Digital Nomads

Mine are: a coworking space, library, cafe, and a hospital (food allergy). If those aren’t close to where I’m staying, I won’t consider going there.

I’ve created a small tool (completely free, not self promotion) that only shows me hostels with my must-haves at most half a mile away.

As an example, here’s all the hostels in Germany vs just the ones that meet my requirements:

All the hostels in Germany

Filtered down to the best/most ideal hostels for me

This is what an actual city (Dresden here) looks like; yellow=cafe, blue=coworking, black=hostel, brown=library, red=hospital

It's an interesting way to quickly get an idea of where I could go next. I’d like to improve this tool and make it useful for others as well though, hence this post.

So, what are your “must-haves” when evaluating where to go as a DN? I’m sure I’ve missed some obvious deal-breakers and would love your input.

(If you want to try it out for yourself, here’s the link: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1Dwo)

Yeah, we have in demand skills but so do a lot of other people (espeicslly on a world wide scale). When everyone has "python developer" or "javascript developer" in their tag line, how do you stand out?

Currently writing at 5:30 AM in the morning lol. DN here with an 8-4 online which translates to 11-7 thanks to daylight savings making it worse (or actually, it doesn’t even matter tbh). Tried to force myself to sleep right after but couldn’t stay asleep for more than 4.5 hours or so and it absolutely wrecked me. BUT then I tried an alternative method where I would just let myself wake up at like 11AM but then sleep for 2.5 hours right before I start so at 8:30PM I sleep right until I start and it works beautifully. I still get 6.5-7hrs of sleep and I rarely get tired when I have to work. Also a huge advantage is being able to do whatever I want from 11AM-8:30PM. It is AMAZING. I’ve got the whole day for myself and I’d rather work at night anyways. Tbh I prefer this much more than my actual time zone haha. By the time I finish work, it’s already dark and my day feels like it’s over but here, I can roam around during the day and have a good lunch/dinner without worrying.

I also heard people back then used to split their sleeping time anyways so that’s why it doesn’t feel super off or anything. Of course, YMMV but I’ve been doing this for three months and feel completely fine. Once daylight savings is over, just do the same time but maybe sleep more in the morning and only sleep 1.5 hours at night before starting (I did this too!). I thought I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep during my sleep times but hey, somehow I did almost every single day.

Another big bonus is that on Saturday after my work, I can sleep around 4-5 hours and live completely normally through Monday night. Though I do get tired at around 2-3 AM and wake up late but hey, I would’ve done the same thing anyways back at home. So if you wanted to try moving to the other side of the world but was worried because of the schedule, maybe you can try this! I can give you hope. It worked beautifully for me!

Edit: LOL meant to say world not country in the title oops

My employer is making me come into office 2 days a week I have been living in Florida for a year? Need a way to beat this atleast 1/2 the time....?

Hey folks. My wife and I both work remotely, from home, and want to start taking advantage of our flexible schedules. I run my own business and she's full time but only has a few meetings a week. We're looking at going to Mexico for a week, either Cabo, Cancun, or Puerto Vallarta, possibly booking both now since Alaska has crazy deals to Mexico right now.

I'm looking for recommendations for hotels. The prices seem to run all over the map and I suspect there's some aspects that I don't anticipate. We're thinking we'd try at least one inclusive, and another in an area with a lot of stuff within walking distance. Looking for ideas and suggestions.

Any recos for coffee shops in Seville to post up with my laptop for a few hours? Open late is a bonus

Hey everyone! I'm planning on going to Sri Lanka this December/January for the first time. I'm looking for a nice, quiet, shanti, could be kinda hippie vibe beach town over there. For a reference, I really liked Gokarna in India, or Mazunte in Mexico. Does Sri Lanka have places with similar vibes? I'm pretty open though, so if anyone has been to Sri Lanka and have recommendations for a cool beach town over there, I'll be glad to hear. Thank you all!

I’m looking for a reasonably priced eSIM option for data only. I’m from the US but have been traveling internationally on a sailboat for a couple of years and need a way to get data on my phone. Finding stores on some of the islands to buy a data sim has been getting difficult.

Is there a company or companies that you would recommend?

Genuine question for globally remote teams/workers

My gf and I are both dutch citizens nomadding in Europe for 3 years now. We fell into it when we moved for a job opportunity that didn't work out and decided to be nomadic from that point onwards.

