Author: Offshore Flow

I have no money left, and I'm preparing to go back to find a job.

In the early morning streets of Chiang Mai, Jane said to me. Jane 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, quit, and then continue back on the road.

She stayed in Chiang Mai for an unusually long time and couldn't remember how many times she had run out of savings. She was very curious about how other young people managed to travel and earn money at the same time.

After all, in the philosophy of most Chinese people, survival is more important than faith, and travel is merely a spice sprinkled on survival.

Historically, people have always had to leave their homeland for survival, crossing into the East, going to the South Seas, and leaving home to seek a living. In the digital age, foreign lands have become a daily exploration and even a lifestyle for the younger generation — a group of cross-border digital nomads has emerged.

Leaning against Doi Inthanon, the highest peak in Thailand, and wandering digital nomads in this ancient city have their own logic about survival and freedom.

The lie of rebooting life

I learned about Web 3 in high school, but during my two internships in college at internet companies, I found that I did not like the work pace of big companies. Finally, before graduation, I found a company in the Web 3 industry, and I have been here ever since.

Zoe, a post-2000 girl from Shenzhen, is the youngest member I met in the Chiang Mai digital nomad community. With a uniquely Southeast Asian tan, she achieved a work-life balance that many people dream of right after graduating from university, traveling and working in places like Dali, Shenzhen, Chiang Mai, and Bali with some friends in the community, a lifestyle that sounds like something a Caucasian girl would have.

During my more than half a year of travel in Southeast Asia, Zoe is one of the few samples who stepped into the digital nomadic lifestyle as the first step in her career. More young people aim to escape from big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen to reconstruct their lives in the foreign land of Southeast Asia.

Before this, I saw more nomads who had gone through ups and downs, sometimes eagerly pursuing exploration, and sometimes passively waiting. Regardless, settling down in a foreign land is enough.

This is quite different from the image of nomads portrayed on domestic social media platforms.

It is neither about labeling the meaningless 'bullshit jobs' nor about pursuing personal spiritual freedom. From then on, through digital nomadism, life was rebooted with sunshine, beach, and sea.

It is also not the so-called 'disenchantment' of digital nomads. After hastily quitting, viewing Cangshan and Erhai, traveling the world, it suddenly became clear that the meaning of life is just a game of monetizing traffic, ultimately leading to the old path of selling courses on Douyin and Xiaohongshu.

Just like Che Guevara wrote in his diary while traveling across South America: 'I feel different now compared to when I first set off.' Digital nomads also have so-called 'life moments.'

In the old Malaysian ferry rocking in the South China Sea, on a motorcycle weaving through the shadows of the ancient city walls of Chiang Mai, and in the back of a pickup truck speeding on the slippery roads near the equator. Each time faced with the hot, sticky air of the Southeast Asian wilderness, that familiar sense of floating always comes, appearing at some moment during each unknown journey and then quickly fading away.

This makes many young digital nomads linger with nostalgia.

Ferry in a Malaysian port

However, even in Southeast Asia, the trivial and helpless daily life is also difficult to avoid.

The nomadic lifestyle is not a panacea for life. In the relatively low-cost nomadic city of Chiang Mai, friends often complain to me about the difficulty of establishing themselves overseas — because the client has delayed settling the payment, leaving only a few hundred THB during the hardest times, having to rely on loans 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 stuck in their comfort zones due to fear of the outside world, but for nomads, foreign lands are not utopias. Seeking the outside world is also a fear of the monotony of daily life.

Young workers who have lived in the city for a long time are tired of the monotonous life of working for money, feeling a lack of meaning. They are anxious about the future and lose touch with the present. In Chiang Mai, where coffee and hobbies can be freely pursued, many nomads are also muddling through in a chaotic daily routine, wandering between cafes and bars.

What can be confirmed is that in the ancient city of Chiang Mai, where the Buddhist atmosphere is strong with temples every five steps, many digital nomads' lifestyles are also difficult to escape the shackles of survival itself.

Alcohol, tobacco, the number of places visited, and the number of impressive people met cannot constitute the flow of life.

Monks and pagodas in local paintings

International consulting firm MBO Partners conducted a survey in 2021 about (The Digital Nomad Search Continues), showing that most digital nomads do not continue their lifestyle for more than three years.

Three years, this limit is a curse for those confident adventurers who have grasped their youth.

Wilderness or track?

Compared to the bustling, crowded Bangkok, the rainy season Chiang Mai with few tourists is another world.

