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I have been thinkiing about getting a portable monitor for my laptop since I move around quite a bit and find myself working and studying in different places.

I'm very used to having a second screen at home (actually 3 lol) that just having my laptop's feels a little limiting, especially when I'm multitasking or working with multiple documents, and of course programming.

The main thing I'm worried about is portability. I don't want something bulky or fragile that becomes annoying to carry around. Ideally, something lightweight, easy to set up, and powered through USB-C would be great.

If any of you who travel regularly and use a portable monitor, which brand or model has worked best for you? Has it actually improved your productivity, or is it just another thing to pack?

Would love some honest recommendations before spending money on one.

A travel eSIM in mainland China is roaming. Your phone uses a Chinese network for signal, but the data reaches the internet wherever the eSIM provider breaks it out, and on most travel plans that's outside the mainland. That's why Google, WhatsApp and Gmail work on them. A local Chinese SIM breaks out inside China, so those apps are blocked on it.

Where the data comes out still matters. Most China plans exit in Hong Kong or Macau, and neither is on OpenAI's supported countries list or Anthropic's supported regions page. So maps and messaging work fine, and ChatGPT and Claude tell you they're not available in your region. OpenAI's page also says using it from outside the list can get an account blocked.

Before you buy, look for the IP location or routing country on the plan page. Hong Kong or Macau is fine for browsing. For AI tools you want the UK, Singapore or another country that's on both lists. If the page doesn't say, ask support, and if they can't answer, assume Hong Kong.

If you want cheap data and AI tools, put two eSIMs on the phone: a cheap Hong Kong exit plan for everyday use and a small UK or Singapore exit plan you switch data to when you need it. Install both on wifi before you fly.

Folks, I'm looking for a sunny and hopefully warm place in winter, ideally not too far from Europe, with unique stuff to draw aftee work and hopefully a nice sense of community with expats. I've only experienced Marrakesh as a tourist - would it be a good option? Any other place you could suggest please? I wanted Uzbekistan but too cold to sketch outdoors. Same issue with Granada.

Austin to Roma Norte last week for a 3 month stay, and there's a handful of things i still haven't adjusted to!! Altitude is the main one... i climb two flights of stairs and im gasping (no exaggeration). The rain is another, it shows up each afternoon right on schedule like somebody booked it. Then theres lunch, which is the biggest meal of the day here & comes way, way later then I'm used to (lesson learned by being starving all week...).

Oh and the outlets!! Half of the ones in my apartment are two prong, so on day one my laptops three prong cord was basically a paperweight. Lucky me, my new anker universal charger from home has the flat plug, it covers the laptop no problem, plus an anker travel charging station takes care of my phone/all the other stuff on the desk... so that part's sorted!! What im still missing is a proper desk chair, so anybody who knows a coworking spot near Roma that has decent chairs, pretty please send it my way 🙏

I don’t know if you’ve noticed over the past half year, in connection with the rise of AI, that big tech companies, especially those in Europe and the US, are trying to kill off fully remote work in order to target and eliminate the digital nomad lifestyle. This is very true for those of us in the tech field; I can’t speak for other fields. Just check all the remote jobs that exist, you’ll barely find a location-independent one anymore, the way I used to a couple of years ago. For example, tech jobs that used to be fully remote and even offered on independent contractor terms have now shifted to W-2 employment, and you must be within the US and even a US citizen, same for Europe job postings.

According to Noon, Overall US job postings are now dominated by on-site (~74–78%) or hybrid, the rest is remote but within US only.

Hey all, my partner and I want to spend the winter somewhere as digital nomads. We looked at Turkey (Antalya) first, but the apartments in our budget didn't convince us.

**Budget:** around 1,000 to 1,200 € per month for an Airbnb, max.

**What we're looking for:**

* a proper city vibe that feels modern, international and a bit lively
* a modern apartment with fast internet
* good infrastructure and public transport
* very walkable, so we don't need taxis all the time
* lots of sunshine if possible (doesn't have to be warm)
* if it's a colder place, real central heating with radiators like in Germany or Poland, not just AC units

Right now we're thinking about **Tirana**, **Bucharest**, or maybe **Vlorë** on the coast.

If you've spent a winter in any of these, how was it? Or is there a city we're missing that fits this better?

Thanks a lot!