I love this lifestyle, and really don't want to stop but we have found ourself in a predicament. Our home country doesn't allow us too have a mailing adress if we don't spend 4 months of the year in the country(we spend 0 days). So we are registered nowhere. A home base elsewhere is something we can't afford and keep living this lifestyle.

Traveling in europe is expensive and troughout the year we break about even(we know it's not ideal but we are fine with it for now) if we had to keep a homebase year round and pay taxes we wouldn't be able to afford living like this anymore.

The problem now is however that banks require some form of adress and recently wise started asking questions and we are scared our bank account might get frozen and leave us without money somewhere and have no access to it.

Also, the rules for digital nomads in the Netherlands are a bit iffy. It's not 100% transparent if you need to pay taxes even tough we spend 0 days here and the last 2 years we were in contact with the tax officials and didn't even have to file.

I've been scouring the internet recently and found a few things such as Estonia e residency that might help with opening bank accounts but won't fix the residency issue and same with opening a American llc but still no adress or residency.

The cheapest option for residency it seems is bulgaria with low taxes and not too high col but like I stated in the beginning, this would crush our digital nomad life as we could not afford traveling around anymore with the added costs. And we would have to stay 183 days there and my gf doesn't like bulgaria whatsoever.

Tldr; do we need to stop nomadding for now in order to have paperwork in order and get life sucked out off us or is there a way we can continue

I will change the location of my Spotify account and then it will switch back to the US in a week and no longer allow me to use my account. How do you guys manage it?

Soon, Mint will be rolling out a new roaming price plan where, instead of putting any amount you want in your roaming wallet, now anytime you use your line while abroad it will charge minimim $10 for the day. On Twitter they told me in a DM that 80% of their customers prefer the following roaming pricing. According to their email:

1-day for $10 60 min / 60 SMS 1GB of high speed data

3-day for $20 200 min / 200 SMS Unlimited Data with 3GB of high speed data

7-day for $40 500 min / 500 SMS Unlimited Data with 10GB of high speed data

If you're like me, and turn your US line on then off just to receive 2FA every once in a while, then this sucks. I just paid for a year of service and my roaming wallet with them just needed $10 top up every several months. Luckily, there are other options according to this recent post.

If I’m not overpaying, I can go anywhere. I have no obligations. I’m not working. I don’t care about touristic attractions. I’m traveling cause it keeps me around interesting people (hostels), makes me healthier, makes life more interesting.

I keep looking at the map and idk where to go next lol. Croatia. Spain. Italy. Greece. Bosnia. Serbia. Albania. Morocco. Tunisia. Vietnam. Bali. Or Central Europe because they have proper heating in winter unlike some of Southern Europe. Idk

Is there a tool that can tell me where to go based on a few criteria? Like cost of good hostels, cost of transportation to get there, maybe average indoor temperature and maybe ethnicity or friendliness. I’m bored of making decisions. I just want to roam around

I will change the location of my Spotify account and then it will switch back to the US in a week and no longer allow me to use my account. How do you guys manage it?

Soon, Mint will be rolling out a new roaming price plan where, instead of putting any amount you want in your roaming wallet, now anytime you use your line while abroad it will charge minimim $10 for the day. On Twitter they told me in a DM that 80% of their customers prefer the following roaming pricing.

According to their email:

1-day for $10, 60 min + 60 SMS, 1GB of high speed data

3-day for $20, 200 min + 200 SMS, Unlimited Data with 3GB of high speed data

7-day for $40, 500 min + 500 SMS, Unlimited Data with 10GB of high speed data

If you're like me, and turn your US line on then off just to receive 2FA every once in a while, then this sucks. I just paid for a year of service and my roaming wallet with them just needed $10 top up every several months. Luckily, there are other options according to this recent post.

Edit: formatting

Hey guys, Originally I'm from New York but I'm doing some digital nomading right now.

My journey started with about 1 week in Dubai, followed by 3 weeks in India, and then I reached my main destination, which was Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam.

I've been here for about 2 months, and I definitely love it here. It's a great city and everything. Love the food, the people, etc. I rented my apartment here for 3 months, so I have about one month left.

Since I've already been in Vietnam for a long time, I'm feeling a little burned out by it, and I had the idea that I should travel to some of the neighboring countries. Since I live in New York, it's very hard for me to get to this part of the world. But since I have this Vietnam apartment, I could keep most of my suitcases here, and just travel light with a small bookbag somewhere. Then before my apartment runs out, come back, take all my stuff and fly back to New York.

