Digital nomads somehow became more synonymous with air travel across the globe but for some reason I don't hear much about the ones who are backpacking and road traveling without leaving the US. Is it mostly because of the appeal to live more cheaply in many other countries?
I am currently living in a nice duplex in a condo in Thailand. We have a big coworking with soundproof rooms for meetings, a 80m infinity pool on the rooftop, a good gym, surrounded by nice and cheap restaurants. Beaches almost everywhere and nice small islands to do diving.
I am paying 600$/month for the apartment. 250$ for the food. I haven't cooked anything for the past 6 months.
I am currently making roughly 50 times the local monthly salary.
Mostly working with my clients, doing some small charity works on the weekend and using all the facilities to get back in shape.
And more importantly, I am living with peace of mine. Nobody is annoying me with insane politics. I don't care about BLM, don't care about feminism, don't care about MGTOW, don't care about gender theory, don't care about white privilege, don't care about whether men can get pregnant or not.
I just try to be useful for the society around me, I feel a little bit bad about not paying taxes here, so I do my best to do some charity and helped a few local businesses with tech.
But overall, I am doing it 30% for economic reasons and 70% for political reasons. It feels good to meet with normal hardworking people.
Oh, and Thai people are really the nicest people as long as you respect them and try to make the effort of understanding their way of life.
How does location affect you on this front? You could care or not about any of these things regardless of location.
> It feels good to meet with normal hardworking people.
The only "normal" ppl are the ones you don't know well enough :-)
I just want to work with good engineers. I don't consider having or lacking a vagina to be a useful metric. And I take no pleasure working in an environment where black people are being shown around as "see, we are so inclusive, we even have black people in our company".
We have pride month, had LGBT/BLM events on the streets, talks about how women are being paid 20% less than men, the white privilege rhetoric is everywhere.
It's impossible to avoid, and all of this circus is impeding my capacity to think clearly. The easiest solution I found is to vote with my feet and move. I enjoy living in developing countries, there are more concrete problems to solve, it's intellectually refreshing.
And it was every where in my past company as well.
I am not trying to fight against it, I just voted with my feet. People can continue this circus if they want, I am just living elsewhere. It definitely help me thinking more clearly without all this distraction, my quality of life greatly improved.
I live in Taiwan and was contracting for a USA company. At the end of the year I walked over to the tax office, told them how much I made, then paid the tax bill. I was in and out in about 15 minutes.
But Thailand is going to introduce a nomad digital visa (Indonesia already done it). The idea is that if your income comes from abroad you don't need to pay taxes (or very little). Because you are effectively not competing with the locals.
I did not bother with all of this during Covid, I just wanted to explore the world and find a nice place where I could project myself for many years. I am now in the process of fixing my current situation, open a company and pay taxes.
But yeah, overall it's pretty nice not to care about those things. You quickly realize, caring or not caring make very little difference (if any). And you also realize you can be a lot more useful by not embracing divisive rhetorics.
Like, when I browse Reddit popular I automatically don’t read whitepeopletwitter, antiwork, murderedbyaoc, and the like.
I still stay here for the money though. I foresee one day exiting US and letting go of my GC if it becomes too much of a hassle to maintain and go back and build my home country. Currently am worried about the state of public education in the US. Too much wokeness for my taste. Ah maybe I have to go back sooner if I want to raise a child.
Private school in my home country does much more better job than public US education.
But in my home country, it was becoming too much.
It's now in school, work, TV, movies, anti white rhetoric all the time.
To the point I would not be comfortable schooling my future children there.
So I decided to move on, and find a new place better aligned on my values. It does not need to be perfect, I can work with flaws and learn to embrace it. But I need a minimum of common ground, so far I found it in Asia (I lived long term in China and almost one year in Thailand). I can see myself settling down here and try to be a useful contributing member of society.
You can check it out on their website it's really nice. But South-East Asia is really full of condo with nice environments.
The thing I truly enjoy with Homa though, is that they have a 80m pool on the roof top. I am trying to get back in shapes. I love swimming, not so much running. And it's hard to find a pool where you can really swim.
Having all of this inside one place, is really a nice way to stay motivated and hit the gym/pool 4-5 times a week.
It's also one of the first condo I have seen where they try pretty hard to create a sense of community.
- Soccer games every Wednesday - Movies nights on the rooftop every Tuesday - Live music every Friday/Saturday - Muay Thai / Yoga classes - Once a month you have some nice entrepreneurial meetings.
Eventually though, I became more comfortable with living in “less developed” cities. (Although I think this designation for countries is rapidly becoming obsolete. Eastern Europe is in many ways more developed than Western Europe these days, for example.)
At this point, the quality of life in a city like Bangkok, Budapest, Istanbul, or Mexico City on $3,000/month is equivalent to about $10,000 or more in NYC or LA. The only affordable places in the US are small towns or camping, so if you want the urban lifestyle, it’s a major downgrade in terms of QoL to move back.
The other comment mentioned the ability to avoid American sociopolitical issues, which is also an underrated benefit. The American media-complex really is a kind of Matrix and once you’re outside it, it becomes easier to see how artificial most of the “pressing issues” are. Certainly political issues exist everywhere, but I have found the inhabitants of most “cheaper” countries to be more concerned with everyday life and work, rather than the latest news headlines.
It’s a bit like saying, “I want to live in Tokyo but not eat any Japanese food.” Sure, that is technically possible and there is plenty of Western cuisine available. But it will require expending energy on an issue that simply doesn’t exist elsewhere.
When you are abroad, you can calmly observe swathes of people changing their culture.
