Five Cities Beloved by Digital Nomads

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20160524-five-cities-beloved-by-digital-nomads

by ytNumbers • 10 years ago

53 60 10 years ago

reustle4• 10 years ago

I've never once heard of someone saying that Miami (or Puerto Viejo or Florianópolis) was a good place as a nomad (not even on my radar), and I've been in the "circuit" for almost 2 years now.

bogomipz4• 10 years ago

Agreed, putting Miami there is a bit of a joke. I am curious what is and has been on your radar for digital nomads and what you think the list should be.

reustle4• 10 years ago

Pieter does a pretty good job of taking the list with his NomadList website. It's hard to say here are best cities because people have different wants and tastes. Some like beaches, some like cities, etc.

officialchicken2• 10 years ago

Having been in a Miami-based startup... it's fashionable, but not technological. Just about every single tech show has a runway with DJ, and I don't mean finance. The major downside is the investment community is full of retirees who don't really make good VC's. The mayor of Miami is pushing for generating tech and startups, so at least there's a political will.

scurvy5• 10 years ago

Brazil is an odd choice considering that a visa costs Americans $100 (last I checked).

WildUtah• 10 years ago

$130

And your air ticket is going to cost a lot more than that. The painful part is that you have to fly to a city with a Brazilian Embassy (LA, DC) inside the USA and stay there for a week while your visa application process happens.

DominikR• 10 years ago

What really makes Brazil a no go for me is how dangerous it seems to be. I wouldn't even dare going there for vacation let alone live there for an extended period.

officialchicken2• 10 years ago

Same here; I've never ever once heard any of those 3 cities come up once in a conversation. Without mentioning Gran Canaria (and Tenerife) in the Canary Islands, I am suspect of the writer's actual first-hand experience as a nomad. The Canaries are incredible - great food, excellent bandwidth - although 100ms latency to US/AWS does occur every rare now and then -, surprisingly large startup/digital nomad scene, lots of co-working and housing options, etc.

joelrunyon9• 10 years ago

I've heard Miami is okay for a base of operations. No state income tax, beach, good flight options and relatively good supply of housing (from what I've heard). Also mojitos.

I wouldn't be surprised if Miami moves up the list in the next few years from the tax situation alone.

SwellJoe3• 10 years ago

relatively good supply of extremely expensive housing

FTFY

By US major city standards it isn't completely off-the-wall expensive (I mean, there are at least a dozen more expensive major cities in the US). But, the nomads I know tend to want to save money so they can work less. While I don't set out to find the cheapest place to park my RV, I also don't end up staying in places like Miami for long (when there are similarly nice cities for less than half the price).

bogomipz4• 10 years ago

This link doesn't work, despite not being in the UK, I get:

"We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. "

corv• 10 years ago

https://nomadlist.com/

sjclemmy• 10 years ago

This is a great link!

userulluipeste• 10 years ago

That is an awful link! I might expected to see some bad points for Bucharest because of, I don't know, air maybe!? (...considering it's a capital with traffic and all.) But no - it scores badly for fun! This is the city that has furbished its entire central district for fun only! People from all around the Europe and western part of Asia fly in here to party because the local authorities made it easy to party 24/7 all around the year! No fun? ...really!? Those score points are arbitrary as hell!

pythonscheme• 10 years ago

How do they compute the favoribility of a city?

Yekaterinburg, Russia:

English Speaking: bad

Free WiFi: bad

Friendly to Foreigners: bad

Racial Tolerance: bad

Gay Friendly: bad

New Orleans, USA:

The only bad thing is the absence of free WiFi in the city. Yet, Ekaterinburg is apparently 12% better than New Orleans. How so?

manmal• 10 years ago

Must be the low living and coworking costs.

drfuchs• 10 years ago

SanFrancisco.GayFriendly != Great???

geomark• 10 years ago

Good luck with Thailand. The military junta is close to instituting MITM on all internet communications.[1] They don't even care that it will break online banking and every other business that relies on secure communication. I guess digital nomads will be fine as long as they don't mind that they won't be able to connect securely to their bank, server, AWS, etc.

[1] http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/993937/internet-l...