I might get crucified for this, but I would prefer a city that has a pretty active Tinder scene. Tinder has worked really well for me in Ho Chi Minh, and I'm not the type to go out to bars or clubs anyways, since I'm introverted. So I use tinder to meet cool locals and explore the city with them.

So out of the list in my title, any recommendations? I'm considering possibly even going to 2 cities, maybe spend 2 weeks in each.

Right now I'm angling towards Bangkok. Since Thailand is cool, and it's the closest to Vietnam. Although I'm very interested in Philippines and Indonesia too. Chengdu has been on my bucket list for like 6 years, and I noticed the flight from HCM to it is only $80, but I would need to get a China tourist visa, and I'm not sure how hard that is.

Korea would be cool too, but I feel like Seoul would definitely be the most expensive option. Plus like I said I'm not really into clubs or bars, which it seems is what a lot of Korean people like.

Do you guys have any recommendations or suggestions?

I’m bored of meeting other travelers. I won’t stay here long cause it’s getting cold

I don’t like bars clubs or tinder

Hi,

I teach yoga and am a German national (currently registered in Germany). As I spend only a few weeks a year in Germany, I am considering unregistering in Germany. I am wondering how you manage invoices and taxes if you are working freelance without a fixed residence somewhere? E.g. have you registered a business somewhere? Have you chosen a (new) residence somewhere?

Thanks for your help!

So the laptop provided by work, which is used to connect to a virtual machine, does not allow turning off location services, which are used pretty much all the time according to windows. Even if I were to set up a gl.inet system on my own, would this negate all of that? Are nomad dreams done for now, at least on this role?

I’m working remotely (very minimally) from early December to early/mid January.

I live on the east coast and want to go somewhere safe for a solo woman, mild-warm weather wise (60s+), and easily accesible nature. Also, a place with adults in their 30s-40s+ is ideal, as I am far from the partying scene.

I enjoy working out, so access to good gyms and healthy foods is a plus.

I was considering Bali but reading about the traffic and how busy it gets around the holidays turned me off. I so don’t want to bounce around too much and would prefer to stay in 1 location for this month.

I’m even thinking of a coastal rental somewhere on the west coast if an international spot doesn’t sopeak yo me

The survey found that 80% of businesses have downsized since the start of the pandemic, with a further 75% planning to reduce their office square footage next year. 

Over 60% of companies who responded to the survey said they are paying $50 or more per square foot of their office space. As a result, over two-thirds plan to reduce their office space by 50% or more with almost a third planning to right-size their office by a quarter or less. 

At the same time, 88% of companies are mandating that staff work a certain number of days in the office, with 52% mandating at least four days a week in the office. 

The return-to-office mandate is an effort by business owners to ensure they're getting the most out of office space given the high costs associated with renting.

However, 40% of respondents in the survey said that they're only utilizing half of their available office space or less, and only 28% said they're using 100% of their space. 

Although 42% are hopeful that offices will go back to pre-pandemic levels of attendance, 58% are sure that that volume of office attendance is a thing of the past.

https://www.businessinsider.com/companies-want-workers-back-in-office-reducing-office-space-survey-2023-11

I’m planning to travel SE Asia (where I’ve been a number of times before), but this time I’d like to stay long-term.

Whilst I have some savings, I will need to have some reliable income, so my savings aren’t depleted completely.

I worked in property sales for 8 years previously, so I’m exploring remote working options in that industry - but many estate agencies want staff to be office based.

Can anyone give me some ideas of steady and reliable remote working options that I could do from my laptop? The key for me is something reliable that I could do for the medium/long term.

Thank you!

Is this pretty much a total block on being able to DN? The work laptop needs to connect to a work VPN and then to a virtual machine. Even if I set up a homemade VPN, it seems like it would still leak the location... I see that the computer is always using location and in the settings for windows anything to do with location settings is locked. So am I stuck, at least in my country, in this role?

Okay so I run a few businesses and travel, and my US LLC gets paid in USD.

US PayPal account, and US bank account. Sweet.

BUT I'm not from the US. So I always get blocked by banks and paypal, asking to SMS verify my US phone number

How do you guys solve this problem?

I've tried virtual numbers / Skype but often the stupid site will not accept it saying "sorry that number is not acceptable".

I got a real US SIM, but somehow the US carriers cancel it after I've been nomading outside of the US, even though I'm still paying for it. It lasted for a while but now I'm stuck again.

hi! i have australian citizenship but currently live in the usa on a non-immigrant visa so i cannot legally work in the u.s., but would i be authorized to work remotely for australia or any other countries?