed was that 40% of people were wearing masks compared to Tokyo. And I felt very strange even to be wearing mine.
And I’m like, is this, is it okay? I felt weird the first day, especially since I did keep wearing my mask, but it felt weird to be wearing it. And I thought people should be wearing their masks, but there were quite a few European tourists there. So I felt, you know, it was much fewer people than I had seen the previous years I’d been there, but it still felt pretty busy.
There were nomads there, which was great. They were all European nomads, but they were starting to come down to Lisbon because they knew that as it gets colder, we don’t want to be stuck in another part of Europe. And this is one of the warmest places we can find in all of the EU.
But most of my friends that I’d met on Nomad Cruise were actually in a Facebook group, and they were coming down, and I was like, this is great. This is what I had wanted that I didn’t have in Tokyo cause everybody was working there. -Becky.
I was there for five weeks, and I stayed with my friends that I’d stayed with before, started learning about the visa process, and the result was that I needed to go to America.-Becky.
Yet again, Becky had to fly back to her technical home in the US to sort the permanent residency in Portugal. She formulated a plan at the end of summer, which had worked perfectly well so far.
The plan was to go to America. Get all the paperwork ready, send it in. Leave the 10-year passport that I had come from Portugal with my mom and wait for that approval, which hopefully I was going to get from the Portuguese embassy, take my second official US passport, which I’d had for three years that I had applied for in Tokyo to go to Israel, which you can have as an American.
You can have two official passports at one time. The second passport is only good for four years, and I had six months left on it. I just happened to have six months left. So I took that passport, and I knew because of the tax rules in the US, which if you’re usually living outside of the US, and you’re not a tax resident of another country, which in my case at the moment, I can only be in the US for 35 days a year.
Because of COVID, I hadn’t been there the whole year. So I had 21 days to do all this stuff. And then I said, I’m going to the place that’s been open for everybody this whole time; you can still fly in. And that is Mexico and happens to be right next to the US. So I took that second passport and headed to Mexico.
I was going to come down here, wait with a few friends, and then, when I got the approval, go back to the US, pick up that passport, get my stuff together, and then fly over to Portugal with an official visa that would allow me to enter. -Becky.
And that is how we rejoined this fellow digital nomad in the middle of her plan to reach Portugal in our current base in Mexico.
Coming to Querétaro, Mexico and why it is a great place for nomads
Becky loves Mexico for the same reasons that almost every digital nomad does. However, it may not be everyone’s first choice to stay here during the pandemic. But, according to Becky, it had its perks.
So I love Mexico City. And while it’s a huge city, it’s probably not the place to think about staying during a pandemic.
I knew they had good health care there. They had good hospitals. If I really needed some care, there are good hospitals in Mexico, and the care would be a lot cheaper than in the US for me, not having my home country’s health insurance. I also knew the weather was going to be better, and that was probably going to be better for me mentally during the pandemic. I could go outside.
I actually started running when I got to Mexico again, and I’ve been able to run in December, which I know is not possible right now for a lot of people. A friend had really been doing a lot of research; shout out to Mick, and he suggested Queretaro to me, which is a three-hour bus ride from Mexico City. -Becky.
Even though Becky had never been to Queretaro before, she started to like it here. She is always open to exploring places she’s never been to before, so staying here was a great choice.
The city of Queretaro wasn’t as small as she thought, and it has Uber and Uber Eats, making it easier for digital nomads and newbies to get around. It also has many working spaces and the weather during the winter season is just perfect.
Having lived in Tokyo for so long, I’m a big fan of efficiency. And so, this place feels efficient to me. It has 21 coworking spaces. As I said, it has Uber eats. If you’re in Playa Del Carmen or Cancun, there’s no Uber. And so, for nomads, there are certain things that we’re trying to have in our day to make it a little more convenient as we’re working, and Queretaro has these things.
And the weather, by the way, is great. I love having a little bit of a cool morning, so I can run. It’s easier for me. And it’s really warm here during the day. And then you do need like a light jacket at night, but it’s only rained two days in two months, and that does so many things for your exercise productive. -Becky.
What felt like summer for us in Canmore, Canada is what the winter feels like here in Queretaro, with 25 degrees celsius daily weather. It’s great to wear sandals during winter, and I’m sure everyone agrees.
Breaking down how getting residency in Portugal works and what Becky’s long-term plans are in Portugal
We had a fantastic time hearing all about Becky’s stories and upcoming plans.
She hosts a podcast called The School of Travels, where she encourages learning through traveling, and if you are intrigued to find out more about her journey as a digital nomad, this is her voice for you all.
Becky ends today’s episodes explaining how the residency in Portugal works and everything she plans on doing after she gets it. Becky planned to leave Mexico just the following day after we hosted her on our podcast to see some friends and family during Christmas in the US and finally start her new nomad adventure.
So I hope to help educate people about this whole visa in Portugal process after I get the next stage done, which is going to be the end of March. The visa I have right now is only suitable for five months. And then, I have to have a formal sit down with an immigration officer and present a bunch of documents showing my income and my residence.
There’s gotta be certain things I show them. And then I should hopefully get a visa for two years. From that, I plan to get the passport, which will take five years plus I think you get the passport after a year of processing or something, which also includes a language test. So I will start studying Portuguese.
And my plan is really to get there now. So I can do the six months of required residency for the year while people still aren’t really traveling. And then, I do have to go back to Japan for my residency requirement, thereby like the third week of August.
So I’ll probably stop there and then hopefully spend some time in Asia. But, again, I missed Asia this year. And when I say Asia, I guess I mean Southeast Asia. -Becky.
Her bucket list includes many hidden gems in Portugal.
What a lot of people may not know about Portugal is they’ve got a nine-island chain called the Azores in the Atlantic ocean, as well as an island called Madeira, which has another tiny island next to it.
And you know, that’s within Portugal. I can fly there, and I’d love to go to the Azores. I went to Madeira last year, and it just looks beautiful. It’s not as warm as Hawaii, but it’s like all these varied islands, and the Camino de Santiago I’d like to take as well. I just don’t know if they’re going to open up all the hotels yet to stay because you need those places to stay as you hike. But you know, it ends in Spain, in Santiago de Compostela. -Becky.
Becky is about to have an exciting and adventurous year ahead. She is also very excited to visit many European countries, like Andora, Luxembourg, and Lichtenstein. For digital nomads, it seems like every new place just pushes their creativity forward and helps them stay open-minded.
In a nutshell
We hope you enjoyed this podcast episode with Becky Gillespie as much as we did. For us, it’s always empowering to hear successful nomad life stories.
Becky was hosted on the Insider talking about how she makes money that allows her to travel anywhere around the world. So if you want to go check that out, you can head to patrion.com/theworldwanderers, where you’ll find Becky’s episode, as well as lots of other interesting topics on how to kind of create a career that allows you to work and travel. That’s patrion.com/theworldwanderers. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you soon.
