I’ve spent time in Bangkok recently enough that I trust myself on the shape of the city — how Sukhumvit reads at street level versus from a skywalk, why Asoke at 6pm is its own small ecology, the difference between a soi in Ari and a soi off Thong Lo. What I do not trust myself on, from memory, is what any of it costs in 2026. The condo market here moves enough quarter-to-quarter that pricing from a year-old impression is its own form of guessing. So I priced this the same way I priced Da Nang: from current listings on the platforms residents use, in their language, cross-checked against the English-language foreigner-facing sites to size the gap.

This is the paid layer, and it’s the first half of a two-part Bangkok teardown. Part 1 (this post) is the cost layer: the area-level math underneath that number, the two decisions that move your Bangkok rent more than any neighborhood choice (neither of which is what English Bangkok guides will tell you), the daily-living and grocery math, and first in this series, a three-way comparison against Da Nang and Taipei, line by line. Part 2, this Saturday, is the decision layer: healthcare, the restaurants residents actually use, the visa landscape after the 2024 DTV launch (which genuinely rewrote the playbook for remote workers), and the honest verdict on who should choose Bangkok over the other two. Bangkok ran long enough to deserve both halves done properly rather than one rushed pass.

Orientation — is Bangkok even for you?

(Already set on Bangkok and just here for the numbers? Skip to the methodology below.)

Here’s the honest case, before the spreadsheet, and it isn’t the brochure’s. The draw is not that Bangkok is cheap; the whole finding of this post is that it isn’t. The draw is that it’s a fully-functioning major Asian capital where a remote worker on a non-Thai income gets a rare bundle: world-class private healthcare you can pay cash for, genuinely world-class food at every price tier, a city built around trains so you never need a car, and — for the first time in a decade — the easiest legal-residency landscape of any big Asian capital (the 2024 DTV; full menu in Part 2). That combination is the reason to come. The low price is not.

The trade-offs are just as real. It’s not the budget option — Da Nang is, and this post shows by exactly how much Bangkok isn’t. The 180-day tax-residency clock is a real trap the easy visa doesn’t solve (Part 2). And the climate is its own cost: relentless heat, a genuine bad-air season, and traffic among the world’s worst — workable only because the trains are good and you plan your life around them.

Who thrives here: a remote worker earning in a stronger currency who wants a big-city base with great food, deep healthcare, and an easy visa, and isn’t trying to grind the rent to the floor. Who should look elsewhere: anyone chasing “cheapest Southeast Asia” (that’s Da Nang, or at most Bangkok’s far-east-Sukhumvit floor), anyone who needs to live on a Thai salary, and anyone who wilts in heat or wants a walk-everywhere rather than a train-everywhere city.

A note on currency: ≈32.5 THB = US$1 .THB figures are written as 25,000 THB (≈$769) throughout.

1. The methodology (and why it matters)

The dominant English-language source for Bangkok cost-of-living is a mix of Numbeo aggregation, foreigner-targeted condo-rental sites (Hipflat in English, DDproperty in English), and a cohort of 2021–2023 “moving to Bangkok” blogs that predate the current visa landscape. For Bangkok in 2026, all three are misleading, in a more subtle way than Da Nang’s foreigner channel was. The English Bangkok internet doesn’t quote you a flat 2× markup. It does two quieter things: it shows you the wrong geographic resolution, and it shows you the wrong half of the inventory. Stacked, those two omissions are most of the “Bangkok costs $2,000+/month for a foreigner” assumption.

Here’s what I did instead:

• Rent data — the Thai-channel baseline: pulled live from DDproperty Thailand in Thai (ddproperty.com/th) and Hipflat TH (hipflat.co.th). The Thai-language interface surfaces stock the English one filters out, and tags each listing with a server-computed walk-time to the nearest BTS/MRT exit — the detail this whole analysis turns on. n=84 listings across six station clusters (Asoke, Phrom Phong, Ari, On Nut, Huai Khwang, + partial Phaya Thai), after excluding the stock that distorts a median: tourist-priced short-stays, ultra-luxury branded residences, unfurnished shells, mislabeled whole-house leases.

• Rent data — the English foreigner-channel comparison: a parallel sample on Hipflat EN (hipflat.com), which searches by Bangkok administrative district rather than by station, a resolution mismatch that turns out to be the whole story of §2.

• Utilities: electricity against the MEA (Metropolitan Electricity Authority) published residential tariff, including the June 2026 restructure (worked calc in §5); water against MWA; internet against AIS Fibre / True Online; mobile against AIS / True / DTAC.

• Groceries: online-catalogue list prices across four Bangkok chains — Lotus’s and Big C (mass-market), Tops (mid-tier), Gourmet Market (premium) — priced per-unit on a Thai cook-at-home basket and a Western-imports basket.

• Healthcare, visa, tax, and restaurants are covered in Part 2 — the decision layer.

Every figure below traces to a specific source. Where I’m uncertain — or where the data has a genuine limit — I flag it.

The advantage here is bilingual sourcing, and in Bangkok it pays off in a specific structural way. The English-language rental internet and the Thai-language rental platforms don’t just describe two prices for the same flat. They describe the same Bangkok at two different resolutions: the English channel aggregates to Bangkok administrative district (Watthana, Phaya Thai), the Thai channel aggregates to BTS/MRT station. For 95% of resident decisions, the station is the address — and the district average buries the station premium. This post does the cross-walk so you can see what a resident sees, not what the English district average tells you.

2. The two decisions that move your rent more than the neighborhood

Two questions move your Bangkok rent more than any neighborhood choice, but neither one is what English Bangkok guides will tell you. They’re the channel you search and the resolution you search at; and which specific station you anchor at, with what kind of stock that station has.

Decision 1: Which channel — and at what resolution

The English Bangkok rental sites (Hipflat EN, DDproperty EN, JustProperty) do two things differently from the Thai-language platforms (DDproperty TH, Hipflat TH). They show you condos rather than the older single-owner stock, and they search by Bangkok administrative district rather than by BTS station.

The first difference matters less than I’d assumed before the data. The Thai-platform อพาร์ทเมนต์ (apartment) category, on close inspection, isn’t a cheaper version of the condo product — it’s a different product: older, larger (75–500 m², mostly 2–3BR), foreigner-family-oriented privately-held towers at ฿55–250k/month. Same square meterage in the apartment category routinely costs more than in the condo category. The genuinely-cheap walk-up rental tier that Bangkok tenant lore describes — the resident-Thai working-class stock at ฿5–10k for a 30 m² unit — exists, but it doesn’t index on DDproperty or Hipflat. To find it you’d need Facebook Marketplace housing groups, LINE-based agent networks, or physical “ห้องเช่า” (room for rent) signage walks. None of those surface in either the foreigner or the major Thai-language platforms. For this post, the rental analysis is condo-vs-condo across channels — which turns out to be where the more interesting moat lives anyway.

The second difference is the real one. At one station, the foreigner channel quotes a clean premium over the Thai-channel station median. At another, it appears cheaper, but only because it’s hiding the premium station inside a district-wide average.

Here’s the picture at Huai Khwang (MRT Blue Line, BL18), where Hipflat EN’s “huai-khwang” district slug aligns reasonably tightly with the actual BL18 station catchment, the Thai-channel 1-BR median runs ฿21,000 (≈$646) vs the foreigner channel’s ฿24,228 (≈$745) — a clean +15% — and the 2-BR ฿31,000 vs ฿39,096, +26%.

That’s the cleanest channel-premium picture across all six clusters, and it’s what Thai-speaking residents on local-language platforms independently flag as the foreigner-channel markup in Bangkok: real, but in the 15–30% range, not 2×.

Now the same picture at Phrom Phong (BTS E5), the premium Sukhumvit station where Hipflat EN’s foreigner-channel search uses the “Watthana” district — which spans six BTS stations east, all the way out to Phra Khanong — the foreigner channel quotes ฿27,540 (≈$847) for that district average, 47% below the Thai-platform Phrom Phong-station median of ฿52,000 (≈$1,600).

That inversion makes no sense at first read. It is not real. The Watthana district median averages in cheaper Ekkamai and Phra Khanong condo stock 2–6 stations east of Phrom Phong. The foreigner channel isn’t pricing Phrom Phong-the-station; it’s hiding Phrom Phong-the-station inside a district average. You think you’re paying ฿27,540 for “premium Sukhumvit” and you are, but not for Phrom Phong specifically. The Phrom Phong-station rent on the Thai platform is ฿52,000, and you’ll find that out when you actually go look at the building.

So the channel-premium isn’t a Bangkok-wide tax. It’s: real and ≈15–26% when the foreigner channel’s district geography happens to align with a station catchment, and structurally invisible-or-misleading when it doesn’t. The English Bangkok internet is showing you the right city at the wrong resolution. Knowing the difference between the two — and knowing which question you can ask the Thai channel that the English channel will quietly answer wrong — is the moat.

Decision 2: Which station — and what stock that station has

Here are the Thai-channel medians for a furnished 1-BR condo, across the six BTS/MRT clusters where local renters actually shop:

Almost a 3× spread across the same Bangkok rail network. The headline: same kind of unit (furnished 1-BR condo, 5-10 minutes from a rail station), and your monthly rent goes from $569 to $1,600 depending on which station you anchor at. None of the English Bangkok guides give you that picture station-by-station; they give you a “Sukhumvit costs $X” district average that’s not the price of any specific flat you can actually rent.

Three things that picture says, and the English Bangkok content doesn’t.

First — the “MRT cheap floor” reputation is wrong. Every English Bangkok guide describes Huai Khwang and the MRT Blue Line as the genuine cheap floor near the center, on the logic that MRT-only is less expat-coded than the BTS Sukhumvit corridor. The Thai-channel data says no. Huai Khwang 1-BR at ฿21,000 is only ≈12% below Asoke ฿24,000, and it’s above On Nut ฿18,500. The MRT-vs-BTS distinction isn’t the price driver in Bangkok. Station-specific anchoring is. The genuine cheap floor on the rail network is east of On Nut, on the BTS Sukhumvit line — not on the MRT.

Second — Bang Chak and Punnawithi are the genuine BTS-corridor value play, not On Nut proper. On Nut at ฿18,500 1-BR is cheaper than Asoke, but it’s not the floor. One station east at Bang Chak (BTS E10), IDEO Sukhumvit 93 lists 1-BR units at 35 m² for ฿19,000 and 2-BR at 54 m² for ฿29,000 — roughly 35–40% cheaper than the same-spec product one station west. Two stops further east from the foreigner-default Asoke buys you 60%+ off rent for the same train. The “value still on the BTS Sukhumvit corridor” point is real and quantifiable: it’s specifically Bang Chak/Punnawithi, not On Nut.

Third — at non-foreigner-dense neighborhoods, the BTS-proximity premium decays into a building-age premium. In Ari the brand-new Noble Around Ari (2023 build, 2-minute walk from N5, 26–45 m² units) and the older Fynn Aree / Vertical Aree / Noble ReD stock (2009–2017 builds, 4–10-minute walks) all sit in the same ฿17–30k 1-BR band. You’re not paying for proximity at Ari; you’re paying for newness. The close-to-BTS premium only really bites in the Sukhumvit core (Asoke, Phrom Phong, Thong Lo) where close-to-station stock IS branded ultra-premium product. Outside that core, the close-stock advantage is small or zero.

The practical takeaway: the right two questions in Bangkok aren’t “what neighborhood?” and “what budget?” They’re “which channel and at what resolution?” and “which station anchors my actual life?” Get the first one right and you stop paying invisible aggregation premiums. Get the second one right and you stop paying $330–780/month for “I want to live in Sukhumvit” when what you actually need is “I want a BTS-connected flat with a 7-Eleven downstairs,” which Bang Chak provides at a third of the Phrom Phong price.

Read more

And the total isn’t the strangest thing I found. While I was pricing it, one number stopped me cold: at one premium station, the English-language rental sites quoted rent roughly 45% below what apartments there actually rent for. Below — the opposite of the familiar foreigner-markup story. And nobody was lying, either. How both of those sentences can be true at once is the key to Bangkok’s entire cost of living, and it decides whether you budget your move on a real number, or on a price that belongs to no apartment you can actually rent.

First, the part where I tell you how I know. The first thing I do when I come up out of the BTS at Asoke is look up. The skywalk wraps the intersection where the Sukhumvit line crosses the MRT, and at six in the evening it’s the whole city in one frame — commuters streaming to the turnstiles, motorbike taxis idling at the soi mouth, the heat finally starting to break. I’ve stood there enough times to trust myself on what Bangkok is. What I don’t trust myself on, not for a second, is what any of it costs in 2026. The condo market moves quarter to quarter, and pricing a city from a year-old memory is just a confident way of being wrong. So I didn’t. I rebuilt the number from current listings on the platforms residents actually use, in Thai, then checked them against the English-language sites the rest of the internet steers you to. That cross-check is where the 45% came from. It’s also why Bangkok earned a two-part teardown: this Saturday is the cost layer (the full numbers), and the Saturday after is the decision layer: safety, healthcare, the visa landscape, and the honest verdict. Today is the free preview of both.

Is Bangkok even your city?

Already have Bangkok circled? Skip ahead to the mystery of the too-cheap rent quote.