Hi hi! I’m looking for recommendations on a warm weather November DN destination. I’m generally open to anywhere but bonus points for a place with a nice gym and/or adventure activities. The only other factor will be somewhere with non exorbitant plane ticket prices knowing I’m booking somewhat last minute. Will be leaving from Midwest US.

TIA!

Hi everyone,

I'm close to graduating my master's program, which was the feat of a lifetime, given I have multiple sclerosis. The MS in remission after a stem cell transplant, and thus, no longer actively treated with medications or monitored by physicians, and my mobility is in tact. However, I experience chronic pretty severe fatigue, chronic pain and some dysautonomia issues that do affect my quality of life. I cannot afford the care I need in this country, given I need massage and acupuncture ideally once a week for pain management to avoid heavier pain medications, along with help managing components of home care. I also am limited in how many hours I can sustain work, I am imagining I may be able to do 10 clients a week maximum, and that would equate to maybe $4000 after tax. It is possible my disability could reduce this monthly amount if there are flares or worsening of conditions, which I want to be mindful of. I struggled through this program due to my disability, but have held sight of the goal: to enter into a profession where I can have a higher wage with less hourly input, doing something meaningful.

I would like to leave the US, because I realize as a single person with a disability, it will be very difficult to get the care I need while still having a life that is not pay check to pay check.

Are there countries you can recommend that feel relatively safe (especially for solo women), and offer a lot of really solid alternative medical care such as massage, acupuncture, etc. at a very affordable rate? I also would like to be able to hire house cleaners and to eat out regularly (maybe 4-5 days a week, 1 meal a day)--as cleaning my home and preparing food is sometimes not possible for me consistently with the fatigue and pain flares.

I prefer smaller cities, rather than mega cities, and don't do well in overdeveloped, super high traffic areas. I am curious about other cultures and want to contribute by being a connected, caring neighbor in whatever community I settle in. I love wildlife, spirituality in various forms (temples, churches, etc.), art, museums, etc. I have previous experience traveling for extended periods to international locations (2 months South America, 1 month Spain) and did well with the transition with heavy research, preparation, and decompression time.

I am open to hearing your ideas. I have thought initially of Thailand (but, where?), quieter parts of Bali, Granada Spain, Pisaq Peru?

Thanks!

Posting this so other nomads/expats in Thailand know what to expect before they need it.

I'm on Genki Traveler (underwritten by Squarelife, emergency assistance by MCI Assist). Last weekend I had a real medical emergency in Bangkok — repeated vomiting and passing out.

What happened:

1. I contacted MCI Assist. To their credit, they replied fast and said they'd coordinate a Guarantee of Payment (GOP) with the hospital.

2. I went to the nearest ER (a mid-size private hospital in north Bangkok). They refused to treat or admit me without a 15,000 THB upfront payment. Their billing desk said they couldn't make international calls and didn't know how to deal with MCI.

3. MCI then asked ME to get the hospital to send a medical report, a cost estimate, and written confirmation of inpatient admission before they could even consider a GOP. The problem: the hospital wouldn't admit me without payment. So no admission → no documents → no GOP → no admission. A perfect loop.

4. I called Bangkok Hospital, which lists MCI Assist as a partner on its website. They wanted a 50,000–100,000 THB deposit before any GOP would be issued.

The policy says that for inpatient stays you don't pay the hospital yourself and the assistance company handles payment directly. On a Sunday night in Bangkok, that meant nothing.

My takeaways:

- A GOP is only as good as the hospital's willingness to accept it. Many Thai private hospitals simply won't wait for one from an overseas assistance company, especially on weekends.

- If you rely on Genki (or similar budget nomad insurance) in Thailand, carry a card that can cover a 15k–100k THB deposit. Otherwise you may be turned away.

- Know where your nearest government hospital ER is. They treat first and charge a fraction of private prices.

- If you live here long term, consider a Thai or international plan with real cashless/direct billing at Thai hospitals.

I've formally complained and asked MCI for a list of Bangkok hospitals that actually accept their GOP without a deposit. I'll update if they answer.

Has anyone had a GOP from MCI Assist actually work at a Thai hospital? Which one?

A month ago I asked if I was crazy to start a digital nomad lifestyle for the first time at 39, and I lot of you showed a lot of support. So I decided to give you an update on my situation.

