Five cities as a nomad: how I pick a base

Kuala Lumpur / Penang / Chiang Mai / Yerevan / Tbilisi… living in five cities as a nomad

“Digital nomad” is a label that sounds cool, but only those living it know the ups and downs.

It does mean you can choose more freely where to live, but it also comes with a lot of decisions to make: visas, housing, budget, safety, healthcare, work efficiency, and whether a place suits your body and your state of mind.

Over the past few months I’ve stayed in or passed through:

Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Chiang Mai, Yerevan and Tbilisi. Setting the traveler’s view aside, I looked at them from the angle of “could this support a stretch of stable life for me.”

Here are the factors I look at when choosing where to live:

• Visa / legal stay: How long can you stay? Can you extend? Do you need to prepare documents in advance? Does it suit remote workers / freelancers?
• Housing: Is monthly rent reasonable? Is the quality of listings consistent? Is the location convenient? Are there supermarkets, cafés and gyms nearby? Are short-term rents pushed up by the tourist market?
• Budget: What does a month of real life actually cost? Is rent a large share? How much do you need to live comfortably?
• Work efficiency: Is the internet stable? Are cafés good for working? Is there a coworking space? Does the city’s pace make it easy to get into work mode? Does the time zone suit your current work / collaborators?
• Safety and healthcare: How is public safety? Can you go out alone at night? How would you handle a minor illness, an emergency, an accident? Do you need extra insurance?
• Everyday convenience: How are transport, payments, food delivery, how widely English is spoken, shopping, and the efficiency of official errands? Beyond work, is there entertainment and things to do to balance life?
• Climate / nature / physical comfort: Does the climate suit you? Are there parks or natural spaces nearby to walk and space out in? Does your body feel comfortable here, or is it constantly being drained?
• Community / cultural atmosphere: Is it easy to meet like-minded people? Are there indie developers, remote workers, creators? Does the city have its own cultural density? Am I inspired here, or just entertained?
• Personal fit: Am I more relaxed here, or more scattered? Do I want to build a routine? Does this place make me want to work, read, walk, live more? Is loneliness amplified here, or given a place to rest?

You could give each factor a weight that fits your own needs, then evaluate your candidate cities overall.

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Here’s a brief feel for each city

Budget basis: one person, comfortable but not lavish, excluding flights, visas, big purchases and major medical costs.

Kuala Lumpur — a pragmatic stopover base

Very convenient, with mature city infrastructure; good for a stopover, a worldly life, and getting your life back in order.

Visa: Malaysia has long-stay options such as DE Rantau for digital professionals / remote workers, but you need to meet income and document requirements. Monthly budget: USD 1,200–1,800. Rent: USD 500–900. Impressions: a strong urban feel, very convenient, lots of great food, but the traffic and the humid heat drain some of your energy.

Good for: people who need convenience, efficiency, a stopover, practical stability. Not for: people who rely heavily on a city’s character and on being fed spiritually.

Penang — slow living and a sense of recovery

A slower pace and a stronger sense of everyday life; the food and the old town’s character are very appealing. It may suit recovering and living more than an intense work sprint.

Visa: same as above. Monthly budget: USD 1,000–1,500. Rent: USD 350–700. Impressions: Nanyang charm, delicious, an old town with a lived-in feel, but the work community and the city’s energy may not match Kuala Lumpur or Chiang Mai.

Good for: a recovery period, slow living, people who love everyday life and food. Not for: people who need a strong community, lots of events, a startup atmosphere.

Chiang Mai — the city closest to the “digital nomad standard answer”

Cafés, coworking, remote workers, cost of living, community events: all of this infrastructure is fairly mature.

Visa: Thailand’s DTV is relatively friendly to digital nomads, remote workers and freelancers. Monthly budget: USD 900–1,400. Rent: USD 300–600. Impressions: friendly, great coffee, an easygoing pace, good for working and recovering. But the air during burning season is a real drawback, and being too comfortable can also make you drift.

Good for: remote work, indie development, low-cost living, people who want to join the nomad community. Not for: people sensitive to air quality, who need strong urban order, or who lose focus easily in a relaxed environment.

Yerevan — small and lovely, at a bit of a distance

Yerevan isn’t a typical digital nomad city, but it has a very particular texture.

Compact, concentrated, with a sense of history, and a kind of refinement and strangeness of a city of stone.

Visa: Chinese ordinary passports can stay visa-free for up to 90 days in any 180. Monthly budget: USD 1,200–1,800. Rent: USD 500–900. Impressions: snowy mountains, stone, a city on a small scale, with cultural density. But the language, infrastructure, English environment and digital nomad community all need more checking.

Good for: people who enjoy cultural difference and unfamiliarity, and don’t depend on a mature nomad community. Not for: people who need high convenience, a stable English-speaking environment, mature remote-work infrastructure.

Tbilisi — attitude and stories

Tbilisi is a city that easily sets your imagination going.

It mixes the bustle of the old town, the modernity of the new town, the avant-garde feel of shared communities, and a kind of rough but opinionated cultural character.

Visa: Chinese ordinary passports get 30 days visa-free for tourism. Monthly budget: USD 1,200–1,900. Rent: USD 500–900. Impressions: a blend, with attitude, strong coffee and neighborhood culture. But as a long-term base, visas, housing, healthcare, sense of safety and regional stability all need a careful look.

Good for: people who value a city’s character, cultural aesthetics, café-and-neighborhood life. Not for: people who, right now, especially need stability, low friction and a lot of certainty.

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There’s no perfect home, but I hope you and I can each find a temporary home of our own.

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Every time I set off, I hope to come back safe and well. If you’ve read this far, take a look at my second indie product, AllGood · 好好的. It’s an index of your life’s information, and maybe your first life ___