Bangkok is one of the easiest major Asian capitals to actually live in as a foreign professional, and in 2026 it’s one of the most underrated for a specific reason I’ll get to. The honest pitch: a genuine mass-transit network you can live car-free on, street food that’s both world-class and cheap, private healthcare good enough that people fly in for it, a deep international community, and — new since most “moving to Bangkok” guides were written — a remote-worker visa that finally makes living here legal and simple instead of a permanent border-run. That last one matters more than it sounds: it reframes Bangkok from “somewhere you get away with staying” to “somewhere you can build a few years of your life.” The trade-offs are just as real: brutal hot-season heat, traffic that’s among the world’s worst the moment you leave the train lines, air quality that turns genuinely bad in the burning season, and a sprawl that can feel anonymous if you land in the wrong neighborhood. Who thrives here: remote workers and professionals who’ll actually use the BTS and eat local, who want a big-city life without big-city Western rent. Who should look elsewhere: anyone who needs clean air year-round, a walkable small-city feel, or a quiet that Bangkok simply does not offer.

If you want the lived-in version — what it’s like to build a life here, neighborhood by neighborhood — that’s the part the AWA site does better than I can. Our expat’s guide to living in Bangkok, written by someone who moved there and stayed, covers the texture; and if you’re still deciding which Thai city, the best places to live in Thailand weighs Bangkok against Chiang Mai, Phuket, and the rest. This post is the numbers.

A rent quote 45% below reality — and nobody lied

Back to the number that stopped me: the premium-station rent quote sitting roughly 45% under what apartments there really go for. Before I give you the answer, try the puzzle yourself: what could produce a published figure that far below the going rate, with no one lying anywhere in the chain? The mechanism is dull, legal, and sitting in plain sight.

Here’s the mistake I made the first time, and the one nearly every foreigner makes. You open the English-language rental sites, you search “Sukhumvit,” and you get a price. The trouble is that the English sites search by Bangkok’s big administrative districts — and a district like Watthana runs from the premium heart of Sukhumvit all the way out six train stops to neighborhoods that cost half as much. The number you get back is a district average. It is not the price of any specific apartment you’ll move into; the average was quietly diluted by cheaper stock kilometres away. You think you’re pricing premium Sukhumvit; you’re pricing a statistical blur. Nobody lied. The map answered a different question than the one you asked.

Same train line, almost three times the rent

Residents don’t shop that way. In Bangkok the station is the address — people don’t say “I live in Sukhumvit,” they say “I’m Thong Lo BTS” or “I’m Ari.” And when you price the city the way residents do, station by station on the Thai-language platforms, the spread is enormous: a furnished one-bedroom condo, five to ten minutes from a train, runs nearly 3× more at the priciest station than at the cheapest — across the same rail network. That’s the single biggest lever on your Bangkok rent, and Saturday’s post puts the full station-by-station table on the page.

One neighborhood, if you take nothing else from today: Ari

If I were moving back to Bangkok on a remote income, I’d start my search at Ari — a few stops north of the Sukhumvit crush on the BTS. Low-rise streets, independent cafés and design studios, a genuinely Thai density rather than an engineered expat strip, and, crucially, it’s far enough off the foreigner-default map that the English-language sites don’t carry the markup they pin to central Sukhumvit. When I priced it, the rent residents pay and the rent the foreigner channel quotes were essentially the same in Ari, which almost never happens closer to the core. It’s the most “I could actually picture living here” neighborhood Bangkok has for a Western remote worker who’d rather live in a Thai neighborhood than an expat one. (One honest caveat I’ll detail Saturday: at Ari you’re paying for newness, not for being closer to the train — the brand-new buildings and the ten-year-old ones a longer walk away sit at almost the same rent, which tells you something useful about what you’re actually buying.)

Is Bangkok safe? Yes — and that’s not even the interesting part

This is Part 2’s territory, but the headline belongs in the free post because it inverts the entire “is Bangkok safe?” genre. On the 2025 Global Peace Index, the United States ranks below Thailand. All three major governments’ travel advisories — the US State Department, the UK’s FCDO, Australia’s Smartraveller — describe violent crime against foreigners as “relatively rare” or say it “rarely involves tourists.” Day to day, by the numbers, Bangkok is safer on violent crime than most large US cities. (Maddie makes the same point from the resident side in the Bangkok living guide: it simply feels safe, and the data backs the feeling.)

The catch is that the genuine risk isn’t the one you’re bracing for. It’s the road. Thailand’s road-traffic death rate is around 25 per 100,000 people a year — roughly double the US rate, nearly ten times the UK’s — and the thing doing the killing is the motorbike. That motorbike taxi you’ll be tempted to hop on for the last kilometre to the BTS is, statistically, the most dangerous thing you’ll do in this city. The mugging you’re worried about is a rounding error next to the ride you’re not worried about. If you take one safety habit from this whole series: wear the helmet, every single time, even the two-minute hop.

And if something does go wrong, the healthcare is the other pleasant surprise

Thailand has no national health scheme you can lean on as a foreigner — which sounds like a strike against the place until you see what the private market actually costs. Bangkok has been a medical-tourism destination for decades, and the depth shows: an annual executive health screening at one of the famous international hospitals runs roughly what a basic cash-pay physical costs back in the US, and the smaller private hospitals residents use for a fever or a stomach bug are cheaper still — cheap enough that you pay cash and skip the insurance-claim dance entirely. The honest read I keep landing on: you do not need US-level health insurance to feel safe here. You need a catastrophic-coverage plan and the willingness to pay cash for routine care, and the routine care is genuinely good. Part 2 puts real numbers on all of it.

The visa that changed everything — and the trap inside the good news

Not many years ago, living here without a local job meant a tourist stamp and a recurring bus to the Cambodian border to reset it — I remember the Friday-night minibuses loading up on Khao San for the run, a grey-zone routine everyone did and nobody felt good about. The DTV, launched in 2024, ended that: five years of validity, 180-day stays, a real legal basis for a remote worker to live here. AWA’s guide to the Thailand Digital Nomad Visa covers the application from first-hand experience. What Part 2 adds is the strategic layer the how-to guides skip, including the trap hiding inside the good news: the visa invites you to stay 180 days at a stretch, and Thailand’s tax system makes you a tax resident the moment you’re here 180 days in a calendar year. Those two clocks interact in a way almost nobody selling “move to Bangkok, it’s easy now” mentions.

This Saturday — Part 1, the cost layer: the full station-by-station rent table, the line-by-line ~$1,600 budget, the first three-way comparison in this series (Da Nang vs Bangkok vs Taipei, and why Bangkok lands where it does), the daily-living math, and a grocery finding that genuinely changed how I’d shop here — because the place the bilingual advantage actually pays off isn’t the imported cheese aisle everyone complains about. It’s somewhere much closer to the bottom of your receipt.

Next Wednesday — Part 2, the decision layer: the complete safety breakdown (including the 2025 earthquake that quietly rewrote one comfortable old assumption about Bangkok), the medical-tourism healthcare math in full numbers, the full visa menu — the easy one, the tax-clean one, the paid one, and who each is actually for — the twelve restaurants residents send friends to (the list now includes one of Thailand’s two three-Michelin-star kitchens), and the honest verdict: who should choose Bangkok over Da Nang or Taipei, knowing it costs more than one and offers more than the other.

Bangkok isn’t the cheap option. After 2024, it might be the smart one, for the right person. The next two Saturdays are where I make that case in full.

If you’re on the ground in Bangkok and your station-anchored rent looks nothing like a “Sukhumvit average” — or the road-versus-crime framing matches your experience, or doesn’t — reply and tell me. The readers who live these cities are always my best fact-checkers.

One more thing, because the regulars will notice: I wrote this preview differently on purpose — surprise up front, the mechanism staged like a puzzle. It’s an experiment for the free posts only; the Saturday teardowns stay played dead straight. Reply and tell me whether the new format worked on you — that’s a vote I’ll actually count.

— Wei

Saturday’s post (the cost layer) priced a comfortable single month in Lisbon at ≈€2,000 (≈$2,340), more than double the local minimum wage, in a city that is expensive and getting more so. It also showed that on top of that high baseline, the foreigner rent premium is a geography, concentrated in two neighbourhoods you’re steered toward — a surcharge on top of expensive, not a way around it.

That post answered what it costs. This one answers whether you should actually do it, and it’s the half with the landmines, because three of the things you most need to get right (the visa, the tax regime, the public health system) are exactly the things the English-language guides get most wrong about Lisbon in 2026. I’ve sourced all of it to official Portuguese government pages, and I’ll tell you plainly where even those leave a question open.

A note before the visa-and-tax section: I’m an analyst, not your immigration lawyer or your accountant. What follows is sourced and dated, not advice, and visa/tax rules move, so the live official link matters more than my paragraph. Where Portugal’s own official portal doesn’t state a number cleanly, I say so rather than repeat a figure the rest of the internet is confidently copying from each other.

1. Safety — the data is more reassuring than the doom-scroll, and points somewhere else entirely

The English-language internet has two failure modes on Lisbon safety: breathless “Lisbon is going downhill” threads, and content-free “just use common sense” filler. The sourced reality is more useful than either, and it inverts the worry.

On violent crime, Lisbon is among the safest places you could move. All three major Anglophone governments put Portugal at their lowest travel-advisory tier: the US State Department (”Exercise normal precautions,” reissued 23 Dec 2025), the UK FCDO (”crime rates are low,” current 1 Jun 2026), and Australia’s Smartraveller (”exercise normal safety precautions,” 14 Apr 2026). The macro cross-check agrees emphatically: the 2025 Global Peace Index ranks Portugal 7th most peaceful country in the world out of 163, top ten globally, ahead of Denmark. Treat the violent-crime fear as resolved.

The real resident risk isn’t violence — it’s two things that touch your wallet, not your body:

1. Pickpocketing, and the official sources are specific about where: crowded public transport, with thieves striking at the doors as they close. The notorious hotspots (Tram 28, the Tram 15 to Belém, the Baixa-Chiado metro) are exactly the tourist-clogged routes. This is non-confrontational, opportunistic theft, not mugging.

2. Rental fraud, and this one is police-quantified. Portugal’s Public Security Police (PSP) recorded 4,553 false-rental crimes over three years (≈1,500/year). The mechanism: a listing for a non-existent or already-occupied flat, below-market price, real photos, a demand to pay a deposit or advance rent before you’ve seen it, then the “landlord” vanishes. PSP’s own advice: never transfer money before confirming the advertiser is real, and check the name on the IBAN matches the owner.

Notice that the single biggest documented crime risk to a new resident is the rental process itself, which ties straight back to the fiador wall from post #1. The same desperation-to-secure-a-flat that makes foreigners pay the furnished premium also makes them the target market for the deposit scam. Treat any “pay to hold it sight-unseen” demand as the red flag it is.

A women’s-safety read, because it’s a real decision input and this brand is women-led: the picture is reassuring on the macro and carries the standard European nightlife caveat. Portugal ranks 26th of 177 on Georgetown’s Women, Peace and Security Index (upper band). The official advisories note sexual assault is “rare but does occur,” concentrated late at night around nightlife areas (Bairro Alto, Cais do Sodré), paired with drink-spiking precautions. Daytime Lisbon reads as a walkable, low-anxiety city; the caveat is the night-out one, not a structural daytime threat.

(What I deliberately didn’t import: the Southeast-Asia risk frame. Road death and burning-season air pollution were real, sourced lines in my Da Nang and Bangkok teardowns. They are not the Lisbon story, so I’m not going to manufacture them. Lisbon’s one environmental footnote is summer heat and wildfire smoke in the interior, real but not a chronic city-air problem.)

Safety is the reassuring half. The visa and tax rules are where the move really gets decided, and the first question is whether you can even qualify.

2. The visa routes — D7, D8, and the income bar

⚠️ This section is sourced to official Portuguese government portals and dated. Visa and tax rules change: use the live official link, not this paragraph, as your authority. This is analysis, not advice.

If you’re not an EU citizen, two residence routes dominate, and the difference between them is income type:

• The D7: the original “passive income / stable means” route, used by retirees and anyone with reliable recurring income. The income floor is benchmarked to the Portuguese minimum wage (€920/month for one person, with the usual per-capita additions for dependants).

• The D8, the Digital Nomad Visa (launched Oct 2022): the route for remote workers earning from outside Portugal.

Here’s the bar most people underestimate, so be precise about it: the D8 requires you to prove an average monthly income, over the previous three months, of at least four times the Portuguese minimum wage. That multiplier isn’t consular folklore; it’s written into the law, in plain words: “rendimentos médios mensais… de valor mínimo equivalente a quatro remunerações mínimas mensais garantidas” (Decreto Regulamentar n.º 4/2022, Art. 31.º-A). With the minimum wage at €920 for 2026, four times it works out to about €3,680/month (≈$4,306), and note that’s a computed figure, not a number the statute fixes: the law pegs the bar to the minimum wage, so it rises every time the wage does. Either way it’s roughly a $52,000/year income floor just to qualify, before you’ve paid a euro of Lisbon rent. The popular framing of the D8 as the easy “just work remotely from a café” visa quietly skips how high that threshold sits. Two practical caveats the brochures skip: first, treat €3,680 as a floor, not a target: consulates apply their own discretion (some count base salary only, discounting variable or freelance income), so practitioners commonly advise showing a comfortable margin above it, nearer €4,000 in practice. Second, the documentary specifics (which three months, how income is evidenced) vary by the consulate handling your file, so confirm those with yours.