Canada• 10 years ago

Upvoted because it's good to bring attention to this idiocy, but I don't think the Thai government is going to try breaking the internet. Everyone is hooked on foreign services. Even supporters of the powers that be will go nuts if stuff like Google, Facebook or Tinder stopped working. It's not China, Thailand cannot hope to force everyone to use some local service instead.

hackerboos• 10 years ago

Plus you can't work on a tourist visa and getting a work permit costs a lot of money.

djscram• 10 years ago

Medellin is a really great place for Digital Nomads.

teh_klev• 10 years ago

Linky for those of in the UK and not allowed to see this:

http://archive.is/uNaEf

e40• 10 years ago

Why would bbc.com be off limits to those in the UK? I've never heard this.

scholia2• 10 years ago

The BBC says:

We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes. You can find out more about BBC Worldwide and its digital activities at www.bbcworldwide.com.

codecamper• 10 years ago

I've been to Puerto Viejo & I can tell you... There is nothing there. Well. there were a lot of mosquitos. And very cheap cocaine (i'm not so into that stuff). I guess $6 cocaine might make you very productive?

mixmastamyk2• 10 years ago

I've only been to Floripa from this list---took a surfing class on the north part of the island. It is lovely, but was just a bit too sparse for my taste. You'll want a car unless you enjoy 30 minute bus rides among the multiple neighborhoods.

joelrunyon9• 10 years ago

This is a good idea for a post, but I'm suprised at the list.

Suprised they left out:

-Ho Chi Minh City (huge number of nomads here)

-Bangkok (same thing)

-Prague (the thailand of europe)

-Bali (the original eat, pray, love)

-Medellin (every nomad in South America is here)

smcl• 10 years ago

Why is Prague the Thailand of Europe?

joelrunyon9• 10 years ago

Tongue in cheek.

Seems like a lot of DN head there eventually when they turn to Europe. Cheap COL, good food, cheap beer, good internet.

CuriouslyC• 10 years ago

Prague is no longer cheap, and the food isn't so good there. Budapest is cheaper, fewer tourists and better food. The only thing Prague still has going for it is super cheap high quality beer.

joelrunyon9• 10 years ago

By any western standard, Prague is cheap.

reustle4• 10 years ago

I did January in HCMC this year and was pretty underwhelmed with the nomad scene. There didn't seem to be much going on at all.

ttam2• 10 years ago

Lisbon/Barcelona, though not cheap, have become very popular in Europe

joelrunyon9• 10 years ago

I'll be in Barcelona this summer for a month. It's great.

trentmb2• 10 years ago

What do these folks do for things that require an address? Do hey just have a PO box they check infrequently?

joelrunyon9• 10 years ago

EarthClassMail.com

trentmb2• 10 years ago

Thanks!

superuser2• 10 years ago

Where do digital nomads sleep? I can't imagine that they're signing year-long leases, or that apartments are happy about transient foreign sub-letters dropping in and out. So you have to be rich enough to sleep in hotels every night? I guess there's AieBnb now, but what did they do before that?

icebraining• 10 years ago

I can't say I know any digital nomad, but as a landlord myself, I wouldn't mind as long as they paid upfront and a bit over market price. Considering the difference in purchasing power, this should be affordable.

bogomipz4• 10 years ago

I don't think so, I think once your on the ground you can generally find short term leases.

reustle4• 10 years ago

Generally airbnbs and hotels. You can negotiate off airbnb in most cases for a lower rate, closer to what the market rate is. For example in the center of Bangkok I negotiated down from nearly $1k/mo on airbnb to $447 cash (16,000 bhat).

ttam2• 10 years ago

actually most places (costa rica, thailand, bali, etc) are fine with renting short term; the "no short-term" renting is very american

most of these places have a mid-long stay tourism tradition prior to DNs

IIAOPSW• 10 years ago

"digital nomad" is my dream lifestyle. But one of the major drawbacks longterm is rent vs mortgage. Most societies are structured in a way that wants you to settle down. While monthly rent v. monthly mortgage payments might be similar in cost, and both fix the "where do I sleep" problem, after 30 years one leaves you with equity and the other does not. I wish there was something similar to a co-op where owning part of a company entitled me to a room just not any particular room. E.g owning type A stock lets me use a type A room in any city I happen to be in.

Five Cities Beloved by Digital Nomads

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