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I've lived and worked in 77 countries.
I'm Vaughn Bullard. For thirty-six years I have worked, lived and traveled around the world: seventy-seven countries and eight hundred and twenty-two destinations, many of them seen from client offices and hotel windows.
Past Customs is about the living part: staying in one place and filming the ordinary parts. Markets, rent, lunch breaks, errands. Each place becomes a chapter with its own series. Chapter 1 is ExPatNoBrasil.
Avenida Paulista, São Paulo
Vaughn Bullard
A little more about me
I was born in the United States and spent my first nineteen years as an Army brat. Most of that time was in Germany, on Army bases and in the small German farm towns around them. A good deal of it was back in the U.S., too, in Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Texas and Illinois, where I ended up graduating from high school north of Chicago. Looking back, that is probably where the habit started: being the new person, figuring out how things work, and paying attention to the everyday details that locals never think about.
After that came college, and then the military. Then came a career in IT that has spanned thirty-six years of international and domestic travel. Professionally, I have spent my career as a technology executive and architect, building software and data systems for businesses and government agencies and working with clients on several continents. Along the way the count reached 77 countries and 822 destinations. I speak a handful of languages, none of them perfectly.
I love to travel, especially when it is not for work. A work trip tends to show you an airport, a hotel and an office, and not much in between. What I prefer is to live in one place abroad and see most of the country from there, the way people who actually live there do.
Many of my favorite memories from all those years are about food. Custard tarts bought on the streets of Lisbon. Dosa from stands in Hyderabad. Crocodile and reindeer in Copenhagen. Tea in cafes in Bogota. Kitfo in Ethiopia. Very strong coffee in Turkey. Sushi in Tokyo. And the best ravioli in the world, in Abruzzo. I am not a food critic. I am just someone who learned that one of the quickest ways to understand a place is to sit down and eat what the people around you are eating.
That is really what this site is for. Past Customs is my way of sharing the ordinary parts of living somewhere: what things cost, how they work, and what is good to eat. If something here turns out to be useful to you, that is all I could hope for. I am glad you are here, and thank you for reading along.
From visiting to living
First stamp
A short consulting job abroad turned into a career.
Carry-on life
Client sites, early flights, and learning to order lunch in languages I did not speak.
Going wide
Five continents. The count passed fifty countries somewhere over an ocean.
The long hauls
Hundreds of cities, always on a return ticket.
Stayed
The decision: stop visiting. Live in a place, and film it.
Three promises
Living, not visiting
Sign a lease, find a barber, and get the errands wrong at least once.
Real costs
Every chapter shows what living there actually costs, from receipts, dated.
A consultant's eye
Systems, logistics, and how things really work, explained plainly.
Three good first reads
The First 30 Days in a New Country: A Practical Checklist
SIM, cash, transit, a bed, and one good meal. Then the slower work of making a place function. A working checklist for the first month.
How to Do a Big Municipal Market Without Getting Played
The episode companion to Mercadão. Go hungry, go early, taste before you buy, and ask the price before anything is weighed.
How to Build an Honest Cost-of-Living Budget Abroad
Online cost-of-living numbers are averages of other people’s lives. Your receipts are the only budget that tells the truth.