Digital Nomad From South East Asian Perspective

If you have never heard of digital nomad, it's basically people working remotely from anywhere with help of internet + technology. They are often advertised working from some tropical island and countries like SEA(south east asia) or some parts of LATAM(Latin America). Most importantly, they are also often from first world countries.

What about people who are not from the first world? Well, as far as I know the concept of remote working itself wasn't popularized until after covid where remote working suddenly became a thing. However, even a long time ago, within the gig economy, the workers were actually from so-called " third world" or developing countries. In fact, many developed countries outsource their work to developing countries because the wage is lower. The difference is that people from developing countries aren't traveling as much as those from developed countries. The desire to be location independent seems less than those from developed countries. Is it because we don’t search for a country lower than our living cost? Maybe. Although now, I found out that there are actually plenty of other places cheaper than Indonesia.

When it comes to digital nomads from develop vs developing countries, I do notice some other differences. Those from develop countries have stronger passport and currencies that allow them to be just anywhere compared to me who needs to apply for visa, be subject to discrimination, questioned, etc than them. For whatever reason, people assume that they're going to spend more while in actuality, they are moving to cheaper countries to spend less and grow their business, whatever that is. Many of them are also bloggers, copywriters, even MLM and they are proud of it. I find the difference that sometimes I am not as proud as them, because growing up, being a freelancer is a failure. Sometimes, I feel like I can't fit into the digital nomad crowd for a whole lot of reasons, which is mostly where I am from. Even in Bali, it seems like remote working was only for those in developed countries instead developing countries and us, are just those "gig" workers to be paid peanuts. Being Indonesian, having the desire to be location independent, and working remotely are some kind of foreign concept.

More problems come when many countries offer digital nomad visas that eventually only cater to people from EU, UK, USA with very low requirements. The Indonesian government itself is even planning to do it for them "tax free" and they can live in the country for five years. At the same time, I as the citizen have to pay more taxes while actually those people and me aren't that different. We both make a living outside Indonesia's territory. Bali for instance, with a lot of foreigners that people expect to "spend" more, they are driving the rental prices that even matches the rent in other countries. In a nutshell, it's like price of develop countries but with a taste and service of developing countries. All in all, it's quite unfair that these digital nomad schemes are only available for those in developed countries rather than giving chances to professional workers even from developing countries. As not all of us are just working to survive but there are people like me, who work to also live, not solely surviving.