You can clear that income bar with the right paperwork. The harder question is what Portugal does to that income once you’re a resident: the famous tax deal that made it a remote-work magnet for a decade is no longer open to new arrivals, and what replaced it is far narrower than the brochures admit. That’s the part that decides whether the move works, and it’s below:

• The tax bombshell — the break that’s closed to new arrivals, and the narrow successor that replaced it.

• AIMA — the permit bureaucracy, with a hard number attached.

• Healthcare — the public system you can use as a resident, and where private insurance earns its keep.

• Where you’d eat — 10 resident spots, and the tourist trap to skip.

• The verdict — who should move, and who shouldn’t.

Read more

(If you’ve already got Lisbon circled on a map and you’re just here for the numbers, skip to the methodology below.)

Here is the honest case for Lisbon, before the spreadsheet.

The draws are real and they are not the ones the brochures lead with. Yes, the light and the food and the trams — but what keeps people is that Lisbon is a genuinely functional European capital where a single person can live well without a car, where the public health system works once you’re in it, where the violent-crime risk is among the lowest in the world, and where you can be in the rest of Europe in three hours. For a remote worker holding a non-EU income, that combination is rare.

The trade-offs are just as real, and the locals will tell you about them louder than I will. Lisbon is in the middle of a housing crisis that its own newspapers describe in the language of displacement: average rents now run above 167% of the national minimum wage, the second-worst ratio of any EU capital. Wages are low; the bureaucracy (you will meet an agency called AIMA in post #2) is slow to the point of dysfunction; and the tax picture for new arrivals changed sharply in 2024 in ways most English-language guides haven’t caught up to. None of that makes Lisbon a bad choice. It makes it a choice you should make with real numbers in front of you, which is the entire point of these two posts.

Who thrives here: a remote worker or self-employed professional earning in a stronger currency, who wants a walkable European base, doesn’t need to maximise savings, and can absorb a slow first six months of paperwork. Who should look elsewhere: anyone who needs to live on a Portuguese salary (the math is brutal), anyone whose plan depends on the old tax-break Portugal no longer offers new arrivals, and anyone expecting “cheap Europe”: Lisbon stopped being that several years ago, and a lot of why is in the rent section below.

A note on currency: €1 ≈ US$1.17 (locked the day I built this). I’ll write euros first, dollars in parentheses: €1,200 (≈$1,404).

1. The methodology — and why it matters here specifically

The dominant English-language sources for “Lisbon cost of living” are Numbeo aggregation and the furnished-rental platforms expats book through. For this city, in this section, both are misleading in the same direction: up, and for a more interesting reason than in the Asian cities I’ve torn down so far.

Lisbon has two parallel rental markets that barely touch:

• The local market: Portuguese-language platforms (Idealista.pt, Imovirtual, Casa SAPO) where residents sign 12-month unfurnished leases (arrendamento, sem mobília). Lower prices, but gated behind a wall I’ll get to.

• The expat market: English-language furnished/flex platforms (Spotahome, HousingAnywhere) that quote the number the rest of the internet repeats as “Lisbon rent.” Furnished, bills-bundled, no guarantor, monthly contracts, all priced for it.

So I didn’t write this from memory or from Numbeo. I pulled 122 genuine rental listings (93 off the Portuguese-language local platforms, 29 off the furnished expat platforms) across five neighbourhood bands, kept studios and one-beds only (≤60 m²), threw out the short-stay and serviced-apartment noise, and computed medians (not averages, which luxury listings wreck) for each band on both €/month and €/m². Then I priced every other line (transit, electricity, internet, groceries) against an official or operator source, and built one worked monthly budget for a realistic single resident.

The result is sharper than “Lisbon is getting expensive.” It’s a map of exactly where the foreigner premium lives, and it is not where you’d guess.

2. The headline: rent, and the two neighbourhoods you’re overpaying for

Start with the single most useful finding, because it overturns the standard advice.

The English-language internet quotes Lisbon rent as a single scary number, somewhere around €1,300–1,500 for a furnished one-bed. That number isn’t fake. But it hides the actual structure, which is this: the gap between what locals pay and what foreigners pay is not uniform across the city. It is concentrated almost entirely in the two neighbourhoods foreigners are steered toward first — and it nearly vanishes everywhere else.

Read that top to bottom. In the historic centre, a foreigner on a furnished platform pays about 1.5× per square metre what a local pays for the equivalent space. In Arroios (the neighbourhood every "best value Lisbon" listicle now sends nomads to), it's about 1.4×. But in Estrela, where Lisbon's longer-settled foreign residents live, the two markets have converged to roughly the same price. And in the modern professional districts, there's no consistent premium at all.

The lesson is not that Lisbon is secretly cheap — it isn’t, and the worked budget below proves it at more than double the local minimum wage. The lesson is two-layered: Lisbon is expensive across the board, and on top of that, two neighbourhoods make foreigners overpay even more, and the English-language rental sites steer you straight into them. The surcharge is a geography you can largely walk out of; the expensive baseline you cannot. Walking out of the premium doesn’t make Lisbon affordable — it stops you paying extra on top of already-high.

(For the regulars who’ve seen this series: this is the same shape as the Da Nang foreigner-premium finding (concentrated in the foreigner zone, gone elsewhere) but milder, and for a different mechanical reason, which is the next section and the part worth paying for.)

So far, so free. Here’s what’s behind the line, and why the per-square-metre gap above is only half the story:

• The worked monthly budget: the actual €/month a comfortable single resident spends, line by line, and the one number that reframes the whole “is Lisbon cheap” question.

• The fiador wall: why the cheaper local flat is, for most new foreigners, literally unsignable, and what the workaround costs. This is why the two markets exist.

• The grocery teardown: where the “Lisbon is cheap” story holds (it does, beautifully, in one aisle) and where it quietly breaks.

• Daily living, costed: transit, electricity, internet, the lines you don’t check until the bill arrives.

Read more

Because what I don’t trust myself on, not for a second, is pricing this city from memory. A €3.20 coffee I can vouch for; the rent is a different matter. Lisbon’s rental market moves fast and it moves up, and quoting a 2026 number from a year-old impression is a confident way to be wrong. So I didn’t. I pulled 122 real rental listings (93 from the Portuguese-language platforms locals actually use, 29 from the English-language furnished sites the rest of the internet quotes) across five neighbourhood bands, and I priced everything else (transit, power, groceries, the lot) against official sources.

And the first thing the data did was confirm something you can see on foot. Walk two blocks of Arroios and you’re in exactly what every “best value Lisbon” listicle promises now: third-wave coffee, renovated façades, the hum of people who arrived in the last three years. Turn the corner, four minutes on, and you’re on an ordinary residential block where the cafés have plastic chairs and the rents are a different number entirely. Same neighbourhood, two markets. That four-minute walk is most of the story of what Lisbon costs in 2026, and almost nobody prices it.

Two teardowns come out of it. This Saturday (June 6) is the money: what a month actually costs and where the foreigner premium really hides. The following Wednesday (June 10) is the harder half: whether you can actually move here, what changed in the tax law that most guides haven’t caught, and the wall that stops you renting the cheap flat even when you find it. Both are for paying subscribers; today’s preview is free. Here’s the case for both.

But first, in case you haven’t seriously pictured yourself there yet.

Is Lisbon even your city?

Already have Lisbon circled? Skip down to the number that surprised me.

Lisbon is one of the most genuinely livable capitals in Western Europe for a remote worker, and the draws aren’t the ones the brochures lead with. The honest pitch: a city you can live in car-free. A public health system you can actually use as a resident. A violent-crime risk among the lowest in the world. Food that’s world-class and still cheap, if you eat where locals eat. And the rest of Europe three hours away.

The trade-offs are just as real, and the locals will name them louder than I will. A housing crisis severe enough that average rents now run above 167% of the national minimum wage — the second-worst ratio of any EU capital. Wages that are low. A residency bureaucracy that has buckled. And a tax picture that turned sharply less friendly to newcomers in 2024.

Who thrives here: a remote worker or self-employed professional earning in a stronger currency, who wants a walkable European base and can ride out a slow, paperwork-heavy first six months. Who should look elsewhere: anyone who needs to live on a Portuguese salary (the math is brutal), anyone whose plan hinges on the old tax break Portugal no longer offers new arrivals, and anyone still expecting “cheap Europe” — Lisbon left that category a few years ago, and Saturday’s rent section is why.

If you want the lived-in version (what it’s actually like to build a life there, the texture the numbers can’t carry) that’s the part the AWA site does better than I can. Our beginner’s guide to living in Lisbon covers the feel of the place; how to move to Portugal walks the logistics; and if you’re still deciding where in the country, the best places to live in Portugal weighs Lisbon against Porto, Cascais and the rest. This post is the numbers.

The number that surprised me — and where the premium actually lives

Here’s what the careful pull turned up, and it overturns the standard advice. Nearly every Lisbon cost of living 2026 guide quotes the rent as one scary number: a furnished one-bed somewhere around €1,300–1,500. That number isn’t fake, but it hides the structure, and the structure is the finding: the gap between what locals pay and what foreigners pay is not spread evenly across the city. It’s concentrated almost entirely in the two neighbourhoods foreigners get steered toward first — and it nearly vanishes everywhere else.

In the historic centre (Baixa, Chiado) a foreigner renting through the furnished platforms pays roughly 1.5× per square metre what a local pays for the same space. In Arroios, the nomad-favourite “value” zone every listicle now pushes, it’s about 1.4×. But in the long-residential districts where Lisbon’s settled foreign residents actually live, the two markets have quietly converged to nearly the same price — and in the modern professional districts, there’s no consistent premium at all.

So here's the sharper way to hold it: Lisbon is expensive — that part is not in dispute, and the body of Saturday's post prices it out at more than double the local minimum wage. But on top of an already-high market, two neighbourhoods make foreigners overpay even more — the English-language rental sites steer you straight into them. Avoiding the premium doesn't make Lisbon cheap; it just stops you paying a surcharge on top of expensive. (Regular readers of this series will recognise the shape: the same concentrated-foreigner-premium pattern I found in Da Nang, milder here, and for a mechanical reason that turns out to be the most important thing in either post.)

The wall nobody warns you about

Because here’s the catch, and it’s the thread that runs from Saturday’s post straight into Wednesday’s. A new arrival looks at that and thinks: easy, I’ll just rent like a local in the no-premium districts and pocket the difference. You usually can’t. And the reason is a Portuguese word most moving-to-Lisbon guides barely mention: fiador.

To sign a standard local lease, landlords overwhelmingly want a guarantor — and not just anyone. The one piece of this I’ll give away free, because it reframes everything: that guarantor generally has to be a Portuguese-resident taxpayer. A person who landed four weeks ago doesn’t know anyone who qualifies. So the cheap local flat is real, and, for a new foreigner, often unsignable on arrival. A meaningful slice of that “foreigner premium” you saw above isn’t a markup at all; it’s the price of buying past a wall you genuinely can’t climb yet. How you climb it (what it costs, what the workarounds are) is the spine of Saturday’s post.

One neighbourhood, if you take nothing else from today: Arroios

If I were moving to Lisbon on a remote income, I’d start my search in Arroios — and then, specifically, four minutes off its trendiest streets. It’s central, it’s on the Metro, it’s genuinely mixed rather than an engineered expat strip, and it sits right at the seam where the foreigner premium is real on the listicle blocks and much thinner a short walk away. It’s the most “I could actually live here, like a resident, not a tourist” neighbourhood Lisbon offers a Western remote worker. (The honest caveat I’ll detail Saturday: “Arroios” on the furnished platforms and “Arroios” on the local platforms are almost two different price worlds, and which one you end up in comes back to that wall.)

So what does a month actually cost — and can you even move there?

Saturday’s paid teardown (June 6) is where the money gets counted properly: the full five-band rent picture, the worked line-by-line monthly budget, the daily-living math, the grocery finding that’s the opposite of what you’d guess (one aisle where Lisbon is startlingly cheap, one where the “cheap Europe” story quietly breaks), and the single number that reframes the whole thing: what a comfortable foreign-income month costs measured against what a local actually earns.

Then the following Wednesday’s post (June 10) is the decision layer, and it’s the one with the landmines: the safety data (more reassuring than the doom-scroll, and pointing at a completely different real risk than you fear), the public health system you’re entitled to as a resident, twelve places residents actually eat plus the famous one to skip — and the visa and tax reality the guides keep getting wrong. The short version of that last one, free, because getting it wrong is expensive: the famous Portuguese tax break you’ve read about is closed to new arrivals. What replaced it, and who it does and doesn’t cover, is on Wednesday.

That’s the pair. If you’ve rented in Lisbon recently: did you hit the fiador wall, and how did you get past it? Reply and tell me. The readers who actually live these cities are always my best fact-checkers, and the next round of cities in this series is reader-driven, so tell me which one to tear apart next, too.

— Wei

New here, or just browsing the archive? A batch of A Way Abroad’s earlier posts — including the founder essays from before this cost-of-living series began — are now free to read. Worth a scroll if you want the story behind the publication before Saturday’s first teardown lands.

I have a soft spot for Da Nang. I spent time there two or three years ago, and I remember why people fall for it: the beach pull of Mỹ An and An Thượng, the Hàn River splitting the visitor version of the city from the more local one, the sense that it’s easier to breathe than the bigger Vietnamese capitals. But that’s the honest limit of what that memory is good for: the shape of the city, not its 2026 prices. Two or three years is long enough for a rental market to move more than I’d trust myself to guess at, so I treated my own experience as a starting point, not as evidence.