I mean a broad definition of "changing" which includes criticizing, destroying, enriching, subverting, etc, etc.
When you are at home, you observe swathes of people changing your culture, living in which is beneficial to you. And there is nowhere else to go to get the same culture. (And media primarily report on the changes that you'd disagree with.) And switching to another culture is kinda expensive.
That being said, as a former "digital nomad" who did it america[0][1] I definitely recommend it. Our country is as vast and beautiful as it is mundane and ugly.
> Is it mostly because of the appeal to live more cheaply in many other countries?
It helps to have friends and stay with them but if you are remote working for an average tech company that shouldn't be a factor. The digital nomad lifestyle blogger is selling to an audience beyond that, thus the emphasis on cheapness. Sure, you can't stay at an airbnb in NYC for months at a time, but Richmond, VA you can. Lots of cheap[2], weird towns in America with things to do.
[0] https://jaredandrews.com/pages/travel-log.html
[1] https://jaredandrews.com/whats-in-my-bags.html
[2] For someone who makes > 70K a year and has no dependents or significant financial obligations.
I did this for 1.5 years from August 2020 to April 2022.
I (and my partner) packed up 2.5 suitcases of clothes, 1 medium box of spices, 2 containers of miscellaneous things (including our extensive 6 set collection of Dominion -- card game) shoved it all into a Honda CR-V and hit the road.
We stayed in Airbnbs or short-term furnished rentals for 4-6 weeks negotiating a rate with the lister most of the time (but sometimes the base host-set Airbnb monthly discount was pretty good) and usually went for 2-BR with good parking situation so we had a good work from home setup and peace of mind with our car (which we unpacked completely when we got to a new place). Our focus was to live in decent neighborhoods and get a place with a decent kitchen (we cooked a lot at home to keep costs down) with the apartment being more modern as a bonus as long as it didn't increase the cost. We also checked with each listing/landlord to ensure the internet was at least 50 mbps or better since both of us would be on video calls during the day.
Key highlights: - ~14,000 miles driven, few tire changes, 3 oil changes, 1 small accident but no other driving incidents - 11 national parks - Yellowstone, Great Sand Dune, and Petrified Forest were my favorites - Fave city: Denver (great outdoors, vibrant young city, growing, lots of sunshine, main con was lacking in world-class food which we were used to from SF) - Surprise hit: Boise (great outdoors, cool Greenbelt river area, very relaxed feel) - Sleepier than expected: Santa Fe (very much a retiree community, lots to see, but gets to be the same -- you can only see so much art before it blends together, and food is a bit of the same after a while -- red/green chile rocks, just can't get over how 50% of the restaurants in the town seemed to serve it)
Overall: - Really fun experience and I would highly recommend it to anyone who has the flexibility and can stand their partner OR be solo for a while - If cost is the focus then you can go for cheaper accommodations at the cost of convenience, modern amenities, and "vibe" of being in the nicer neighborhoods/closer to the action - Gets a little tiring exploring every city from scratch, not knowing a ton of people to build community around, what good places to go to/having a local spot etc.
A lot of the DN talk and stories online you read are not from people originating in the US in the first place.
I'd also wager that doing this domestically has never really been uncommon at all? Just that many of these people don't think of it as "nomading" (cf "expat"/"immigrant" difference iukwim) and so are 1) less attracted to the idea because of cultural preconceptions 2) the ones who do are less likely to try pushing their lifestyle onto you.
That is, it's actually not less common at all, you just hear about it less.
Trying to do any meaningful or serious work while literally backpacking or in a van all the time sounds terrible and exhausting.
I think the more successful ones are just renting a monthly Airbnb or short term apartment but not necessarily traveling all the time and staying in hostels.
IIRC from Airbnb earnings reports an increasing high number of bookings are monthly rentals. I’m sure that is true of the US as much as elsewhere and would suit someone who wants to live a few months in one location and move to another within the US.
If I do decide to travel in the US, it will be van life style. Temporary housing has just gotten way more expensive and that's no surprises; houses cost more and those costs are reflected in the bill.
Nowhere in America fits the bill.
I had a great time exploring and there’s tons of beautiful places to check out, but its definitely a bit disappointing to miss out on experiencing vastly different cultures. There’s unquestionably some variety, but for the most part it’s all distinctly North American-flavored. I think for people deciding to embark on a once in a lifetime adventure outside their comfort zones it’s probably a bit more rewarding to branch out more, with very little cost.
For example, people go on Utah vacations and rush Arches, Bryce, Zion, but there are so much beautiful places in between that you couldn't budget in a small trip with friends (e.g., some random slot canyon that barely is on the radar)
Or if people go to Colorado for a Rockies trip, you can have the whole western slope to yourself for a month
I’m considering buying and renovating an older RV as my first ‘home’.
Any advice on this? Other than avoiding driving through the prairies? :P
It's fine staying in one spot for a year. It's fine going back home for a while and recoup. Be it over a weekend or half a year. It's fine leaving a place after two weeks when you made preparations to have it as a more long-term base if you realize something's off. It's fine to go out and meet people all the time. It's fine not to (though most of us do benefit from regular socializing in-person, self-identified introverts included).
Balance this with trying to make decisions deliberately, rather than on impulse.
Two major pieces of advice I'd give younger self that come to mind:
- Nurture the friendships you value. Be proactive in staying in touch with people you want to keep.
- Take care of your body and figure out an ergonomically sustainable way to work. Day-long sessions at coffee shops or the backseat of an RV will make a number on your back sooner than you think.
Construction sites and Walmart parking lots make it work though. Also no one would call it that, it's too braggadocious.
