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I am not American but I have been a digital nomad for the past three years. I am currently living in a nice duplex in a condo in Thailand. We have a big cowork

I am not American but I have been a digital nomad for the past three years. 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.

wszfahwbwbaha 4y ago
Kaze404 4y ago
Must be nice to be able to not care about those things.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- soueuls 4y ago
  It's not too nice to have to leave your country just to get peace of mind. 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.
  - Kaze404 4y ago
    Sorry, I think I didn't express myself properly. My point was that the people involved in those movements unfortunately are not allowed to stop caring about them, as the problems they denounce won't magically go away.
    - soueuls 4y ago
      I understood your original comment, my answer was a bit off topic and sarcastic on purpose. I clearly have met enough black people who would define themselves by their race and did not take part in any organization that just promote racial adversity. I have even done a fair share of charity work in Benin in 2019 and so I have seen a fair share of people who clearly did not get any geographical benefit. For some of them, life was hard. To these days I have yet to meet someone who got anything positive off the anti white rhetoric. It’s like a self help book, it might feel good, but it does not put any food on the table. And so, since I have the freedom to do, I decide to vote with my feet and avoid any places that promotes this kind of ideologies. I need calm to be able to think and all of this nonsense is impeding my capacity to think. Plus, I prefer to pay taxes in a place that does not favor gender or racial quotas.
kuhewa 4y ago
It seems like you must care about those things, considering the qualified for the more importantly qualifier. Were these social issues du jour really bashing your doors down when you were living at home, or were you just consuming media that was overly concerned with it?
- soueuls 4y ago
  It's everywhere in my home country. You can only avoid it if you decide to consume content pretty much opposed to it. 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.
immigrantheart 4y ago
I live in the USA now and filter out most politics from social media. Being an immigrant from a 3rd world country, I lean more conservative so I also don’t care about stuffs you mentioned above 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.
- Kaze404 4y ago
  Out of curiosity, why does being an immigrant make you lean towards conservatism? You realize one of the biggest conservative talking points in the past 4 years is how immigrants are “stealing” their jobs?
  - tmn 4y ago
    Not the comment author you replied to, but I didn't read it as 'I immigrated, therefore it infers I'm conservative". Rather I read it as they were stating two independent facts about themselves. On the topic of the 'Talking Point' you're referring to. I don't know anyone who has voiced concern with legal immigration (I live in predominately conservative area). I will agree illegal immigration is a talking point.
  - immigrantheart 4y ago
    Conservatives aren't a monolithic voting bloc, unlike what the media tells you. There are conservatives who are okay with legal and high skilled/high paid immigration (which I am one). No one is stealing highly paid, trading, fintech, programming jobs, with above $200k/year salary here. I can confidently say that ALL (100%) of conservatives, are not in favor of illegal immigration, and not in favor of low skilled immigration. Some other points that conservatives are (some of these are libertarian, but conservatives and libertarian often have similar interests), which are aligned with me: - Economy matters, bring back local jobs, bring back local manufacturing - Small government, less government spending, less taxes for useless government spending, less wars, less meddling with other countries problem - Personal freedom and responsibilities - Self sufficiency - No to unrestricted abortion - No to stimulus checks - No to constant lockdown - No to UBI - No to student loan forgiveness - We can define what is a woman and what is a man - No to defund the police - All Lives Matter, including Asian and White lives A lot of immigrants actually have the same interests aligned with conservatives, based on the points above. I think immigrants know firsthand how it feels like to: - Have incompetent government, corrupt government, corrupt media - Have freeloaders everywhere taking advantage of the system, we are here to work, to make money, not to support those who don't - Have violence on the street as a result of police have no teeth - Asian immigrants, experience bias in not being hired/accepted into school, due to Affirmative Action and Diversity Inclusion practice. Asian immigrants on average, economically, actually less better than Blacks So we don't want the countries where we immigrate to, to avoid the problems in the first place, to have the problems we want to avoid. Immigrants also, prefer traditional gender/sex in society. Doesn't mean that woman can't be a plumber, sure they can. We just don't prefer gender fluidity/spectrum to be taught in schools to our children. The reason being, it introduces weakness to the population. Man should be strong, independent (not talking about toxic masculinity), and woman also have very important roles in society. Gender fluidity/spectrum contributes to confusion and undermines the future of the population. That's not to say we don't have trans in our society. We do, and we are okay with that, but they have to play by the rules of the majority. They can't go into man's bahtroom if they are born woman, and vice versa. They can't join woman's sports if they are born man. We are also not okay to make it normalized in school and getting shoved on it by the media.
jameshush 4y ago
I’m not familiar with Thailand, but how are you not paying taxes there? Are they giving you a tax break? 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.
- kwere 4y ago
  Territorial taxation, one pays taxes only on what is generated inside the country and often remittances. Working as employee is taxed at Thai rate, working as a contractor for foreigners is not taxed
- wdb 4y ago
  Maybe the person is not declaring income (happens a lot) or they do some travelling to neighbour country shenanigans. There quite a few agencies that help you avoid taxes as a digital nomad
  - nevon 4y ago
    You could not declare income in your home country as well. Travelling or not, you're still gonna pay taxes _somewhere_.
- soueuls 4y ago
  It's technically illegal on a tourist visa (but I am on a weird covid extension scheme). 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.
atmosx 4y ago
> 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. 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 :-)
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
  i don't think you can. it's not like i go out looking for the next big thing to get worked up about, I'm just bombarded with it. even if i somehow avoid media, my fellow humans will bw talking about it.
- soueuls 4y ago
  In my home country it's not possible to avoid it. 80% of the tech companies have diversity/inclusion meeting/committees where you have to discuss how to hire more women or POC. 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.
rohith2506 4y ago
Sounds like a great environment. I am looking for something similar in Asia for few months. Can you let us know coworking space details?
- soueuls 4y ago
  The place I am currently living is called "Homa" in Phuket. I think they are going to open a new one in 2023 in another city (better located). 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.