Riding a motorcycle, driving in any direction around the ancient city for less than an hour, one can see the rolling greens covering the mountains and fields, occasionally dotted with dark and quiet ponds. By evening, the noisy rev of engines quiets down with the dusk, and all that can be seen are large clouds overhead. If lucky, the stars may reveal themselves behind the clouds opened by the mountain winds. This has made Chiang Mai regarded as an ideal place for meditation and retreat.

Jun'an, who is over thirty, moved from Dali to Chiang Mai last year. The place where he works is hidden in the mountains of the outskirts of Chiang Mai.

Doi Inthanon Mountain foot

Strictly speaking, Jun'an is not a typical digital nomad because his profession does not require the internet.

From the perspective of people living in the city for a long time, Jun'an and his work might experience absolute freedom — he is a practitioner of body, mind, and spirit.

He will take students to play guitar in the wilderness, blow the didgeridoo, dance, sing divine songs, set up idols in an attic filled with Southeast Asian tropical atmosphere, light incense, and arrange various herbs, guiding people into a 'spiritual journey.'

Jun'an 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 the eyes of others.

'So, will these connections of body and mind make your real life better?' My question was quite utilitarian.

'Well, it will indeed,' Jun'an pondered for a moment. 'I have a clearer vision of what I want. For example, most of those who come to participate in our spiritual ceremonies are foreigners, and my current goal is to hope that more Chinese can feel the spiritual world.'

Many participants in the experience ceremony are founders and investors from domestic tech companies as well as people from the Web 3 industry. 'Everyone generally feels good, and more than 80% of people would come back.'

The connection between body and mind may break through class barriers, but attending courses on body and mind has quite a high threshold — starting from 10,000 THB each time. In Chiang Mai, the average GDP per capita in 2021 was about 135,991 THB (approximately 28,000 RMB).

One core reason the lifestyle of digital nomads can seem relatively free is geographical arbitrage, making money in different worlds while living between fuzzy lines. Jun'an's life and career in Chiang Mai, where prices are relatively low, indeed seem to be getting better, just as he hoped.

Outside the Web 3 industry gathering area, life as a digital nomad is not as pleasant as imagined, especially for those whose careers are not suitable for remote work and want to transition to become digital nomads.

Jane, who has traveled abroad multiple times, meticulously calculates her daily living expenses. She looks for various purchasing opportunities and asks other nomads about their money-making channels.

When the accommodation price at Mad Monkey (a well-known budget hostel chain in Southeast Asia) exceeds 300 THB (about 60 RMB), she immediately opens accommodation apps to find alternatives. She controls her daily meal budget within 100 THB, and she hardly participates in popular activities like elephant conservation or watching Muay Thai matches in Chiang Mai.

Local band in Chiang Mai performs for flood relief

Another example is Alian, who hastily quit her job at a major internet company in China and has had a relatively smooth transition.

On social media, an important 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 over a month, quickly learning the front-end trio and REACT, blockchain development, Solidity development, and frantically listening to industry podcasts, attending online conferences, browsing Twitter for news, and working on simple projects on GitHub, I carefully wrote my LinkedIn profile. I thought about joining the community first to work on some simple projects, accumulate practical project experience, and then gradually transition careers, but unexpectedly I was able to chat with the founders directly. Perhaps sincerity touched the big shots, and by the end of August, I got the opportunity to enter the industry and join the project team. Everything started 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, engrossed in typing away, creating a quiet yet urgent atmosphere reminiscent of a study room for exam preparation in a university library.

If digital nomads from China carry a bit of the unique depth of East Asians, and faces filled with stories, long-term residents in Chiang Mai possess a relaxation that is hard to imitate. Traveling in Southeast Asia and flying to Australia on a Working Holiday Visa (WHV) seems to have become a trend for young people from Europe and America to spend their youth exploring.

Foreign backpackers and Chinese tattoos on their backs

I know a French guy named William who occasionally takes remote part-time jobs with unemployment benefits and doesn't have to worry about a gap year while drifting around Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand for half a year; an Australian punk guy who works for two to three months a year rides a motorcycle bought in Laos and travels around Southeast Asia for the next six months; a girl from New Zealand I met at a Chiang Mai hostel doesn't have to worry about retirement, even if she has never worked or paid personal insurance, she can receive her pension without any discrepancy when she retires.

Chiang Mai has chic shared spaces on Nimmanhaemin Road, as well as low, old, dark rooms near Ping River, just like Westerners with high exchange rate currency working for high-tech welfare companies, completing their 'geographical arbitrage.' Digital nomads from different cultural strata in Chiang Mai also have their own wilderness and tracks, except that some people are born in what others see as 'wilderness.'

