Backed by Thailand's highest peak, Inthanon Mountain, and wandering digital nomads in this ancient city, they have their own logic about survival and freedom.
Written by: Offshore Flow.
Editor: Lu Zijia.
Source: Temperature Chronicle WeChat Official Account.
'I'm out of money; I'm ready to go back to find a job.'
In the early morning streets of Chiang Mai, Jian looked up at me and said. Jian is 25 years old and from Yunnan. This is not her first time having to interrupt her journey, return home, find a job, save money, resign, and then continue back on the road.
This time, she stayed in Chiang Mai longer than usual and couldn’t remember how many times she had spent all her savings. She is very curious about how other young people can travel while also making money.
After all, in the philosophy of most Chinese people, survival is more important than faith; travel is merely a spice sprinkled on survival.
Throughout history, people have always had to leave their homeland for survival, venturing eastward or going south to seek a living. In the digital age, foreign lands have become the exploration and even the daily life of today’s young people—an emerging group of transnational digital nomads.
Backed by Thailand's highest peak, Inthanon Mountain, and wandering digital nomads in this ancient city, they have their own logic about survival and freedom.
The lie of restarting life.
'I knew about Web 3 back in high school, but my two internships during college were at internet companies, and I found that I didn't like the work pace of big companies. Eventually, I found a Web 3 company before graduation, and I've been there ever since.'
Zoe, a post-00s girl from Shenzhen, is the youngest member I met in the digital nomad community in Chiang Mai. With a unique Southeast Asian islander tan, she achieved the Work-Life Balance (WLB) that many people dream of shortly after graduating from university, traveling and working in places like Dali, Shenzhen, Chiang Mai, and Bali with some friends in the community, a trajectory that sounds like something only a white girl would have.
During my more than half a year of travels in Southeast Asia, Zoe is one of the few examples I encountered who took her first step in her career into the digital nomadic lifestyle. Many more young people aim to escape from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen to rebuild their lives in exotic Southeast Asian countries.
Before this, I saw more nomads who had gone through many twists and turns; they were sometimes eager to explore and sometimes passively waiting. Regardless, they just wanted to settle down in foreign lands.
This is quite different from the image of nomads shaped on domestic social media platforms.
It is neither about labeling courageous rebellion against meaningless 'bullshit jobs' nor about pursuing personal spiritual freedom, but rather a life reboot achieved through digital nomadism under the sun, beach, and sea.
It is not so-called demystification of digital nomads. After a hasty resignation, seeing Cangshan and Erhai, traveling the world, suddenly understanding the meaning of life, and publicly announcing that digital nomads are just a game of traffic monetization, ultimately walking the old path of 'selling courses and cutting leeks' on Douyin and Xiaohongshu.
Just like Che Guevara wrote in his diary while traveling through South America on a motorcycle: 'I feel that I am different now compared to when I first set off.' Digital nomads also have so-called 'life moments.'
In the dilapidated Malaysian passenger ship rocking in the waves of the South China Sea, on the motorcycle weaving through the shadows of Chiang Mai's ancient city walls, in the back of a pickup truck speeding along the slippery tropical roads near the equator. Each time, when the familiar floating sensation comes with the hot, sticky air of the Southeast Asian wilderness, it arrives suddenly at some moment during each unknown journey and fades away quickly.
This makes many young digital nomads nostalgic and wandering.
Ferry at the port of Malaysia.
However, even in Southeast Asia, the trivial and helpless daily life is equally unavoidable.
The nomadic lifestyle is not a panacea for life. In Chiang Mai, a city with low consumption, friends often complain to me about the difficulties of establishing a foothold abroad—because the client has delayed settling wages; at the poorest times, only a few hundred Thai baht are left, forcing them to rely on borrowing to get through.
Australian Theravada Buddhist monk Damika said in (Good Questions, Good Answers): 'Driven by fear, people go to sacred mountains, sacred forests, and sacred places.'
In the original text, this sentence lacks context. People may be trapped in their comfort zones due to fear of the outside world, but for nomads, foreign lands are not utopias; exploring outward is also a fear of a routine daily life.
Young workers who have lived in cities are tired of the life of commuting between three points, everything looking towards money, and a lack of meaning; they are anxious about the future, losing the present. In Chiang Mai, where coffee and hobby freedoms can be easily realized, many nomads also muddle through in an inverted daily routine, wandering between cafes and bars.
It can be confirmed that in the ancient city of Chiang Mai, where there is a strong Buddhist atmosphere every five steps, many digital nomads' lifestyles are also difficult to escape the shackles of survival.
Alcohol, tobacco, how many places one has been to, how many impressive people one has met; superficial freedom cannot constitute the flow of life.
Monks and pagodas in local paintings.
The international consulting agency MBO Partners conducted a survey in 2021 on (The Digital Nomad Search Continues), which showed that most digital nomads do not maintain their lifestyle for more than three years.
Three years, this time limit is a curse for these confident adventurers who have mastered their youth.
Wilderness or track?
Compared to the bustling and crowded Bangkok, the rainy season in Chiang Mai with few tourists feels like another world.
