Asian Wander Women
Emily Fang is a cofounder of Asian Wander Women, a media and community based platform that aims to help Asian women gain location and financial freedom to wander around the world—all on their own terms. Emily worked and lived in Singapore for the past three years, and before that, in the Bay area for nine, and she is super passionate about connecting the East and the West because of her time overseas in Asia as someone who was born in the U.S. Currently, she is consulting for two startups while trying to build the media arm of Asian Wander Women.
Asian Wander Women
In 2020, Ivy Xu and I set out to create a community of like-minded women. Back in the building phases, it was called Asian Female Nomads. A lot of people didn’t really relate to the term “nomad” so it was changed to “wander women'' in 2021. The group organically grew from a small group of 50 women to its current 1,300+ people. I brought in a lot of people from Southeast Asia because of my network there while I was overseas, and Ivy was traveling to different cities, and also funneling people into the group. By word of mouth, organic growth, and both of our content channels, people started filing in. The goal was to hit 1,000+ members and to keep the community healthy and sustainable–which we reached! Now, with more members, the goals for 2023 are to continue growing the community sustainably without watering down the content, build the media arm, and hopefully generate funding and/or revenue by the end of 2023, through content partnerships, affiliate marketing, etc. to keep it sustainable and potentially hire some of the women from our community to build it up.
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Getting Involved with the AWW Community
Run a social event: We have a resource guide on our website at asianwanderwoman.com so if you ever want to host your own meetup, there’s a package that includes how you create the branding, marketing collateral, how to get people’s interest and where to post.
Create content: You can provide content to the community through website articles, itineraries, or expert advice.
Casual social meetups: Meet up with community members for food and other local events!
Reach out for or offer support: If someone's going to a new country, let’s help them soft-land into that country.
© 2023 Asian Wander Women
© 2023 Emily Fang
Emily’s tips for traveling or moving to a new place
Find one or two people who are locals in that city or country or have a good understanding of it.
Generally, through AWW, it’s been very easy to just find people who are really excited to welcome you into their country. I also have a collaborative Google Doc that’s shareable so anyone that I meet along the way can just add anything. The locals really just know what you should be doing, where the great accommodations are, what clubs to go to, where the best food is, etc. so I highly recommend finding locals and certain groups. You can do this with AWW, Subtle Asian Travel, Meetup.com…there's so many organizations to look into.
Do a bit of research on the city or place where you’re going, especially with the weather.
I crowdsource information online to get a feel or a sense of what it's going to be like. I also look at forums and YouTube videos with current time stamps to see if it’s a good time to go. One time in 2022, I went to Siargao, which is the surfing capital of the Philippines, and I didn't know that they were hit by a typhoon in 2021. So when I went, everything was just kind of wiped out with no Wi-Fi and no cafes. If only I had just looked it up and done proper research around the weather and whether anything happened to that area recently.
Be aware of cultural do’s and don'ts.
You can ask a local some things that you should be aware of and should prepare yourself for, and if you didn't know, then just say you're sorry. Remind yourself that you're in someone else's country. We should respect the places where we go.
Travel safely.
I generally share my itineraries with my sister or my best friend. I let people know where exactly I'm staying and going, especially emergency contact information. It's not that I'm paranoid, but I've had a few friends who got stuck in different countries so giving more information to a contact that you'd know and trust is going to be helpful. It's just like insurance. It’s preventative. But I will say that if you are traveling alone, and you're Asian and female, you just have to be a little bit more careful. I personally am a little bit more paranoid when I travel alone, so I give all the information necessary to my sister or someone that I trust.
© 2023 Asian Wander Women
© 2023 Asian Wander Women
Financially sustainable travel
Figure out exactly what you’re comfortable with. A lot of women in AWW sublease their apartments for less than what you’d be charged for an Airbnb or hotel! My friend and I once found a really cheap place in Brooklyn, New York, that was $1,500 for two weeks, but we had to share the studio. We made it work, because New York is one of the most expensive cities in the world and I was not down to pay ~$4,000/month for rent.
Make sure you have multiple income streams. We’re moving into a new “creator” economy, where anything you produce can be used as leverage as part of your branding. You can literally make money out of anything. What are you knowledgeable about or what niche specialty do you have? For instance, someone paid $50 to me on Superpeer, a platform where people can request a one-on-one with you to get a consultation, to talk for 30 minutes about how to move to Singapore!
Consider your impact when traveling
Think about how we have an impact on society and our surroundings wherever we travel and read up on a place’s history and cultural norms. Try going to the source of the business rather than using Tripadvisor or travel platforms that take a big cut, and ask your local friends to connect you directly to local businesses! One example of this is when I went to Bali I had a local driver, Bromo, who drove me and my friends around. I talked about him on all my social channels so that friends could directly book with him for travel accommodation.
Check out our latest issue to learn more about Asian Wander Women and read about our Lotus Magazine team members!
