Nick W

Mike is sitting by a rooftop pool above a condo in Bangkok. The city sounds come up to us, the drone of cars and motorcycles and the grinding crashes of construction. They’re ever-present in Thailand’s capital as it recovers from its Covid lockdowns. It’s hot and humid, the clouds scatter across a brilliant blue sky.

Mike’s talking about life as a digital nomad. He’s one of 15.5 million digital nomads hailing from the U.S. “I’m working about ten hours a week at the moment,” he says. “All my expenses are paid, my bills and my adventures. I’d like to bring it down more.”

How is Mike managing to fund a lifestyle that most of us could only dream to achieve? He charges a high price for his services, provides good value for that investment and lives where the living is easy. As a U.S. citizen, Mike is used to paying a high premium on utilities and rent, yet in Thailand he’s spending a fraction of what he did in the States.

“It makes sense to me, I’m still young and this is the time when I want to be pursuing my passions. Thailand has some of the best climbing here in South East Asia. If I were in the States, I’d probably live in Vegas. There’s climbing half an hour from downtown. But it would be a whole lot more expensive.”

Finding the gigs or jobs that maintain this lifestyle can be a challenge to overcome. It requires self-marketing, time flexibility and a promising resume. Upwork and JobServe are popular platforms, though new startups like Darkily.com are also aiming to connect freelancers and companies. As the market grows and remote work becomes increasingly accepted, the ways digital nomads look for work will grow and evolve. It can currently be a case of flood or drought, with digital nomads often working for multiple companies at the same time. Yet, then the next month, they may struggle to find anything at all. Not everyone is cut out for how unstable this line of work can be.

When I ask what was the greatest challenge around being remote in Thailand, Mike becomes more thoughtful. “My family,” he says. “My family lives in San Diego and I’m close with them. Not seeing them for this long has been tough in a lot of ways.”

A digital nomad is often far from their original support networks. These can be families, friends, co-workers or even support workers like therapists. At the same time, they face difficulties and stresses people who work in traditional jobs would never experience. Many nomads would agree that the difficulties aren’t greater, they’re just different.

The found families that expats and nomads build while living abroad are often both ephemeral and deeply connected. With less time to get to know each other and a high turnover rate, nomads will often skip the small talk and form close bonds in days and weeks. Mike spoke about finding friends through his hobbies and his friendship group grew from there. “I was coaching this friend at the climbing gym for weeks. You know, giving her advice. She brought me into her group, we went out for meals afterwards. It grew like that.”

A constant challenge for digital nomads is the visa. In the time of Covid, this was an especially thorny issue. Many digital nomads had to pay increasing amounts of money to stay in their chosen countries and were often under threat of expulsion and frustrated by ever-changing legislation. This, along with other stress factors, like distance from families have lead digital nomads to look for therapy online. Betterhelp.com is one place where digital nomads can receive help from licensed remote therapists who understand the specific issues on a personal level.

Mike is a software engineer, designing and writing code for manufacturing lines along with a small team of friends based mostly in the US. We’ve come to expect high wages and remote work from tech professionals, but what about other industries? With the ingenuity of youth and the pressures of Covid, a growing number of jobs and businesses are finding new expression online. It’s no longer just for tech professionals. The nomad experience is one increasingly open to the wider public and it’s here to stay.