Riding a motorcycle, heading in any direction around the ancient city for less than an hour, you can see lush green covering the mountains and fields, occasionally dotted with dark, quiet ponds. By evening, the noisy sound of throttles quiets down with the darkening sky, and all that can be seen are large clouds overhead. If lucky, the stars may reveal themselves behind the clouds blown away by the mountain breeze. This is why Chiang Mai is regarded as an ideal place for meditation and seclusion.
Over thirty, Junan moved from Dali to Chiang Mai last year. His workplace is hidden in the mountains of the outskirts of Chiang Mai.
At the foot of Inthanon Mountain.
Strictly speaking, Junan is not a typical digital nomad since his profession does not require the internet.
From the perspective of city dwellers, Junan and his work may experience absolute freedom—he is a practitioner of body, mind, and spirit.
He will lead students in the wilderness to play guitar, blow the didgeridoo (a traditional instrument of the Australian Aboriginal tribes, one of the oldest instruments in the world), dance, sing divine songs, set up idols in a loft filled with Southeast Asian tropical vibes, light incense, and arrange various herbs, leading people into the 'spiritual journey.'
Junan is a music teacher in Dali. Whenever life needs a bit of freshness, he comes to the rainforests of Southeast Asia, to the mountains of Chiang Mai. He then becomes a representative of wilderness and freedom in others' eyes.
'So will these connections of body, mind, and spirit make your real life better?' My question was quite utilitarian.
'Hmm, it will indeed.' Junan pondered for a moment. 'I have a more concrete idea of what I want. For example, most of the people who come to participate in our spiritual ceremonies are foreigners. At this stage, my goal is to hope that more Chinese can feel the spiritual world.'
Many participants in the experiential ceremony are founders, investors of domestic tech companies, and people from the Web 3 industry. 'Everyone generally feels good, and over 80% of people would come again.'
The connection between body and spirit may break through class boundaries, but participating in body and spirit courses has high thresholds—each session starts at 10,000 yuan. In Chiang Mai, the average GDP per capita in 2021 was approximately 135,991 Thai baht (about 28,000 RMB).
One core reason why the digital nomadic lifestyle appears relatively free is geographic arbitrage, earning US dollars and RMB between the blurred lines of different worlds. Junan's life and career in the relatively low-cost Chiang Mai are indeed getting better, just as he hoped.
Beyond the Web 3 industry cluster, the life of digital nomads is not as pleasant as imagined, especially for those whose professions are not very suitable for remote work and want to transition to become digital nomads.
Jian, who has traveled abroad many times, keeps a close eye on her daily living expenses. She looks for various purchasing opportunities and inquires about money-making channels from other nomads.
When the accommodation price of Mad Monkey (a well-known budget hostel chain in Southeast Asia) exceeds 300 Thai baht (about 60 RMB), she immediately opens accommodation apps to find alternatives. She controls her daily meal budget within 100 Thai baht and almost never participates in popular activities like elephant conservation and Muay Thai matches in Chiang Mai.
Chiang Mai local band performed for flood relief.
Another example of a relatively smooth transition from a domestic internet giant is Alian.
On social media, a key theme of Alian's self-media channel is exploring how digital nomads around the world earn money to support their global living.
'After self-studying Web 3 development for more than a month, I quickly went through the front-end trio and REACT, blockchain development, Solidity development, and listened to industry podcasts and participated in online conferences, managing to create some simple projects on GitHub, and carefully writing my LinkedIn profile. I thought about joining the community first, doing some simple projects to accumulate actual project experience, and then slowly changing fields or positions. Unexpectedly, I was able to chat with the founder directly; maybe my sincerity moved the big shots. By the end of August, I got an opportunity to enter the industry and can join a project team. Everything starts from 0 to 1, beginning as an intern.'
By the pool with rippling water, under the bright floor-to-ceiling windows, nomads like Alian each guard a table, facing their work tools, focusing intently on their keyboards, the quiet yet urgent atmosphere feels like returning to the self-study room of a university library.
If we say that digital nomads coming from China to Chiang Mai carry some depth unique to East Asians and faces full of stories, the white residents who have lived in Chiang Mai have an unreplicable sense of relaxation. Traveling in Southeast Asia and flying to Australia on WHV (Working Holiday Visa) seems to have become a trend for young people in Europe and America to spend their exploratory youth.
Foreign backpackers and Chinese tattoos behind them.
I know a French guy named William, who occasionally takes on remote part-time jobs with unemployment benefits and doesn't have to worry about the gap in his employment history while wandering in Malaysia and Thailand for half a year; an Australian punk guy works for two to three months each year, then rides a motorcycle bought in Laos to travel around Southeast Asia for the next six months; a Kiwi girl I met at a Chiang Mai hostel doesn't have to worry about retirement issues, even if she has never worked or paid personal insurance, she can receive a pension without any deductions when she retires.