This is the paid layer: the area-level math underneath that number, the foreigner-price gap that the rest of the internet quietly passes along to you, and the first direct cost comparison in this series — Da Nang against Taipei, line by line.

So I didn’t write this from memory. I rebuilt it from current listings on the platforms locals actually use, cross-checked against Vietnamese-language sources, and priced every line against an official source where one exists. Where I’m relying on something dated or thin, I say so. Here’s what I did: I pulled live rental listings off Chợ Tốt (Vietnam’s biggest landlord-direct classifieds) across five Da Nang areas, sorted the genuine local stock from the short-stay and serviced inventory, and then pulled a matching sample off the English-language foreigner rental sites to measure the gap between the two. I priced electricity against EVN’s official tariff, internet and mobile against current provider pricing, healthcare against a private-hospital price list, and the visa against the official immigration portal. I cross-checked Vietnamese-language local-recommendation sources to find the twelve places residents actually eat, not the ones the tour groups queue for. Then I assembled all of it into one worked monthly budget for a realistic single remote worker.

The result is more specific than “Da Nang is cheap” and sharper than the foreigner-site bands: where the local price really sits, how much of the gap to Taipei is just rent, and the two line items where Da Nang quietly costs more than Taipei.

A note on currency: ≈26,400 VND = US$1 (publish day). VND figures are large, so I’ll write them as 8M VND (~$303) throughout.

1. The methodology (and why it matters)

The dominant English-language source for Da Nang cost-of-living is a mix of Numbeo aggregation and foreigner-facing rental sites, and for this city both are actively misleading in the same direction: up.

Here’s what I did instead:

· Rent data — the local baseline: pulled live from Chợ Tốt / Nhà Tốt (www.nhatot.com), the landlord-and-local-broker classifieds that are Vietnam's closest thing to a real market grid. I captured listings across five areas and excluded the stock that distorts the median: short-stay/serviced units in branded buildings (Mường Thanh, Panoma and similar) priced monthly for foreigners, whole-house "nhà nguyên căn" leases mislabeled as apartments, and unfurnished shells (the nomad-relevant unit here is furnished). One real limit: Chợ Tốt's cards rarely show the electricity rate, beach distance, or whether utilities are bundled — that detail lives in the free-text page, in Vietnamese, and only sometimes. So some figures are sized from the genuine sample plus local-language listing detail, not a clean structured field.

· Rent data — the foreigner channel: I pulled a matching sample of comparable furnished units off the English-language sites (FazWaz, RentDaNang) to measure the premium. That gap is one of the most useful findings in this post.

· Utilities: electricity against EVN’s official retail tariff (Decision 1279/QĐ-BCT); internet and mobile against current Viettel / FPT / VNPT pricing.

· Healthcare: a private-hospital published price list, plus the expat-insurance reality (there is no national scheme you can lean on here; more in §6).

· Visa: the official Vietnam e-Visa portal, plus the 2025 Talent Visa decree.

· Restaurants: Vietnamese-language local-recommendation sources, cross-verified against the Michelin Guide Vietnam 2025.

Every figure below traces to a specific source. Where I’m uncertain, I flag it.

The advantage here is bilingual sourcing, and in Da Nang it pays off in one specific, expensive way. The English-language rental internet and the local-language rental platforms describe two different cities at two different prices. This post does the cross-walk so you can rent at the first price, not the second.

A note on units. Da Nang apartments are advertised in square meters (m²), with no local quirk to translate, unlike Taipei’s 坪. A furnished studio runs roughly 25–35 m²; a one-bedroom 40–55 m². I’ll give m² on each unit so you can compare like for like.

2. The headline: what a furnished apartment actually rents for

Here’s the most useful comparison in this post. Genuine local-platform median rents for a furnished studio / one-bedroom, across five Da Nang areas:

A few things in that table contradict what the English guides will tell you.

First: the local price is far below the foreigner-site price, and the gap is huge where it matters most. Here is the same furnished one-bedroom, local-platform versus English-language foreigner site, by area:

Look again at An Thượng and Mỹ An, the top pair. In the exact neighborhood foreigners are funneled toward — An Thượng and Mỹ An, the beachside expat strip — the English-language sites quote roughly double the local price for the same furnished one-bedroom. A 45 m² one-bedroom that lists around 8–9M VND (~$300–340) on Chợ Tốt shows up at ₫19.3M (~$732) on the foreigner sites. The foreigner sites themselves only cop to a “20–40% tourist markup.” The real gap in the foreigner zone is 2–2.5×.

And notice where the premium vanishes: in cityside Hải Châu and the affordable west, local and foreigner prices converge; sometimes the foreigner site is even lower. (In Hải Châu it can read cheaper, but that’s a stock mismatch, not a discount — the local platform there skews to new serviced executive minis around ~10M while the foreigner sites list older, plainer cityside stock, so you’re comparing two different products.) The premium isn’t a Da Nang-wide tax. It’s specifically the price of renting in the neighborhood the internet steers foreigners toward, through the channel it steers them through. Avoid both and you’ve cut your single biggest line item roughly in half.

Second, a wrinkle in the “cityside is cheaper” rule. Both Da Nang’s reputation and the lived-experience guides tell you the cityside (west of the Hàn River) is the cheaper, more local side, and broadly that holds: rent ordinary local stock on the cityside and you save, with the genuine cheap floor out west in Liên Chiểu (~4M VND studios), where students and longer-term locals live. The one thing the listings flagged: central Hải Châu’s modern serviced-studio stock (around the business core and Lotte) prices at ~10M VND, at or above the beachside Mỹ An genuine one-bedroom (~7.5M), because that segment is newer and amenity-loaded. So “cityside = cheap” is true for normal apartments, just not for the serviced-mini tier in the central core. (Modest sample on that last point — directional, not gospel.)

The practical takeaway: if you’re choosing where to live in Da Nang, the right question is not “cityside or beachside?” It’s “am I renting on the local platform or the foreigner one?” That choice moves your rent more than the neighborhood does.

Read more

In the morning, My Khe Beach is all walkers, swimmers, scooters, and pale gold light off the water. By afternoon, the heat pushes everyone into cafés. At night, the river bridges light up, the sea air comes back in, and the whole city feels more open than its price tag suggests. It’s not just inexpensive — it’s genuinely beautiful, coastal and spacious and easy to imagine yourself settling into for a season.

If you’ve never seriously pictured yourself in Da Nang, start here. It’s a coastal city of about a million people in the exact center of Vietnam: a long ribbon of white-sand beach on one side, green mountains and the Sơn Trà peninsula on the other, a river of lit-up bridges down the middle. The international airport puts the rest of Southeast Asia a cheap short-haul flight away, and Hội An’s lantern-lit old town is 30 minutes south. It runs at a noticeably calmer pace than Hà Nội or Hồ Chí Minh City, somehow feeling like far fewer than a million people.

What actually keeps people is the daily texture: beach mornings, an outsized café-and-coffee culture (the coconut coffee earns the hype), cheap and genuinely good food, and a small-but-real community of remote workers, English teachers, and the broader Southeast-Asia drifting class. It’s the kind of place you meet a yogi, a developer, and a dive instructor at the same coworking table. It isn’t a party town and it isn’t a glossy expat bubble; it’s a livable beach city that happens to be inexpensive. If the version of “abroad” you keep picturing is work from a café, swim before dinner, and still save money, Da Nang is one of the strongest options in Asia.

The trade-offs are real and worth saying out loud: a genuine rainy season over the cooler months from roughly October to March (heavy rain, the odd typhoon, and the mold humidity brings), scooter-everywhere traffic with no metro to fall back on, a language barrier that gets steep the moment you leave the foreigner zone, and a smaller professional and English-speaking scene than a big capital — it’s a beach city, not a business hub. Who should look elsewhere: anyone who needs a deep English-speaking professional network, a dry climate, big-city culture and nightlife, or a clear path to actually staying.

The next question is usually “can I even be there?” That part’s easier than most countries. There’s no digital-nomad visa, but you don’t need one to start: the 90-day e-Visa ($25 single-entry, $50 multiple-entry) is an online form, and people extend long stays by leaving and re-entering on a fresh one. It’s not a residency path, and there’s a real catch once you pass roughly six months (more on that below). But as a “come try the city for a season” proposition, the barrier to entry is genuinely low.

So Da Nang is easy to want and easy to get into. The harder question — the one that decides whether it’s the deal it looks like — is what it actually costs once you’re living there. And that’s where most of the English-language internet quietly gets it wrong.

Want the lived-in version first: the neighborhoods, the café scene, what daily life actually feels like? Our guide to living in Da Nang covers that side. This post is the numbers.

Here’s the number I wish I’d understood before treating Da Nang as simply “cheap”: the same furnished one-bedroom near My Khe Beach rents for about 8M VND (~$303) to a local — and roughly double that to a foreigner who finds it through an English-language website. Not 20% more. Double.

That gap is the single most useful thing I can tell you about Da Nang’s cost of living, and it’s the thread running through Saturday’s full teardown. Today, the preview, and the one neighborhood call that matters most.

A quick word on where this comes from. I spent time in Da Nang two to three years ago, long enough to remember the shape of the city, the beach-side rhythm, and the way the place opens out toward the water, but nowhere near recent enough to price 2026 rent from memory. So I didn’t. I rebuilt it from live listings on the platforms locals actually use, cross-checked against Vietnamese-language sources, and then measured those against the English-language foreigner rental sites. The distance between the two prices is the story.

The counterintuitive part

You’d assume the foreigner premium is a flat tourist tax: pay 20% more everywhere, the cost of not speaking the language. It isn’t. It’s concentrated almost entirely in one place: the beachside foreigner zone of An Thượng and Mỹ An, where the English rental sites quote 14–19M VND for a one-bedroom that lists at 7–9M on the Vietnamese platforms. That’s not a markup; it’s a different price for the same apartment.

And here’s the tell: move to the city center, or the cheaper west of the city, and the two prices converge. Sometimes the foreigner site is even lower. So you don’t actually pay a premium for living in Da Nang. You pay it for living in the one neighborhood the internet steers foreigners toward, through the one channel it steers them through. Avoid both and you’ve roughly halved your single biggest monthly expense before you’ve done anything else.

This is the part that gets lost in the “Vietnam is cheap” content. Da Nang is cheap, yes, but the better story is that it gives you a beautiful coastal life at ordinary prices if you don’t let the English-language rental market define the city for you.

One neighborhood: Mỹ An

If you take one practical thing from this preview, take this. An Thượng, the grid of bar-and-café streets named An Thượng 1, 2, 3 off the beach, is where you’ll want to be: the coworking, the flat whites, the smoothie shops, the easy international dinners, the ten-minute walk from laptop café to sand. It is the part of Da Nang where the foreigner infrastructure is obvious, and honestly, some of it is useful.

Mỹ An, a few blocks back from the bars, is where you’ll want to live: the same beach access, quieter streets, more local daily life, and on the Vietnamese platform a furnished one-bedroom runs about 7.5M VND (~$284), versus the ~15M+ the foreigner sites will quote you for the same area.

That is the practical sweet spot. You are not exiling yourself to a worse neighborhood just to save money. You are still close enough to walk to the beach, still close enough to use the cafés and coworking spaces, still close enough to get dinner without planning your whole evening around a Grab ride. You are just renting the good neighborhood the local way: on Chợ Tốt, or through a Vietnamese-speaking agent, instead of the first English page that loads.

If you want to feel out the areas before you pick (Sơn Trà, the cityside, which one actually fits you), our Da Nang neighborhoods guide is the lived-in map. Saturday’s post is the rent-by-area math.

So what does a month in Da Nang actually cost?

Renting the local way, a comfortable single month in Da Nang lands around ~$810: a furnished studio or one-bedroom in a quiet-but-near-beach area, a motorbike, health insurance, groceries, and eating out for about half your meals. That’s roughly 70% of what the same comfortable month costs in Taipei, the first city in this series. And the part that genuinely surprised me: almost the entire gap is rent.

On nearly everything else the two cities are closer than the stereotypes suggest. And on two lines, getting around (Da Nang has no metro) and healthcare (no national scheme), Da Nang quietly costs more. The full line-by-line comparison is in Saturday’s post.

If $800 sounds spartan, it shouldn’t. It is a floor, not a ceiling. Most people reading this on a Western salary can spend more, and in Da Nang “more” buys a startling amount: a 70–100 m² oceanview apartment with a pool and gym, weekly housekeeping, a coworking membership, eating out wherever you like, about $1,760/month, barely above Taipei’s comfortable budget and a fraction of what that life costs on any US or European coast.

That is Da Nang’s real pitch. Not “cheapest backpacker base.” Not “live on nothing.” More like: morning beach walks, a proper apartment, a motorbike, cafés you actually want to work from, seafood dinners, space, light, and still a monthly number that would barely cover rent in most Western coastal cities.

The two costs nobody puts in the brochure

Two more things Saturday’s post counts that the cheap-paradise content leaves off.

First, your electricity bill. Most landlords quietly charge foreign tenants a flat rate well above the real state tariff, and Da Nang’s heat means the AC runs. The sea breeze helps at night, but it does not cancel out a humid central Vietnam summer. Electricity is the line that ambushes people in month one.

Second, the clock — actually, two of them. There’s the 90-day visa cycle that never stops (there is no digital-nomad visa). And there’s the one with real money attached: stay past 183 days, or even just sign a lease that long, and you can become a Vietnamese tax resident, with your worldwide income technically in scope. I’ve never seen that mentioned in a “move to Da Nang” listicle.