wszfahwbwbaha 4y ago

Kaze404 4y ago

Must be nice to be able to not care about those things.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
soueuls 4y ago
It's not too nice to have to leave your country just to get peace of mind. 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.
- Kaze404 4y ago
  Sorry, I think I didn't express myself properly. My point was that the people involved in those movements unfortunately are not allowed to stop caring about them, as the problems they denounce won't magically go away.
  - soueuls 4y ago
    I understood your original comment, my answer was a bit off topic and sarcastic on purpose. I clearly have met enough black people who would define themselves by their race and did not take part in any organization that just promote racial adversity. I have even done a fair share of charity work in Benin in 2019 and so I have seen a fair share of people who clearly did not get any geographical benefit. For some of them, life was hard. To these days I have yet to meet someone who got anything positive off the anti white rhetoric. It’s like a self help book, it might feel good, but it does not put any food on the table. And so, since I have the freedom to do, I decide to vote with my feet and avoid any places that promotes this kind of ideologies. I need calm to be able to think and all of this nonsense is impeding my capacity to think. Plus, I prefer to pay taxes in a place that does not favor gender or racial quotas.

kuhewa 4y ago

It seems like you must care about those things, considering the qualified for the more importantly qualifier. Were these social issues du jour really bashing your doors down when you were living at home, or were you just consuming media that was overly concerned with it?

soueuls 4y ago
It's everywhere in my home country. You can only avoid it if you decide to consume content pretty much opposed to it. 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.

immigrantheart 4y ago

I live in the USA now and filter out most politics from social media. Being an immigrant from a 3rd world country, I lean more conservative so I also don’t care about stuffs you mentioned above 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.

