News Forum - Bangkok comes in at #2 on best digital nomad cities

[Thaiger]

A study by a UK-based company has named Bangkok the second best city in the world to work as a digital nomad. The company, called The Instant Group, is a flexible working solutions provider. The Instant Group found that over have of the world’s top 60 cities for digital nomads are in Asia. Other Asian cities on the list included Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Hong Kong. But the one city to beat Bangkok is Libson, Portugal. In choosing the best cities for digital nomads, The Instant Group considered these factors: affordability, weather, broadband speed, scenery, and transport. Bangkok scored […]

The story Bangkok comes in at #2 on best digital nomad cities as seen on Thaiger News.

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[Artemis080]

Realistically, there is only one reason that DN's are flocking to Portugal over Bangkok - decent visas and residency.

Thailand gets 10 year LTR visas that you have to work for stock exchange listed companies and other hoops of fire. I'm all for there being a standard, but frankly the rest of the world is eating Thailand's lunch to meet remote worker demand. And that's sad given that tonight I went to out dinner and every restaurant was mostly empty at 8pm.

 

[minvan]

I doubt these researchers have any real world experiences regarding to these topics. Delusional LTR visa requirement just as everyone expected.

$1m US asset? Fine, but who gets +$80k pension these days? What year is this?

Making $80k annual salary? Not a problem. But good luck find the company that make more than $150m as a revenue and let their employees working remotely off the business hours other side of globe. Most of those employers who are willing to pay that much of salaries for remote employees are mostly start-up and they are not making that kind of revenue nor those are trading on the major stock exchanges. 

If Thailand really wants to attract remote work population and fulfills their desire to find 1 million remote work people to apply those visas, they should either remove that minimum revenue requirement of employer or make separated categories for self-employed people who make much more than +80K which most of DN population is.

Hope they do some research before make these idiotic visa requirement and be realistic about their expectation. 

[Artemis080]

5 hours ago, minvan said:

If Thailand really wants to attract remote work population and fulfills their desire to find 1 million remote work people to apply those visas, they should either remove that minimum revenue requirement of employer or make separated categories for self-employed people who make much more than +80K which most of DN population is.

Exactly. Everyone in my field (technology) who works off site has their own LLC or corporation to offset the risks to the company for taxation, insurances, PE and so on. These are all people that have very significant incomes. Then there is the issue of taxation and be being subject to dual taxation. What an ill thought out missed opportunity to actually become the hub of something for once.

[tezzaaa]

Could someone explain to this company in London that Thailand doesn't currently have a visa for such digital nomad so their findings is complete nonsense.

Must be a grad on work experience who carried out the 'analysis'...

[BigHewer]

I am often skeptical of these “Top 50 Cities” lists concocted by foreign think tanks reading their tea leaves. If the lists looks dodgy, it probably is: faulty criteria and subjective judgements.

In this case, I went to the source article and then the source itself, “Instant Offices”. Their criteria are: affordability, availability of wifi, weather and quality of life. So the criteria are incomplete and easy to manipulate. No mention of safety, transport infrastructure, ease of obtaining residency. So basically a load of nonsense. 

For those interested, here is the full list of 77 cities: 

https://www.instantoffices.com/blog/featured/best-places-to-be-digital-nomad-in-2022/

 

 

[KaptainRob]

42 minutes ago, BigHewer said:

I am often skeptical of these “Top 50 Cities” lists concocted by foreign think tanks reading their tea leaves. If the lists looks dodgy, it probably is: faulty criteria and subjective judgements.

In this case, I went to the source article and then the source itself, “Instant Offices”. Their criteria are: affordability, availability of wifi, weather and quality of life. So the criteria are incomplete and easy to manipulate. No mention of safety, transport infrastructure, ease of obtaining residency. So basically a load of nonsense. 

For those interested, here is the full list of 77 cities: 

https://www.instantoffices.com/blog/featured/best-places-to-be-digital-nomad-in-2022/

They're selling or leasing agents for office space, say no more!

[BigHewer]

35 minutes ago, KaptainRob said:

They're selling or leasing agents for office space, say no more!

Ah, we have the act itself, now we have motive! ‍

[Marc26]

12 hours ago, BigHewer said:

I am often skeptical of these “Top 50 Cities” lists concocted by foreign think tanks reading their tea leaves. If the lists looks dodgy, it probably is: faulty criteria and subjective judgements.

In this case, I went to the source article and then the source itself, “Instant Offices”. Their criteria are: affordability, availability of wifi, weather and quality of life. So the criteria are incomplete and easy to manipulate. No mention of safety, transport infrastructure, ease of obtaining residency. So basically a load of nonsense. 

For those interested, here is the full list of 77 cities: 

https://www.instantoffices.com/blog/featured/best-places-to-be-digital-nomad-in-2022/

Whatever the lists are based on, I can say I saw more young westerners in their late 20's, 30's in Bangkok than I ever have

And just by how they were acting, it seemed they lived there more than tourists

 

So I would say the DN footprint is definitely expanding in Thailand