Chiang Mai has exquisite shared spaces with a small bourgeois vibe on Nimmanhaemin Road, as well as low, old, dark rooms near Ping River, just like Westerners holding high exchange rate currencies working in high-benefit Western companies, completing their 'geographic arbitrage.' Digital nomads from different cultural strata in Chiang Mai also have their own wilderness and tracks; only some were born into what others see as 'wilderness.'
The narrative of any person is not only derived from themselves but also from the history and culture behind them.
As French writer Eric Pion said: 'This place I once tried hard to escape: a social space I deliberately distanced myself from, a spiritual space that served as a negative model during my growth, is also, no matter how I resist, still a part of my spiritual core—my hometown.'
A unique worship in a temple in Chiang Mai.
Acknowledging that certain cores continue as an inseparable part of body and spirit, this may be the first lesson for digital nomads heading to foreign lands.
Returning to the real present.
'The endless monsoon rains may transform the otter back into a whale.' This is a sentence by Malaysian Chinese writer Huang Jinshu. The ancestors of whales evolved from fish that came ashore but returned to the sea for various reasons; their close relatives are otters.
The rains in Malaysia are like giant whales returning to the deep sea in cycles, while the rainwater in Chiang Mai is filled with the rhythm of life. After every rain, the greenery outside the window appears more vibrant, and the ancient city wall becomes a bit thicker.
Xiaoxia can be regarded as a 'river otter' in Chiang Mai. Her first job after graduation was as a bank teller in a small city in her hometown, a stable career position, 'on the shore,' day after day. 'My daily job is to help the elderly apply for cards and withdraw their pension; I can easily imagine what the future looks like.'
Thus, Xiaoxia chooses to return to the sea.
Diaoman Island and the South China Sea in the rain.
'At that time, cross-border e-commerce was very popular, and I happened to be good at English and got a job as an English customer service representative. The boss was a foreigner, the workload was quite relaxed, and I gradually became familiar with the industry and started to do it myself.'
Xiaoxia has started to move away from her initial customer service position, gradually transitioning from hard-earned work hours to taking on some cross-border projects, and has also taken on remote positions. With more freedom in money and time, Xiaoxia wanders in digital nomad communities in Anji, Jingdezhen, Dali, and then travels to Singapore, Penang, and Chiang Mai.
After choosing to become a digital nomad, Xiaoxia's work and life have been improving, so when she suddenly decided to return to work in her home country at the end of the year, people around her were quite surprised, 'I can get a senior management position back home, and this position can connect to some resources through the company's platform. The collaborations I have on hand won't be abandoned.' Xiaoxia looks very excited.
For most people, the vague feeling that they have been so happy because of work was a long time ago. Now, people easily feel impatient with the present, thinking that a better life must be in the future. In the end, in one dry, solidified night after another, they drop their work, lose friends, and look around in confusion.
ENJOY THE LIFE graffiti on the streets of Chiang Mai.
Young people's spiritual mentor Xiang Biao says that Chinese people are living a suspended life, and whether one can enjoy life in time is not important; what matters is that moment when the future may collapse.
Xiaoxia is an exception. For her, whether one is a nomad or not is not the main line of life, but merely a way of living that one actively chooses.
City dwellers have an exaggerated imagination of the nomadic lifestyle, just like the lines from the movie (Into the Wild): 'It is undeniable that being 'unfettered' can always make people feel excited and happy. Because accompanying it is the escape from history, oppression, rules, and the tedious obligations and responsibilities. The so-called absolute freedom.'
People cannot always be surging with enthusiasm; in the end, everything will return to the average.
Lotus in the moat of Chiang Mai.
But for Xiaoxia, when she chooses to jump back into the sea from the shore, it means that a 'young whale' can migrate from the warm tropical breeding grounds to the polar regions to forage.
Having seen many young people come and go, the community organizer Ziyi never cares where the people entering the community come from, what they do, or where they are going. She hardly pays attention; she believes that the community will naturally embrace various people.
The gamer left behind a brand new PS5 here, and soon someone contributed (Black Myth: Wukong) (Elden Ring); old Ai, who does the shisha business, bought two sets of shisha equipment to satisfy cravings, making the nightly shisha sessions a regular nighttime activity in the community, and even the shisha master has been passed down to the fifth generation; local staff in Chiang Mai can arrange flower beds, courtyards, and other decorations according to their preferences, with small surprises hidden throughout the public spaces.
Playing (Black Myth) in the community.
'Let's see what it becomes.'
In addition to collaborating with various nomadic communities such as DNA, NCC, 706 Youth Space, Shanhaiwu, and Wacat, Ziyi also plans to include some feminist communities in the next steps. 'I don't want to label the inn; it's still the community itself. It welcomes any normal human being.'
Nomads are fluid, including the community itself; some people leave but still want to return, while others stay without any particular reason.
People who fit into the nomad community unknowingly stay here for a long time.
Chiang Mai University at the foot of Suthep Mountain.
As the rainy season in Chiang Mai is about to end, and a week after Jian left Chiang Mai to return home, I asked her if she had found a new job. There was silence on the other end of the phone for a moment.
'Wish me to become a digital nomad soon.'
Doesn't require a lot of money.
'It is enough to support myself while drifting.'