Anyone's narrative is not only derived from oneself but also from the history and culture behind it.

As French writer Éric P. said: 'This place I once desperately tried to escape: a social space I deliberately distanced myself from, a spiritual space that served as a negative example during my growth, is also, no matter how I resist, still an integral 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 mind, this may be the first lesson for digital nomads heading to foreign lands.

Return to the real present

'Endless monsoon rains, the water otter may again transform into a whale.' This is a line from Malaysian Chinese writer Huang Jinshu because the ancestors of whales evolved from fish that came ashore into mammals but for various reasons returned to the sea. Its close relative is the water otter.

The rain in Malaysia is like a giant whale returning to the deep sea repeatedly, while the rain in Chiang Mai is filled with the rhythm of life. After each rain, the greenery outside the window becomes more vibrant, and the ancient city walls gain another layer of weight.

Xiaoxia can be considered a 'water otter' in Chiang Mai. Her first job after graduation was as a bank teller in a small city in her hometown, with a stable job position, living a daily life on the 'shore.' 'My job every day is to help elderly people apply for cards and collect pension insurance money; I can fully imagine what the future will look like.'

Thus, Xiaoxia chose to return to the sea.

The islands of Koh Tao in the rain and the South China Sea

At that time, cross-border e-commerce was very popular, and I happened to be good at English and got hired for an English customer service position. The boss was a foreigner, and the workload was quite relaxed. I gradually got familiar with the industry and started doing it myself.

Xiaoxia began to leave her initial customer service position, gradually transitioning to taking on some cross-border projects and working remotely. With more freedom in terms of money and time, Xiaoxia wandered in digital nomad communities in Anji, Jingdezhen, Dali, and then to Singapore, Penang, and Chiang Mai.

After Xiaoxia chose to become a digital nomad, her work and life improved, so when she suddenly decided to return home to work at the end of the year, it surprised those around her. 'I can take a senior management position upon return, and this position can connect to some resources through the company's platform. Some projects I'm currently collaborating on will not be dropped.' Xiaoxia looked excited.

Most people vaguely feel that it has been a long time since they were so happy because of work. Now, people are easily impatient with their daily lives, believing that a better life is surely in the future. In the end, in one dry, solid night after another, they drop their jobs and lose friends, looking around in confusion.

ENJOY THE LIFE Chiang Mai street graffiti

Young people's spiritual mentor Xiang Biao said that Chinese people are living a suspended life, and whether they can enjoy the moment is not important; what matters is the 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 life that one actively chooses.

People living in cities for a long time have excessive imaginations about the lives of nomads, just like the line from the movie (Into the Wild): 'It is undeniable that 'being unbound' can always make people feel excited and happy. Because accompanying it is the escape from history, oppression, rules, and those tedious obligations and responsibilities. So-called absolute freedom.'

People cannot be surging with excitement all the time; eventually, everything will return to the average.

Lotus flowers in the moat of Chiang Mai

But for Xiaoxia, when she chose to jump back into the sea from the shore, it meant a 'young whale' could migrate from the warm tropical breeding ground to the polar region to forage.

Having seen many young people come and go, the community manager Zihua never cares where newcomers come from, what they do, or where they are going. She hardly pays attention; she believes that the community will naturally embrace all kinds of people.

A gamer left a brand new PS5 here, followed by someone contributing (Black Myth: Wukong) and (Elden Ring); Lao Ai, who runs a shisha business, bought two sets of shisha equipment to satisfy cravings, making the shisha sessions a fixed evening program in the community, even passing down the shisha skills to the fifth generation; local staff in Chiang Mai can arrange flower beds, courtyards, and other decorations according to their preferences, with hidden surprises throughout the public space.

Playing (Black Myth) in the community

Let's see what it will become.

In addition to collaborating with nomadic communities like DNA, NCC, 706 Youth Space, Shanhaiwu, and Wamao, Zihua also plans to incorporate some feminist communities next. 'I don't want to label the hostel; it's about the community itself. It welcomes any normal human beings.'

Nomads are fluid, including the community itself. Some people leave but still want to return, while others have always been here without any particular reason.

People suited for nomadic communities unknowingly stay here for a long time.

Chiang Mai University at the foot of Doi Suthep

As the rainy season in Chiang Mai was coming to an end, and just a week after Jane left Chiang Mai to return home, I asked her if she found a new job. There was silence on the other end of the phone for a moment.

I hope to become a digital nomad soon.

No need for a lot of money.

It's enough to support oneself while drifting.