Da Nang expat FAQs: rent, visa, language

Is Da Nang expensive for foreigners?

Cheaper than the foreigner-facing rental sites make it look, but only if you don’t rent through them. A comfortable single month runs about $810 if you rent locally. Buy that same modest lifestyle through the English-language listings and the baseline jumps to about $1,200 — a ~$400 premium, almost all of it rent, just for renting in English (and still well short of the $1,760 living-large tier). So the honest answer is “no, unless you let it be.” Against the dirt-cheap-Southeast-Asia reputation, Da Nang is cheap but not free: getting around and healthcare cost more than people expect.

What’s the cheapest legal way to live in Da Nang?

A furnished studio out west in Liên Chiểu, near the university zone, from around 4M VND (~$150). Below that are phòng trọ rooms (2–3.5M VND) listed in a different category, which most remote-worker readers aren’t after. The trade-off for the cheap floor is real: 20–30 minutes by motorbike from the beach and the An Thượng scene, and thinner English-speaking infrastructure.

Do I need to speak Vietnamese?

To rent at the local price: effectively yes, or a Vietnamese-speaking agent on your side. That one thing is the difference between the $810 month and the $1,200 one, so it pays for itself in week one. For day-to-day life inside An Thượng and Mỹ An, English gets you through; step outside the foreigner zone and it thins out fast, though Grab and translation apps smooth most of the friction.

Is there a digital-nomad visa?

No. The practical route is the 90-day e-Visa ($25 single / $50 multiple-entry), applied online. You renew by leaving and re-entering, indefinitely. The catch nobody flags: stay past 183 days (or sign a lease that long) and you can become a Vietnamese tax resident, with your worldwide income technically in scope. Saturday’s post walks the detail. For anything specific to you, talk to a Vietnam tax professional.

What does this post NOT cover yet?

Two things. (1) Families (international-school fees, larger family housing, the couple-with-kids math) aren’t modeled here; this is a single resident and a single-earner couple. (2) A structured grocery comparison (local market vs Western imports, by item) is still to come. And the natural Southeast-Asia head-to-head, Da Nang versus Bangkok, lands later in the launch sprint.

What’s in Saturday’s teardown

The paid post is the whole build: the area-by-area rent breakdown (Mỹ An, Khuê Mỹ, Sơn Trà, cityside Hải Châu, the genuinely cheap west), both worked budgets line by line, the full Da Nang-versus-Taipei table, the daily-living and healthcare math, the visa and tax detail, and the twelve places Da Nang residents actually eat, with the beachside tourist traps named and avoided.

If you’re weighing Da Nang against somewhere else, or you’re just tired of cost-of-living numbers that turn out (on arrival) to be the foreigner price, that’s the post for you. It lands Saturday.

— Wei

This is the paid layer — the district-level math underneath that number.

Most readers who write in about Taipei are choosing between staying somewhere familiar and getting on a plane. I’ve been to Taipei multiple times — long enough to know which neighborhoods English content gets wrong, and where the generic guides point the wrong way. The five districts below are the ones where my lived experience and the 591 listings line up.

I pulled 591.com.tw rental listings across five Taipei City districts, excluded misleading stock (social housing, rooftop add-ons, lofts, oversized “studios”), then normalized the remaining units by 坪 — the local unit that actually makes Taipei rent comparable. I pulled current transit, utility, internet, mobile, and NHI figures directly from official Taiwan sources (Taipower, Metro Taipei, Chunghwa Telecom, the National Health Insurance Administration). I cross-checked Chinese-language local recommendation sources against Taiwanese blogs to find the twelve places Taipei residents actually send friends to. Then I assembled all of it into one worked monthly budget for a realistic single-resident expat.

The result is more specific than “Taipei is cheap” and more useful than Numbeo’s city-center average: where the Da’an premium is real, where it’s overstated, why Xinyi’s median is misleading, and what a comfortable month actually costs once rent, food, transport, healthcare, and daily living are all counted.

This is the first Taipei deep-dive. A later Taipei post will cover the remaining districts and the New Taipei affordable-alternative tier; this one focuses on the five districts most likely to matter for a first move. The promise is cumulative depth: each paid post becomes a layer in a growing comparison file, and each refresh makes the earlier work more useful. The full roadmap sits at the end.

A note on currency: NT$31.50 ≈ US$1 as of publish day; I’ll refresh the conversions when the rate shifts more than 5%.

1. The methodology (and why it matters)

The dominant English source for Asian cost-of-living is Numbeo. Numbeo’s “rent in city center” for Taipei is an aggregation of unverified user submissions, often two or three years out of date, with no methodology disclosed. That figure ends up cited in every “moving to Taipei” guide on the internet. It often describes nothing well for the decision you’re actually trying to make.

Here’s what I did instead:

· Rent data: pulled directly from 591.com.tw — Taiwan’s primary rental platform — across five Taipei City districts. I captured both promoted-card listings (which lean toward agent-paid placement and newer stock) and the regular listings grid (closer to real market mix). I excluded social housing (社宅 / shèzhái — allocation-gated, not market-rate), rooftop add-ons (頂加 / dǐngjiā — unpermitted construction, priced as their own sub-market), lofts (樓中樓 / lóuzhōnglóu — different unit type, often mislabeled as a standard studio), and oversized units mismarketed as studios. After exclusions, I worked in rent per 坪 (the local unit, 1 坪 ≈ 3.3 m²) — normalizing for unit size gives a cleaner comparator than raw rent.

· Transit and utilities: pulled from Taipower’s official rate schedule (effective October 1, 2025), Taipei Metro’s published Frequent Passenger Program (updated January 2026), YouBike Taipei’s rate page, and Chunghwa Telecom’s consumer landing page.

· Healthcare: National Health Insurance Administration’s English eligibility and copayment pages, cross-checked against the supplementary premium rules.

· Restaurants: Chinese-language local recommendation sources, cross-verified against Taiwanese blogs (PIXNET, 食尚玩家 / Shi Shang Wan Jia — “Trendy Travel & Food,” 窩客島 / WalkerLand). I prioritized spots where local users say “從小吃到大” (eaten here since childhood) or “我每周都去” (I go every week) — not places where tourist listicles cluster.

Every figure below traces to a specific source. Where I’m uncertain, I flag it.

The advantage here is bilingual sourcing. English guides rarely surface the listing details that change the headline number — like whether utilities are bundled in, or whether you’re looking at a legal building. A few Chinese rental terms with no clean English equivalent: 含水電 (utilities included), 頂加 (unpermitted rooftop add-on — cheaper but legally precarious), and 限女性 (women-only listings — a real category, typically NT$3-5k below comparable units). This post does the cross-walk so you don’t have to.

A note on units. Taiwan apartments are advertised in 坪 (ping), the local unit of floor area. One 坪 ≈ 36 sq ft (3.3 m²). Throughout this post I’ll use sq ft as primary, with 坪 in parentheses for context on first mention per district. Quick mental conversions for studios: 6 坪 ≈ 215 sq ft (compact studio), 8 坪 ≈ 285 sq ft (standard), 10 坪 ≈ 355 sq ft (generous), 15 坪 ≈ 535 sq ft (1-BR territory).

2. The headline: typical studio rent across five districts

Here’s the single most useful chart in this post. Five Taipei City districts, median rent for a typical self-contained studio (套房 / tàofáng — studio with private bathroom):

Da’an is only about 30% pricier than Wenshan at the median — not the 2× premium English content implies. A typical small studio runs roughly NT$15,500 / $490 in Wenshan and NT$20,000 / $632 in Da’an. Meaningful, but a ~$140/month difference. The Da’an “expensive Taipei” reputation only kicks in at the top end: a nice renovated 8 坪 (~285 sq ft) studio in Da’an can run NT$30,000+ / $950+, while Wenshan caps closer to NT$20,000 / $632. Even when you normalize for unit size — comparing $/sq ft, not $/month — the spread across all five districts stays under 20%.

If you’re choosing a neighborhood inside Taipei City, the right question is rarely “can I afford Da’an?” It’s “which of these five gives me the right MRT line, building age, and noise profile?” — because the rent gap is small compared to a 20-minute longer commute or a 5-floor walk-up versus a building with an elevator.

Read more

The useful question is not “Is Taipei cheap?” It is “Which version of Taipei are you pricing?”

This is the headline version of the work. I’ve been to Taipei multiple times and recently pulled rent data from Taiwan’s primary rental platform across five Taipei City districts, cross-checked utility and healthcare figures against official Taiwan sources, and read Chinese-language local recommendations English content doesn’t surface. Saturday’s paid post has the full five-district breakdown, the worked monthly budget, healthcare in depth, and the twelve restaurants Taipei residents actually send friends to.

A few up-front clarifications before the numbers:

· “Taipei” in this series means the Greater Taipei living market — Taipei City proper plus the New Taipei areas many expats actually consider, like Banqiao, Yonghe, and Tamsui. The free post below focuses mostly on Taipei City; Saturday’s paid version explains where the boundary matters.

· Currency: NT$ primary, USD secondary at roughly NT$31.60 ≈ US$1.

· Date stamp: All numbers verified mid-May 2026.

The headline Taipei cost-of-living number

For a single person living comfortably in a mid-tier neighborhood in 2026: roughly US$1,100–1,400 per month.

“Comfortable” at this tier means: a self-contained studio with elevator and AC, eating mostly local food with a few mid-tier meals out per week, full transit pass, decent internet and mobile, NHI access (for eligible expats), and a buffer for travel and unexpected costs. Not luxury. Not student-tier either.

The range is mostly rent. Where you live inside Taipei City drives 70-80% of the variance.

Three things English Taipei guides get wrong

1. The Da’an “premium” is much smaller than English content implies. Most English moving-to-Taipei guides treat Da’an as the expensive part. The actual data: at the median, Da’an is only about 30% pricier than the cheapest district inside Taipei City — not the 2× premium implied by the generic narrative. A typical small studio runs roughly NT$15,500 (~$490) in Wenshan versus NT$20,000 (~$632) in Da’an. Meaningful, but a $140/month difference — not the canyon English content suggests. Where the premium widens is at the top end, not the median.

2. Xinyi is two markets, and the district median misleads. West Xinyi (around Taipei 101, Taipei City Hall, the commercial district) is the genuine luxury anchor — NT$33,000–39,000/mo for a studio. East Xinyi (around Yongchun, Wuxing Street) is mid-tier — NT$14,000–17,000. The district-wide median averages both and describes neither. If you’re searching for “an apartment in Xinyi,” always specify which side.

3. The transit pass many English guides cite is two years out of date. The current Taipei monthly transit pass is the TPASS at NT$1,200/mo, which replaced the old NT$1,280 dual-city pass on July 1, 2023. English content still cites the old number. The TPASS covers MRT, city bus, and the first 30 minutes of every YouBike ride across Keelung, Taipei, New Taipei, and Taoyuan. That’s the pass you actually want. The “20% EasyCard discount” you’ll see referenced was also discontinued several years ago and replaced with a tiered cashback rebate (5–15% based on ride frequency). Both errors get repeated everywhere because English aggregators haven’t refreshed their data since the 2023 transit reform.

Zhongshan: the deepest Taipei rental market

If you’re trying to find an apartment quickly, Zhongshan is the district with the most options. The 591 rental capture found 636 self-contained studio listings there — roughly 30% more than Da’an’s 497 and nearly 6× Wenshan’s. Whatever your price floor or ceiling, there’s stock at that level.

Median rent is NT$15,999 (~$506) — the headline median looks cheaper than Da’an, but comparable-size units land closer to Da’an pricing. Zhongshan’s broader unit-size distribution drags the median figure down.

What you’d actually find:

· South Zhongshan (around Zhongshan or Shuanglian Stations) — Da’an-adjacent and similarly priced. A genuine 8-坪 (~26 m² / 285 sq ft) studio with elevator lands NT$18,000–20,000 ($570–$632).

· North Zhongshan (around Minquan West Road Station, sliding into Datong character) — meaningfully cheaper. The same 8-坪 unit drops to NT$14,000–15,000 ($443–$475). If you can absorb being two MRT stations further from the city core, this is the value buy that doesn’t require leaving Taipei City.

· Linsen North Road around Zhongshan Station — the cheapest genuine studio in our entire 5-district sample landed here at NT$12,000/mo (~$380) for ~215 sq ft. The catch: it’s the 七條通 area, historically Taipei’s nightlife and former red-light zone. Walk it at 11 PM and you’ll catch the neighborhood between two eras — small Japanese-style bars from twenty years ago, and new ramen and specialty coffee places opening every few months. Excellent value if the character doesn’t bother you; obvious skip if it does.

One food note for the neighborhood: when you eat beef noodles in Taipei, skip 永康牛肉麵 (Yongkang Beef Noodle — top of every English food list, perpetual tourist queue). Walk to 林東芳 (Lin Dong Fang) on Bade Road Section 2 — a 10–15 minute walk from either Zhongxiao Fuxing or Nanjing Fuxing Station — open until 3am, herbal-braised beef noodle (a proprietary Chinese-medicinal broth, not the standard red-braised), with their signature spoonful of spicy bone-marrow beef tallow (牛油辣椒) on top. The post-work bowl Taipei residents actually go to. NT$220–320.