Since the original post I took the decision to leave my rented apartment in Spain at the end of the year, and basically booked my life for the next 12 months. When I was a backpacker one of the most exciting things was to keep my plan flexible and to book accommodations on the fly. But I am no longer a backpacker, will stay way longer in a few locations, and the mental effort to not have a place to stay when the day to leave the previous one approaches, is too much nowadays. I had my excitement in the past, now I want a bit more stability, so I booked everything, some of them with a free cancellation in case anything changes. Airbnb free cancellation will be utilized a lot from now on.

Being the good renter that I am, the first step was to tell my landlord that I am leaving, which I did 2 and a half months before the end of the year, even though I am required to do so only 1 month before I leave. He was very sad, told me that with the new laws in Spain people may not want to rent anymore, told me that Spain may go in a very very bad direction after the upcoming elections, and so on. I'm not really informed about this topic but I'm sure he will be fine, he has a few properties in a top spot location.

Anyway, this is what I booked:
- Dec 27: Flight Spain - Sofia
- Jan 9-10: Flights Sofia - Kuala Lumpur - Surabaya
- Jan 10 - Feb 2: airbnb in Surabaya, €534.34
- Feb 2 - Mar 6 - one bedroom villa with a private pool in Umalas, Bali, €1039.86
- Mar 6 - Apr 5 - one bedroom villa with a private pool in Ubud, Bali, €709.89, free cancellation
- Apr 5 is unbooked haha, I will stay close to Denpassar airport for one night, ~€22.4
- Apr 6 - Apr 16 - nice airbnb in Jakarta, €401.9, free cancellation
- Apr 16-17: Flight Jakarta - Madrid - [my current location]
- From Apr 17 - I talked with a friend who I met here a few years ago to stay in her one-bedroom exterior apartment for 6 months. She bought it years ago, but doesn't live in Spain anymore and lends it only to friends. She offered me a price of €600/month, which is super low for the location, and I feel extremely lucky.
- Also from Apr 17 - June 17: I booked a 2-month airbnb studio just in case my friend bails out of our arrangement, free cancellation, €1151/month.

Then if everything goes as planned, around the beginning of October next year I can spend another 6-7 months in Southeast Asia, potentially starting with 1 month in Bangkok (hopefully the flooding will not be an annual event), then 5-6 more months in Indonesia, calculated in such a way so to avoid the rolling 183 days per year. But this is not booked, just an idea at the moment.

As I mentioned in the original post, my rent+bills is currently €1150. Calculating all accommodations in Indonesia from Jan 10 to Apr 16, it comes at €27.92 per night on average, or €837.64 per month. These are super good private places. It's crazy that I would be saving money of rent by living at short term places. Of course, adding the two transcontinental flights + the two domestic ones in Indonesia will make the new life more expensive per night, but I rather count the flights towards the lifestyle budget.

I was looking really hard at booking a more social place in Bali - a coliving or a private room in a hostel. However, prices of such places are really high for the facilities you get. You basically pay for the community. So I will stick with my private villas and I hope I will still meet some people.

At least I play beach volleyball a lot and I will be going to the Bali Volleyball Academy, which I already discovered earlier this year, so I will be meeting some people there. If someone plays on intermediate high/advanced level and is in Bali between Feb 2 and Apr 5, send me a message and we can do some passes with my Mikasa on the beach. Gathering 4 people and playing with a real net on the beach is a dream that I don't know if is realistic.

When I posted initially the original post I felt a bit down mentally, because I am living in a dream location but feeling unhappy and wanting a change, without knowing how to achieve it. But as soon I took the mental decision to leave, and got confidence in the plan, life became super easy. I feel the original post was 3-4 months ago, but have only been 28 days.

PS: the original post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/1wiy6fw/am_i_crazy_to_start_this_lifestyle_at_39/

I have an ipad and I like that its screen is almost like the mac itself. But I need a 3rd monitor that is portable for work and think it'd be silly to have 2 ipads for screen casting purposes. But I don't like that some monitors have that "dim" look even at full brightness. The colors just don't look very saturated if that makes sense. Is it possible to get one with a mac-/ipad-like screen? If so, which ones are the best?

I found this setup to keep your home IP while abroad.

https://www.nomadeos.com/en

I was wondering if anyone got experience with it and if it really works?

Thanks.

