I first found about about my friend Ramon Stoppelenburg when we were both Internet panhandlers in the early part of the decade. My site of course was Dating Amy, his was Let Me Stay for a Day.
Let Me Stay was a pretty amazing project–Ramon’s goal was to travel around the world for free and it took off immediately. His site caught the attention of the media and had millions of hits, which garnered the Dutch native 3,577 invitations from 72 countries. I think he visited about 24 of those countries.
Ramon and I are both too lazy to write this blog post, so from wikipedia:
The travels took Stoppelenburg through the Netherlands, Belgium, France, England, Ireland, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Austria, South Africa, Spain, Australia and Canada. Coverage by international media[1][2] and the number of visitors to the website allowed Stoppelenburg to have everything sponsored: his website, clothing, camera, backpack, shoes and even his airline tickets.
As I correctly predicted just recently, once a cyberbeggar, always a cyberbeggar: Ramon is back to his Internet begging ways. Sort of. He wants to buy The Flicks cinema in his new home of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It looks like he’s already raised a few grand. He is a good guy, so help him out if you have an extra dollar or two.
If you’re thinking of trying Internet begging, there is one caveat: To be successful you have to be born on December 20 as Ramon and I both are.