Taipei expat FAQs: rent, NHI, language

Is Taipei expensive for foreigners? Less than English content implies, but more than it used to be. The Gold Card boom shifted premium rents upward post-2022, and west-Xinyi luxury is its own market at US$1,600+/month. For a single resident living comfortably in one of the five districts above, the realistic monthly budget lands US$1,100–1,400. Compared to Hong Kong, Tokyo, or Singapore, Taipei still wins on the line items that matter — rent, healthcare, daily food — but not by the canyon a 2021 cost-of-living comparison would suggest.

What’s the cheapest legal way to live in Taipei City? A standard small studio (~6 坪 / 215 sq ft) in Wenshan, landlord-direct, walk-up building, MRT-served — NT$13,000–15,000/mo (~$411–475). Below that you’re in 頂加 (unpermitted rooftop add-on) territory at NT$9,500–12,000/mo. 頂加 is real and findable but legally precarious and brutally hot in summer. Below 頂加 is a different unit type (雅房 — shared bathroom, often shared kitchen) which most expat readers aren’t looking for.

Do I need to speak Mandarin? For housing search, off-menu restaurant ordering, and government / utility setup — yes, or you need a Mandarin-speaking friend on call. For day-to-day life inside Da’an, Xinyi, Songshan, and central Zhongshan, basic English gets you through most transactions; outside those central districts, English availability drops sharply. Gold Card holders tend to land in foreign-friendly building stock in Da’an / Xinyi where the friction is lowest. ARC holders working elsewhere will hit more of it.

Is Taiwan’s NHI actually worth it? Yes, materially. Once enrolled, a clinic visit is NT$50 (~$1.60). A specialist with GP referral runs NT$100–170. An annual physical that would cost $500–1,500 at a US private clinic runs NT$8,000–15,000 self-pay in Taipei — and most of it is covered under NHI for the standard copay if you go through GP referral. Saturday’s §6 walks the eligibility nuance (Gold Card immediate, employed ARC immediate, unemployed ARC after 6 months continuous residency).

What does this post NOT cover yet? Three things. (1) New Taipei pricing (Banqiao, Yonghe, Tamsui, Xindian) ships in Taipei #2 later this year — that’s where the ~25–35% rent savings for a 25–40 minute commute live. (2) A structured grocery comparison (PXMart / Carrefour / wet market by item) also lands in Taipei #2.

What’s in Saturday’s paid Taipei breakdown

The full version: all five districts at this level of depth (Da’an, Songshan, Zhongshan, Xinyi east/west, Wenshan), a worked monthly budget table with sensitivity bands for swapping districts or adding a dependent spouse, current Taipower electricity tier rates with practical bill estimates, NHI eligibility breakdown for foreigners and the per-visit copays, twelve restaurants Taipei residents send friends to (with order-this-not-that specifics), and the methodology table.

One ask

Hit reply with the next city you want broken down at this level — especially if you’re comparing it against Taipei. The launch sprint is Taipei → Da Nang → Lisbon → Bangkok. After that the queue becomes reader-driven — especially helpful if you’re choosing between two cities and want the numbers side by side.

Thanks for reading.

— Wei

That’s a real legacy, and I’m grateful she trusted me to take it forward.

I’m Wei, the new owner. I grew up in the U.S. and I’m currently writing from Hong Kong. I took over AWA because this brand does something genuinely useful: it helps people think through whether, and how, they could actually build a life abroad, not just visit somewhere for a week, but understand what daily life might really feel like.

That’s a corner of the internet I want to spend the next several years building on — and it isn’t an abstract bet for me.

I’ve spent time in 20+ countries and over 100 cities, and the lesson keeps repeating itself: tourism tells you almost nothing about a place. A few months of actually living somewhere — eating where locals eat, building friendships that outlast the trip, learning why things are done the way they are — opens the country up in a way no itinerary ever could. That’s the crossing AWA helps people make.

Before getting into what’s evolving, I want to start with the most important part.

What’s not changing

A Way Abroad, the site itself, will keep doing what it’s been doing.

Same mission. Same women-led contributor pipeline. Same focus on lived experience over tourist gloss.

Kat built an editorial brand that works because readers trust it. My job is not to overwrite that. It’s to protect what already works and build on it thoughtfully.

The contributors you’ve been reading will keep writing. New voices will keep joining. Country pieces, lived-abroad essays, practical guides, personal stories — all of that will continue on A Way Abroad.

So if you’ve been reading AWA for contributor essays and country guides, the site isn’t really changing.

The soul of AWA will stay with the women who have lived these moves and written honestly about them. What I want to add is a more practical decision layer on top: fresher numbers, clearer comparisons, and tools that make the leap feel less abstract.

What this newsletter is becoming

This Substack, specifically, will take on a more focused role.

The site will remain the broad home for AWA’s lived-experience stories. The newsletter will become the practical, data-heavy layer for people actively comparing where to move.

Here’s the honest version: there’s no shortage of expat cost content online. Numbeo, Nomad List, dozens of blogs — you can find a Lisbon cost-of-living post in about ten seconds.

What’s harder to find is cost coverage that’s kept up to date, gets to the neighborhood level instead of relying on city averages, and treats Asia with the same depth as Europe.

That’s the gap this newsletter is going to work in.

Cost teardowns that get refreshed when the numbers move. Neighborhood-level breakdowns when the city is big enough; area-by-area when it’s smaller. Either way, more granular than the city-average numbers most cost guides settle for. And because I’m based in Hong Kong, deeper coverage of places like Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Japan, including the lesser-known cities that rarely show up in English-language guides.

Concretely, that means:

● City deep-dives with verified cost data, broken out by neighborhood and category

● Decision frameworks for the real questions that come up when choosing between two places

● Refreshed visa coverage based on current government sources

● Later this year, a comparison tool that lets you stack cities side by side as the data accumulates.

● Down the road, tax content developed with the help of a family member who works professionally in expat tax

Along the way: the small places locals actually eat, the cultural texture behind the numbers, the lived-experience knowledge that doesn’t fit in a spreadsheet.

The cadence will be predictable.

Wednesdays will be free: the top-line numbers, the main takeaway, and one useful example.

Saturdays will be paid: the full breakdown, with the spreadsheet-level detail.

Same topic, same week, for three weeks every month — six posts a month, on a predictable rhythm. The free post will help you decide whether the city is relevant to you. The paid post will give you the deeper planning layer.

A note on the paid tier

Almost everything has been behind the paywall until now. I’ll be reviewing the back catalog over the coming months and gradually opening up older posts that make more sense as free reading.

Going forward, paid posts need to earn their place.

The goal is for each paid breakdown to be useful enough that it can genuinely help someone make, or rule out, a real move.

How the numbers get made

Cost data ages fast.

A Lisbon rent figure from 2024 isn’t necessarily what you’re paying in 2026. Most cost-of-living articles online don’t get meaningfully updated after they’re published.

So a few commitments:

Every city teardown will be dated, sourced on the ground from people who actually live there.

The cities I cover most actively will get refreshed at predictable intervals instead of being left to rot.

Where possible, I’ll show you the prices instead of just listing them — apartment listings, market price tags, restaurant menus, transportation costs, and other real-world examples.

The goal is simple: the numbers should be useful enough that you can actually plan around them.

Next post: Taipei

The first city deep-dive lands next week.

We’re starting with Taipei because Taiwan is one of the places I know best personally. I’ve spent a lot of time there, looked closely at what daily life actually costs, and think Taipei deserves a more practical, up-to-date guide than most English-language coverage gives it.

Free post on Wednesday. Paid breakdown on Saturday.

After Taipei: Da Nang, then Lisbon, with Bangkok and reader-requested cities to follow.

After that, we’ll see what you ask for.

One ask

If you have a few seconds, write in the comment section below and tell me the city you’re personally researching for a possible move.

One word is enough.

I’ll be reading every comment, and the cities that come up most will move up the queue.

Thanks for being here. Kat built something real. I’m taking it seriously.

— Wei

My life up to that point had been defined by me hopping from country to country and more often than not industry to industry. I worked all over the map (literally) and was really excited to share just how many options there were to move abroad.

Truthfully, I never imagined it would turn into what it is today with nearly 400 articles from over 200 women from around the world. Over 80 countries are now represented on the site, either by a writer from there or an article about how to you can live there.

I love this brand. I’m incredibly proud of what it’s become and the people it has introduced me to.

That said, it’s time for me to part ways. I’m no longer the rambunctious globetrotter I was back in 2019. We just bought our first home in a quiet city in the mountains of Italy and while boxes still occupy 90% of the floor space, I’m so ready for this next chapter.

While I know I won’t stop traveling any time soon and still live abroad myself, I’m looking forward to slowing down and not having 3 jobs. Balancing my full-time work with 2 passion projects has been fun but with this move I’ve decided to prioritize less screen time and more time exploring the mountains now in my backyard.

I’ve always treated a big move as a way to reassess and think about what needs improving, trying, or doing more of. From finding more friends away from the wild party scene I found myself in to learning new sports and hobbies, a move has always felt like the perfect chance to make some changes.

And for this one, I want to take advantage of slowing down and getting outdoors as much as possible.

That said, I’ve worked hard to find a new owner that values A Way Abroad as much as I do. You can still expect the same great articles you’ve grown accustomed to and plenty more tips, advice, and things to consider when moving to a new country.

Even if I won’t be the one behind the scenes, A Way Abroad isn’t going anywhere. If anything, this new owner seems to have the energy the site deserves to continue to grow it.

I expect them to continue sending email updates and publish new articles on the website itself. I’ve shared our social media accounts with them and they might just want to revive the Instagram and Facebook pages I’ve let drift into the shadows.

So, this is the last email you’ll be receiving from me as the author. It’s been a real pleasure helping you find your way abroad and learning from those that have already carved their own paths.

I’ll continue to work on Mamma Mia Indeed, our Italian travel site, so if you want to keep in touch, you can find that Substack here.

Otherwise, have some fun and best of luck wherever your life may take you!

xx,
Kat

Next week we’re moving to Belluno, a small “city” marked as the gateway to the Dolomites in Northern Italy. Even here in Trieste we often get looks of confusion and even empathy when we tell them about our upcoming move.

They can’t imagine a worse place to live but we can’t imagine a better one.

Contrary to the fact that I just updated all of our “best places to live” guides on the website, these lists are actually a bit of bullshit. What’s right for me, a 57-year old man from Denmark, or an 19-year old person from Guatemala will likely not align. Even a group of fellow 35-year old married women wouldn’t all agree.

Maybe they’d love Belluno, too, but more often than not we’d have different ideas as to what’s the “best.” There’s a big difference between what’s the most popular, has the best stats, and actually feels like a good fit for your lifestyle.

• Are you looking for the best place to find a job abroad? You’ll likely want a bigger city.

• Are you looking for access to nature and a calmer pace of life? Skip the cities from above.

• Are you looking for the most affordable place to call home? That’s just a stat that might not reflect real life.

• Are you looking for a nice sense of community and delicious food? People look for friends in different places and our palates might not favor the same flavors.

• Are you looking for anywhere that’s legally possible? Each nationality has different legal rights, so you’ll need to make sure you’re filtering information for your passport.

This is all to say that rather than focusing on the places you’re “supposed” to love, focus on the qualities that overlap with your lifestyle.

Get covered now

Let’s take Bali as an example. People have been shocked that we’ve never been to Bali in all of our years living in SE Asia and as digital nomads. For many, that’s the undisputed king of paradise. For me, its incredible popularity was the exact reason I was never intrigued to visit.

Truthfully, this is the same thing I’d say about traveling somewhere new. Why always follow the beaten path when the world is so much bigger and more diverse than that?

It’s easy to get caught up with what’s trending on social media or the city or town that’s on the top of every list. And maybe that place is perfect for you. But just because it’s right for one, doesn’t mean it’s right for all.

And that’s a really good thing. The world is too wonderfully diverse for all of us to flock to one single place.

Lists like these can be a really good starting point to understand the basics and get the ball rolling but don’t be afraid to divert from the popular path. Most people assume Raf and I would live in Rome or Florence, and while I’m sure we could have made those work, the tiny city of Belluno that most have never heard of seems like the better fit for us.

Dig into the updated lists for 2026 but remember, it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution:

• Best Places to Live Abroad - Worldwide

• Best Places to Live Abroad - Asia Edition

• Best Places to Live Abroad - Europe Edition

• Best Places to Live Abroad - Latin America Edition

• Best Places to Live Abroad - Digital Nomad Edition

• Best Places to Live Abroad - Teacher Edition

If you’ve moved abroad somewhere not quite expected, share in the comments. I’d love to hear more about the places you love most.

xx,
Kat

I’m expected to the be the expert on my home country, the US. I get asked the most specific questions and even if I say, “I’m not sure,” people look at me like I must not actually be an American.

It’s not just me, I’ve seen the same thing happen with Raf as he’s asked to recount decades and decades of Colombian history.

The other day, the language teacher at the Italian school I go to asked me what school lunches are like in the US. I said I wasn’t sure but he pushed. I, in my broken Italian, explained that I haven’t been in a US school for about 20 years and even when I was a student myself my mom packed my lunch.

Still, the questions came.

Are they healthy? Probably not but I can’t say with confidence one way or another.

Are they balanced? How much do they cost? Is there a menu printed beforehand? Are their options for dietary restrictions? I literally do not know nor care.

This happens a lot now with politics and while I do enjoy digging into cultural aspects that make Americans the way Americans are and explaining details that most news sites don’t cover, I truly don’t know the name of most senators, their policies, or how much money they make.

I left that country to not think about those things.