Kaze404 4y ago
Out of curiosity, why does being an immigrant make you lean towards conservatism? You realize one of the biggest conservative talking points in the past 4 years is how immigrants are “stealing” their jobs?
- tmn 4y ago
  Not the comment author you replied to, but I didn't read it as 'I immigrated, therefore it infers I'm conservative". Rather I read it as they were stating two independent facts about themselves. On the topic of the 'Talking Point' you're referring to. I don't know anyone who has voiced concern with legal immigration (I live in predominately conservative area). I will agree illegal immigration is a talking point.
- immigrantheart 4y ago
  Conservatives aren't a monolithic voting bloc, unlike what the media tells you. There are conservatives who are okay with legal and high skilled/high paid immigration (which I am one). No one is stealing highly paid, trading, fintech, programming jobs, with above $200k/year salary here. I can confidently say that ALL (100%) of conservatives, are not in favor of illegal immigration, and not in favor of low skilled immigration. Some other points that conservatives are (some of these are libertarian, but conservatives and libertarian often have similar interests), which are aligned with me: - Economy matters, bring back local jobs, bring back local manufacturing - Small government, less government spending, less taxes for useless government spending, less wars, less meddling with other countries problem - Personal freedom and responsibilities - Self sufficiency - No to unrestricted abortion - No to stimulus checks - No to constant lockdown - No to UBI - No to student loan forgiveness - We can define what is a woman and what is a man - No to defund the police - All Lives Matter, including Asian and White lives A lot of immigrants actually have the same interests aligned with conservatives, based on the points above. I think immigrants know firsthand how it feels like to: - Have incompetent government, corrupt government, corrupt media - Have freeloaders everywhere taking advantage of the system, we are here to work, to make money, not to support those who don't - Have violence on the street as a result of police have no teeth - Asian immigrants, experience bias in not being hired/accepted into school, due to Affirmative Action and Diversity Inclusion practice. Asian immigrants on average, economically, actually less better than Blacks So we don't want the countries where we immigrate to, to avoid the problems in the first place, to have the problems we want to avoid. Immigrants also, prefer traditional gender/sex in society. Doesn't mean that woman can't be a plumber, sure they can. We just don't prefer gender fluidity/spectrum to be taught in schools to our children. The reason being, it introduces weakness to the population. Man should be strong, independent (not talking about toxic masculinity), and woman also have very important roles in society. Gender fluidity/spectrum contributes to confusion and undermines the future of the population. That's not to say we don't have trans in our society. We do, and we are okay with that, but they have to play by the rules of the majority. They can't go into man's bahtroom if they are born woman, and vice versa. They can't join woman's sports if they are born man. We are also not okay to make it normalized in school and getting shoved on it by the media.

jameshush 4y ago

I’m not familiar with Thailand, but how are you not paying taxes there? Are they giving you a tax break? 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.

kwere 4y ago
Territorial taxation, one pays taxes only on what is generated inside the country and often remittances. Working as employee is taxed at Thai rate, working as a contractor for foreigners is not taxed
wdb 4y ago
Maybe the person is not declaring income (happens a lot) or they do some travelling to neighbour country shenanigans. There quite a few agencies that help you avoid taxes as a digital nomad
- nevon 4y ago
  You could not declare income in your home country as well. Travelling or not, you're still gonna pay taxes _somewhere_.
soueuls 4y ago
It's technically illegal on a tourist visa (but I am on a weird covid extension scheme). 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.

atmosx 4y ago

> 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. 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 :-)

8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
i don't think you can. it's not like i go out looking for the next big thing to get worked up about, I'm just bombarded with it. even if i somehow avoid media, my fellow humans will bw talking about it.
soueuls 4y ago
In my home country it's not possible to avoid it. 80% of the tech companies have diversity/inclusion meeting/committees where you have to discuss how to hire more women or POC. 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.

rohith2506 4y ago

Sounds like a great environment. I am looking for something similar in Asia for few months. Can you let us know coworking space details?

soueuls 4y ago
The place I am currently living is called "Homa" in Phuket. I think they are going to open a new one in 2023 in another city (better located). 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.