Check out pricing here

On the flipside, people back home have expected me to know intricate details on the countries I’ve lived in. While I do know more than those that haven’t visited or have only popped in for a short vacation, I also don’t know everything.

I can make guesses, I can share my experiences, I can describe the delicious food, but I can’t tell you what healthcare is like for elderly, how the government works, and how much every little thing costs.

It’s a weird conundrum being caught between multiple countries: you become a master of none.

The longer I live outside of the US, the more that country becomes a mystery to me. I’ve been gone almost 1.5 decades. Things are likely different from when I last lived there and even then, I was never much of adult there since I left at age 22.

Yet, all the places I’ve called home since then have been 6 months, 1 year, 2 years of my life. Enough to feel at home but not nearly enough to understand all of the nuances.

I don’t feel like I really the country I’m from or the country I now call home. Personally, I enjoy the unknown and slowly unraveling these mysteries. It’s the people asking the questions that are more turned off by my ignorance.

Maybe it’s just me that feels this way but I do think it’s something you’ll want to have in your head if you’re moving abroad. You might just be the only person from X country this person has spoken to. You’re about to become the expert voice, whether you’re really that person or not. So think twice on what it is that you’d like to say.

xx,
Kat

His options were to fly under the radar and rely on the legal grey zone of, “I live here but work there” confusion. While this grey zone still exists in a lot of places around the world,…

Read more

While I know the term “expat” has a lot of controversy around it, I personally think the definition applies well to people moving to a country for a year or two and who have no intention of putting down roots.

An immigrant is a person who is planning to stay in said country. They’re aiming for permanent residency, ideally citizenship, and to call this new place home. An expat doesn’t care so much about that - they’re there for work, love, or something in between and have no intention of understanding the bureaucratic, political, or economic systems beyond the need for a temporary visa.

I’ve considered myself an expat when I worked abroad in Ecuador, Panama, South Korea, and Vietnam. I considered myself a digital nomad when I worked remotely from other parts of SE Asia and the Balkans. I’ve been simply a tourist more times than I can count.

But now, I’m an immigrant.

We’re actively aiming to stay in Italy. We’re on the path to permanent residency and have agreed we’ll stay until we can apply for citizenship. We bought an apartment, have taken out a mortgage, and are trying to understand the country beyond base knowledge.

The language class I’m in isn’t one that simply teaches grammar; it teaches the language through the lens of culture. Many days we talk about government programs, the school system, and how recycling works here instead of opening a textbook.

I’ve always had a big interest in culture. It’s my biggest driver when prioritizing slow travel and taking the chance to live somewhere vs. just traveling there. This shift though has gone deeper.

There are things I never thought about in other countries I’ve lived in that I now want (or need) to know about in Italy. How's the political system really set up? What rights do I have as an immigrant? Things like tax cuts and healthcare and all the other boring stuff about being an adult I’ve actively been trying to avoid.

The problem with the word “expat” isn’t so much in the word itself; it’s how people use it. It’s the idea that people who are on my exact same path cling to it rather than admit that they’re an immigrant. There’s nothing wrong with being an immigrant and if you’re one who cringes a little bit at the idea of becoming one yourself, well, you really shouldn’t be moving abroad in the first place.

This lifestyle shift marks a big change in my life but one I’m eager to embrace.

Do I still crave the flexibility of previous years when we changed jobs and countries as often as we please? Of course. Some days I wake up yearning to go rogue. But, more often than not, I’m excited to feel for the first time as an adult what it means to put down some roots and settle in.

So, cheers to us, with this lifestyle switch that’ll hopefully bring us plenty of excitement, just in a different way than we’ve been used to.

Weird. But good.

It meant more time hanging with our friends, enjoying the sun on the rare days it came out, getting into Reformer Pilates more, and trying to get even more serious with my Italian study.

Side note: for those learning a language or preparing for that possibility, Italian is the 2nd language I’ve learned as an adult, Spanish is the 1st. I think the best practice possible is just throwing yourself into a “sink or swim” situation and forcing yourself to speak. In addition to this, I’ve also been enrolled in an in-person language school the past year. This month I decided to step it up a bit and have started to make my own “language book” where I’m slowly creating chapters based on specific parts of grammar I’m having a hard time memorizing. It’s not fun and makes my brain feel gooey but has been paying off.

We’ve also spent a lot of time daydreaming about our future apartment and how we’ll decorate it. In case you missed it, we bought an apartment in Belluno and get the keys the end of April. We’re super excited about our first ever home together and having all design choices left to us. But are also nervous about the reality that we only own 2 desks, 2 office chairs, a TV, and a hammock and what furnishing an entire apartment will actually entail.

I also made a new friend which really just pisses me off. Hear me out - we do have a small group of friends here that I care about but have had some trouble meeting people that live in the city (most of our friends live in the outskirts so it makes meeting for coffees or a random drink after work tough). This girl I met at Pilates and it was a quick and easy connection. We met for a coffee today and had a really nice time - conversation flowed, our senses of humor were similar, you get the idea.

All of you who have moved around know this feeling and how much you want to cling to it. So the fact that this connection happened in our last month of living here is a bit of a bummer. I’ll still hopefully see her a few times before we move because a friend is a friend but I do wish we met 2 years ago when we both moved here.

New on the Site

I published 3 new articles on the site this month. It was inadvertently a very heavy European-centric month but if that’s where you’re looking to move, you’re in luck! In case you missed them, check out:

• How to Move to Spain: The Ultimate Guide

• A Beginner’s Guide to Living in Lecce, Italy

• An Expat’s Guide to Living in Larnaca, Cyprus

Coming Up in April

For April, I plan to update some of the round-up guides I have on the best places to teach English and where to live in different regions. These are all now from 2024 and 2025 so deserve a recap.

Otherwise, I have a few new articles in the queue from writers around the world that I’ll get published as well.

As for what’s to come for Substack, I’m considering a few different topics but will likely let my heart take me where it wants to go the moment I sit down to start writing. If you’d prefer to guide me in a particular direction, let me know what you have in mind and I can try and accommodate. I’m here for you so don’t hesitate.

Until next week!

Kat

In case you missed the first ones, you can read up on living in Southeast Asia, East Asia, Latin America, and now Southern Europe.

I can’t stress enough that this is a general look, based on my experience living in these regions. This really just scratches the surface and leaves out a lot of the diversity each and every region of the world is home to.

There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution anywhere but I do hope this gives you a broader look into what your life here could look like and if you think it might be a good fit for you.

I think by now you’re probably sick of reading the same disclaimers I’ve started each piece this month with so I’ll assume you know the drill by now and will stop here to jump into the good stuff.

The General Vibe

To make sure we’re all on the same page here, I’m calling these countries part of Southern Europe, thanks to the definition outlined by World Population Review:

• Italy

• Spain

• Portugal

• Greece

• Serbia

• Croatia

• Bosnia & Herzegovina

• Albania

• Slovenia

• North Macedonia

• Montenegro

• Malta

• Andorra

• San Marino

• The Vatican

My personal experience in this region comes from 1.5 years spread between Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, and Croatia and the last 2.5 years (and counting) in Italy.

Personally, I think Southern Europe has the best combination between things that are efficient (enough) with the laid back spirit I fell in love with in Latin America and SE Asia.

While bureaucratic processes can be a nightmare and patience truly is a virtue you’ll need to live here, things work just enough that I’m good with them. While the Balkans are still lacking in public transportation (namely a good train system), countries like Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Slovenia have a good enough one to get you where you need to go.

I’d rather have to wait in line for some things and know paper documents still rule the day than live somewhere overly systematized and with rules you can’t so easily bend.

People living in these regions tend to be welcoming. Your entire day is planned around a really good meal (or two) that can stretch for hours. Good wine, good company, and food cooked with local ingredients seem to be the love language most speak.

A little Italian example of this. Most restaurants will only give a table 1 reservation for the night. If someone reserves at 8:30pm but the restaurant opens at 7, there’s a good chance that table will sit empty until 8:30, even if people pop in and ask if there’s a table available.

I’ve heard countless tourists complain about this and assume the waitstaff just doesn’t want to serve them.

Italians assume that people going out to dinner will be there for at least 2 hours. They’ll have an appetizer, first course, second course, and often dessert with wine enjoyed throughout the courses. There’s a chance the waitstaff will say, ‘you can have this table but only if you eat quick’ but for most that’d be considered rude and wouldn’t even be offered.

A lot of Southern Europe follows this same principle of slowing down and enjoying your world around you. This isn’t something I’ve found in other regions I’ve lived where fast food or a daily menu is the norm.

The General Job Market/Internet Access

I’ll be blunt here: the job market is not good in this region. While there are opportunities (we moved to Italy only because my husband got a job here), they are far and few between.

The rule to getting a work visa is that you have to prove you can do a job most locals can’t. Being highly specialized or having a unique skillset will set you apart but at the same time does limit your opportunities. With countries that are part of the EU, you have to prove this not only with the country you’re moving to but from the entire EU as well.

For the Balkans, a lot of people I met living here worked for international companies or government entities and were based in the region for a few years. Instead of getting a job within the country itself, they had an internal transfer.

Even if you can get a job, if you’re coming from North America or East Asia, you can assume that salaries will be lower than what you’re used to and taxes might be higher. The work-life balance should be better but it’s still a trade off.

The internet is pretty good but know it’s not perfect. When we lived in the Balkans, we had a lot of trouble with video calls and dealing with big files but we always rented and weren’t in control over the chosen internet service. If you work remotely or stream a lot and want to move here, I’d suggest you budget for a premium service.

The General Visa Routes

If you’re able to get a job here, you’ll be on a work visa. While that’s certainly possible, I don’t think it’s the most common visa routes for this region.

Digital Nomad visas or visas for those with passive income are definitely the most common in Spain, Portugal, Greece, and now Italy. Many people living in the Balkans are either on a work visa from an internal transfer, are married to a local, or are skipping the visa process and doing visa runs every few months.

Strangely enough, Americans can live in Albania for 1 year without a visa. This is certainly the easiest option to move to this region and completely ignore visas, at least for a year. I’m not sure if other nationalities have this same option (I know Colombians do not) so it might be worth looking into for your passport if Albania intrigues you.

The General Cost of Living

The general cost of living in Southern Europe is less than Central and Northern Europe, from what I’ve seen. I will say I’ve seen rent and general prices rise here since arriving but likely in tandem with the rest of the continent.

Generally it’s a big pain point if you live in big cities. Spain, Portugal, Italy, and even my friend living in Bosnia has mentioned housing prices in the major cities so high that locals and foreigners alike are getting pushed out.

If cost of living is a big factor for you, I’d still consider these countries but would suggest looking more into mid-tier or less touristic areas.

This region is really bountiful when it comes to agriculture. They produce a lot of the entire continent’s fruits and veggies. If you eat local and shop weekly to buy fresh produce, you can keep your grocery bill low. This also means eating seasonally and being willing to change your favorite dishes to accommodate what’s available.

Anything Else to Add

Like I said, this is a general look, based on my 1st hand experience of living in Southern Europe. While I could talk for hours about the food, landscapes, and day-to-day life, that’d defeat the purpose of making this general and not so honed in to a specific place. If interested in Italy, here’s all of the articles written about this country.

If you’ve lived anywhere in Southern Italy and have something to add, drop it in the comments!

The goal here is to either A) help you narrow down where in the world might be a good fit for you or B) help get your mindset right if you’re already planning a move to one of these places.

I’ve already written about Southeast Asia and Latin America. Today I’ll focus in on East Asia and next week I’ll wrap up with Europe.

Let’s get to it.

The General Vibe

East Asia is often considered:

• China

• Japan

• South Korea

• Taiwan

• Hong Kong

• Mongolia

• North Korea

Personally, I lived in South Korea for 1 year. I’ve visited Japan and Hong Kong but to speak about more than just South Korea, I’ll be relying on friends who have lived in each of the above countries, with the exception of Mongolia and North Korea.

Generally speaking, I’d consider life in these countries to be colorful, cute, and safe.

The colors stem from a simple walk through any city. Lights, textures, and a painted vibrancy shout back at you. The region doesn’t have the stoicism much of Europe has or the simplicity of Latin America; it’s eye catching, with each shop or restaurant fighting for your attention.

I consider it cute because, well, most things are cute in East Asia. They rely heavily on anime, cartoons, or big dancing stuffed animals for advertising. Even the police notices on the subway in South Korea were drawn and adorable, looking more like a picture you’d give to your 6-year old than a warning against pickpocketing.

You’ll quickly learn multiple ways to make hearts with your hands and, before you know it, you’ll be tossing them out in every picture you take. This alone has come to symbolize my time in South Korea so much that I have a finger heart tattooed on my arm.

The sense of safety cannot be understated here, especially compared with other parts of the world. I forgot to mention this in last week’s edition on Latin America but that’s not a word I would use to describe that region. But it is something I’d confidentially say about East Asia.

There are, unfortunately, bad people everywhere but in East Asia you don’t have to worry so much about getting your phone slipped out of your back pocket or walking around with a bookbag that obviously carries a laptop.

One night in Seoul, a friend of ours drunkenly left his phone at an all-you-can-eat-bbq around 1 in the morning. The next day, he woke up and realized what he did. He assumed his phone would be long gone by then so didn’t stress about rushing to the place, he instead went to work and swung by around 6pm after finishing his day. When he arrived, his phone was still sitting on the table where he left it. Diners had come and gone and staff had cleaned the table multiple times, always setting the phone back to where they found it, waiting for its owner to return.

While I’m sure this is an extreme case, there’s very few places in the world where there’s even a chance of this happening and East Asia is one of them.

The General Job Market/Visa Options/Internet Access

The job market here is really strong for foreigners compared to other regions of the world, especially if you’re interested in teaching English.

The only caveat is that they have strict requirements for teachers and not much wiggle room to bypass them. I’ve heard of a few exceptions but you can assume the rules to be:

• Must have a passport from a native-English speaking country

• Have a TEFL certificate

• Have a Bachelor’s degree in any subject

• Show a clean background check from country of residency

• Have a clean bill of health (you’ll have to do a health check once you arrive for your visa)

If you have these qualifications, there are plenty of teaching jobs out there for you. For more specifics on each country, I suggest you check out:

• Teaching in South Korea

• Teaching in Taiwan

• Teaching in Japan

• Teaching in Hong Kong

• Teaching in China

If you don’t want to teach, there are still options out there but know the job market can be competitive, especially if you need an English-speaking job. The best country to move to and job hunt in-person is Taiwan. This is one of the few countries in the world that offers a visa before you get hired. You can read more about that option here.

There are now a handful of countries that offer some sort of digital nomad visa, namely Japan and South Korea. This gives remote workers the chance to live here while working online, just know that as of now, they both have strict caps on how long you can stay.

For those that work online or are interested in tech, there’s no better region in the world for you. I’ve never enjoyed faster internet or access to new technology more than during my time in East Asia. My husband is what we would all consider a huge nerd and to him, that region is heaven.

The General Job Culture

This section is one I haven’t added to the other posts but felt it was necessary to mention here. The job culture can be really tough. Personally, this was the reason we decided to move on after only a year in Seoul.

I adored the city, my friends, and the joyfully chaotic life we had there. I also loved my coworkers and my students. But I did not love the job culture.

Working in East Asia is a commitment. The region tends to pay well and a lot of time offers perks like housing and a fast visa process but the bar will be high. You’ll likely work long hours and be expected to go above and beyond. Sick days aren’t really a thing and even vacation days aren’t always a given.

Locals tend to work hard and play hard, surviving on way less sleep I learned I needed to function. While that lifestyle can be a lot of fun for the right person, it wasn’t the best personal fit.

The General Cost of Living

Generally the cost of living is higher than you’d face if you opted to move to Latin America or SE Asia instead. That said, if you work in-person, your pay and perks will be higher as well, offsetting that.

Apartments tend to be very small in big cities. Most have a lofted bed to give you more floor space but, truly, don’t expect too much space unless you have a big budget backing you up.

Luckily, street food runs supreme in these countries. To balance your budget, you’ll want to get comfortable with eating on the street. Don’t worry, your taste buds will thank you!

Anything Else to Add?

This is a very general look, based on my 1st hand experience of living in East Asia, namely South Korea. While there’s so much diversity in the food, landscape, and specific cultures here, this is a blanket look into the region.

If you’ve lived anywhere in East Asia and have something to add, drop it in the comments!

In case you missed last week’s, I just want to issue a small warning that this will be very general and based on my personal experience. While for the most part everywhere speaks Spanish, there are still big differences between cultures, cost of living, and day-to-day life.

Don’t think of this as the golden rule but instead a general idea into what your life living in this region could look like.

Let’s dive in.

The General Vibe

Parts of the Caribbean are sometimes included when referring to the region, Latin America, but for today’s purpose let’s stick with Mexico down to Chile. From my travel experience, the Caribbean is completely it’s own and while Spanish is sometimes spoken, the culture and way of life might differ too much to lump it into this piece.

Specifically, I’ve lived in Ecuador (2013-2015) and Panama (2015-2016), with a handful of months spent in Guatemala, Peru, Colombia, and Argentina. My in-laws are also Colombian, with all of Raf’s family still calling that country home (and giving us the perfect excuse to visit).

Generally, I’d describe Latin America as energetic. Not so much in terms of how physically active the people are but for the vibrancy everyday actions involve.

Voices are loud, streets are colorful, and music never seems to turn off.

It’s actually something both my husband and another Colombian friend of his complain about in Europe. I love when I open my balcony door on a Sunday and not a single noise reaches me. For them, it’s terrifying. Where are the street vendors? The friends playing on the corner? Or the neighborhood speaker that never seems to turn off?

That’s actually a real thing.

My neighbor in Ecuador proudly brought home a new speaker one day. One of those massive ones often found in clubs or karaoke joints. They put it on their patio, angled to the street, and never turned it off in the 2 years we lived next to each other. They kept the tune of our barrio and I was the only one that was surprised.

With the exception of a few mountain towns, a moment of silence is rare in Latin America but the rhythm will somehow find a way to creep in until you’re swaying along with it.

Other than the energy, you’ll also realize that most people are curious. If you don’t look like you belong, you will get attention. People will stare, point, and ask you questions you might feel are too personal. It’s not an attack on you, it’s genuine curiosity.

From my experience, the level of English is really low across the region. Doors will open up to you if you speak Spanish and are willing to answer questions with kindness. Especially in smaller towns, getting to know your neighbors will be crucial. Next thing you know you’ll be dancing the night away with them, grateful for that neverending music.

The General Job Market/Internet Access

I’ll be honest: the job market isn’t great for foreigners. There are some opportunities to teach English, work in hospitality, or work for international companies but true paid positions (especially ones that sponsor your visa) aren’t so common.

This isn’t to say there aren’t opportunities, there are. You just have to work a little bit harder to find them.

I went to Guatemala on a language program, studied abroad in Argentina, lived in Ecuador as a Peace Corps Volunteer, volunteered in Peru, and worked as a tour guide in Panama.

Truthfully, my work as a tour guide was paid but was “under the table” and didn’t provide a visa.

While it’s certainly possible to get hired as an English teacher, if you want to ensure a visa and a good salary, I’d opt for teaching at an international school instead, so long as you meet those requirements.

The quality of internet will depend drastically on where exactly you move. Cities will have better signal than rural areas. In my experience though, the internet still isn’t that great when compared to other parts of the world. You should be fine with basic remote work but if you deal with heavy files or spend all day in video calls, you’ll want to do some research on the best internet provider.

The General Visa Routes

I mentioned border runs in last week’s piece on living in SE Asia. Here, border runs are just as common. A lot of people pop into the region and slowly work their way around, moving on every 3 months or so, or do a border run and heading right back to their adoptive home the next day.

While the system isn’t quite as impressive as in SE Asia with numerous companies ready to offer their service, it’s still as common.

If you have a legitimate job, you should be able to get a work visa. From my experience, it’ll take a lot for a company to want to sponsor you but it’s not unheard of.

There are a handful of countries in Latin America that currently offer a digital nomad visa of some sort. If you work online and want to move to this region for longer than a tourist visa allows, look into:

• Argentina Digital Nomad Visa

• Belize Long-Stay Permit

• Brazil Digital Nomad Visa

• Colombia Digital Nomad Visa

• Costa Rica Rentista Visa

• Ecuador Rentista for Remote Work Visa

• Mexico Temporary Residence Visa

• Uruguay Digital Nomad Visa

For more details on each, start at #29 on this article.

The General Cost of Living

Generally, Latin America is considered affordable. Of course, keeping in mind that cities and popular hubs will be more expensive than smaller and less-known destinations.

You can easily make life here super expensive, as you’ll find plenty of international restaurants, high rise condos, and luxury shops in any of the big cities, just like you will in your home country. That said, most would say you’ll get more bang for your buck here.

Now it’s time for my typical disclaimer: please don’t only move abroad because of the promise of a lower cost of living. While this can certainly be a perk, you’ll need some other motivators - like genuine curiosity and an eagerness to live in said culture - than just how it’ll affect your bank account.

Anything Else to Add?

This is a very general look, based on my 1st hand experience of living in Central and South America. While there’s so much diversity in the food, landscape, and specific cultures here, this is a blanket look into the region.

If you’ve lived anywhere in Latin America and have something to add, drop it in the comments!

So, that’s exactly what I’ll do this month.

Note that I won’t write about regions I’ve never lived in but only those I have. This one is obviously on Southeast Asia but later in the month I’ll cover South America, Europe, and East Asia.

Truthfully, I’m going to have to be very general in my descriptors here. I’m going to focus on my personal experiences only and rely on comparisons to build examples. Every region is home to immense diversity so instead of assuming every single place in an area is the same, take this as a gentle understanding. This is a rough guide, not an exact science.

My goal here is that this series will help you narrow down you focus on where in the world could be good for you but also to get your mindset right before a move if you’re already heading in one of these directions.

Enough of the preamble, here’s a general look into life abroad in SE Asia.

The General Vibe

Most commonly, these countries are considered part of SE Asia:

• Brunei

• Cambodia

• Indonesia

• Laos

• Malaysia

• Myanmar

• Philippines

• Singapore

• Thailand

• Timor-Leste

• Vietnam

My experience comes mainly from Vietnam, having lived there for 3 years (2018-2021). Before moving to Vietnam, we traveled through Thailand for a few months. We also took a number of trips around the region between 2018 and 2019 before borders closed.

Generally speaking, SE Asia is laidback, vibrant, humid, and a lot of fun.

It’s a weird juxtaposition between relaxation and absolute chaos. There’s a saying in Vietnamese, "Không sao," which translates to “it’s OK” or “it doesn’t matter.” This is the first thing you’ll want to learn as you’ll hear it often and use it just as much.

It’s fine, you’ll be alright, no stress here. That’s the Vietnamese mantra.

And then you hit the streets and chaos reigns. Motorbikes buzz wildly, street vendors take over any leftover sidewalk space, and litter and rats scatter about.

From my travel experience, while I don’t know the local mantra, the vibes are similar.

Personally, I found this fascinating and a fantastic way to live your life, just maybe with less litter and rats, ideally. The way of the road never bothered me, if anything, I loved the motorcycle culture, especially once you realized there really is a method to the madness.

Since we lived here during peak Covid, we were able to glimpse into another aspect of culture: the sense of community. We felt this from the beginning but it really became apparent once the pandemic hit.

People truly give a shit about their neighbors. In the US, we’re individualistic, in Latin America it’s all about the family, but in SE Asia, it’s communal.

I really love this mindset and it’s something I would recommend you’re aware of when you move in. Think of the community at large, not just yourself or your friend group, and you’ll settle in easier.

The General Job Market/Internet Access

For those that want to teach English, this region should be one of your top contenders. While you can get better paying jobs in East Asia (more on that another week), jobs are abundant here. And the requirements to get hired aren’t so strict.

If you’re a native English speaker with some experience and a TEFL certificate, you should have your pick of jobs but even if you’re lacking a qualification or English isn’t your native language, you can likely find something.

My only note here is that make sure you actually want to teach, that you’ll put some effort in, and your English is good enough to do so. I met too many people who were taking advantage of this system and while I don’t ask that you’re the most passionate educator out there, your students deserve someone that at least wants to be there.

If you don’t want to teach, jobs will be more limited. The best options would be working in hospitality (but you’ll either need to have a lot of experience, speak the local language, or both), working for an international company that transfers you here, or working remotely.

With a few exceptions, most people I know who have lived (or are currently living) in SE Asia are either English teachers or remote workers.

While you might have to deal with some power cuts from time to time, the internet is pretty solid. Of course, the exception being if you choose to base yourself somewhere far flung. In cities you should be set though.

The General Visa Routes

Generally, most foreigners are either on a work visa or are taking advantage of tourist visas and doing border runs every few months.

Just a note, most often, if you don’t meet all the “true” requirements to teach English, even if you have a job, they likely won’t give you a work visa. That’s simply because the requirements I highlighted above are government mandated to qualify for a visa. If you have these, you certainly should advocate for a visa. I’d take it as a red flag if the school wanting to hire you isn’t willing to do this for you.

Most who are either working under the table or working online will end up doing border runs. This means you’re entering in the country on a tourist visa and hoping over the nearest border the day it expires and coming back in with a new one. While I’d consider it a “grey zone,” the idea is so common that many countries have offer numerous companies that literally take you across the border and back.

Now that countries are starting to catch on to just how many us work remotely, more and more digital nomad visas are starting to pop up. Truthfully, there aren’t too many to choose from in SE Asia yet but you do have some options. Mainly, the DE Rantau Nomad Pass in Malaysia and Digital Nomad Visa in Thailand.

The General Cost of Living

Generally, SE Asia is considered affordable. Of course, a city or popular tourist town will always be more expensive than the rest of the country, so choose wisely if budget is a key factor for you.

Buying international groceries and trying to replicate your life from home here will also raise your monthly expenses exponentially.

That said, generally, it is a really good region if you’re hoping to save as much as possible. If you shop and eat locally and skip the high end apartment complexes, you can keep your expenses lower than in most other parts of the world.

I have said this before and I’ll continue to say it but please, please don’t only move abroad because of the promise of a lower cost of living. While this can certainly be a perk, you’ll need some other motivators - like genuine curiosity and an eagerness to live in said culture - than just how it’ll affect your bank account.

Anything Else to Add?

Like I said, this is a general look, based on my 1st hand experience of living in SE Asia. While I could talk for hours about the food, landscapes, and day-to-day life, that’d defeat the purpose of making this general and not so honed in to a specific place. If interested in Vietnam, here’s all of the articles I’ve written about this lovely country.

If you’ve lived anywhere in SE Asia and have something to add, drop it in the comments!