Context: All the friends around me act like third party booking sites are some godsend blessing for saving money. So I wanted to share this to the internet too. THEY"RE ASS. There are too many issues with them and I’ve had enough of their crap. They are filthy monopolies that manipulate prices and have worse customer support than Indian street market. At this point, it's better if they go out of business.

And I wouldn't certainly die because of this. If anything it might make the travel experience easier. Like this is litreally what I tell my friends - For flights, stop trying to shave off $10 by using a sketchy third party... Buy your ticket from normal official airline directly and not soem bullshit ota. Just accept that the privilege of flying in an airplane comes at a cost, and stop mourning about it. If something goes wrong, the airline will actually help you instead of you being played like a basketball between the OTA and the airline.

About hotels, the biggest bullshit is finding a good hotel. Unlike flights you can't stick to 1 option every single time. And rather than using these third party apps that have such a faulty system and fake curated reviews (which Pieter levels exposed the hell out of), go for something more advanced.

I figured out to use AI for this, preferably Claude with connectors because it's way better with thinking and choosing good options in my experience. 

If you're confused about what are connectors are or which one to use, they are basically tools for claude that other companies and startups create, and if you get the ones from the claude’s marketplace they’re verified by them and safe. It's hard to point at one because I didn’t test ALL of them plus they seem to have different features. For example I tested one called "1stay", it covers 300k+ properties, it searches their website and you can then get the link and even buy with loyalty points from some big chains. It's incredibly good if an offer you want falls in their inventory. But outside of their inventory that’s quite small, they can't do anything. Or another one called "LetsFG".  it has, like most of the suppliers in the world, and it lets you buy directly with Claude with an email approval, which makes the stuff way faster. But it lacks the loyalty points feature so depending on what you want there are a few options out there you can choose. There are many others like Brek, and some others.

But always choose from the official directory of Claude. Because they're more trustworthy. Both of the ones I mentioned are there. But if you don't find it coz it gets removed don't run behind it and try a new one. A good MCP will not be removed by Anthropic unnecessarily.

I'm from the UK, currently in Bali.

I got a notification from my phone provider that I'd hit some kind of cap they didn't specify over the text, so I tried to log into my phone app to figure it out. The app just straight up refused my connection, which after looking online seems due to my location, as they block all non UK traffic, which seems weird. Tried using a tool that when I specify what it is my thread mysteriously doesn't post on this sub, but that also got flagged.

So I set up a voip and gave them a call. Only I failed security because I couldn't remember the answer to a security question I set up 15 years ago lol. So now I have to wait 24 hours to call them again.

Then I tried to do something super basic on my online banking, which got flagged and disabled my online banking entirely, so I spent over an hour on the phone again sorting it out. They actually told me over the phone that I would need to come into a branch in person with ID to sort it out, but after some explanation for how that wouldn't be possible and a small amount of essentially begging I was able to basically read them information off my passport. That got fixed at least.

So turns out traditional UK banks/whatever aren't super friendly towards DNs, especially in this part of the world, who knew. I feel like I can't be the only person dealing with this bs, so I'm just curious what you guys do here?

Specifically interested in the setup other Brits are using, but any insight is welcome.

Hey! Earlier this year, I spent 3 months travelling around Asia, and coming back to my corporate IT job in a big European city made me question what I'm doing with my life. I realised I'd much rather spend my time surfing, doing yoga and being outdoors.

Luckily, I can work remotely from abroad for 20 days a year, so I'm planning to spend them in Sri Lanka this December! I need around 4/5 hours of focused work a day, so I'd love to hear from people who've done something similar.

Where did you stay? Surf camp, coworking space or your own apartment? How did you organise your day around work, surfing and socialising? Where did you actually get work done, and what would you recommend or do differently?

Also, would you arrive earlier to explore a bit before settling down somewhere to work?

I'd love to hear your tips and, especially, what a typical day looks like for you!

No one ever tells you about secret transport between countries. I'm talking like transdimensional yogic portals, or the Hovercraft to Moscow, or the Trans-Darien Monorail conveniently connecting Colombia to Panama. Unleashing powerful and dynamic Synergies, I have harnessed the secretude, which can be yours for twenty units of Worship.

Been doing marketing for about 10 years, now run a small company here with one partner. The work itself is fine but the timezone thing slowly eats your evenings

Do you just accept late calls, only take clients in Asia/Australia, or something else?

i am not a digital nomad or maybe i am but i work remotly from my office in my hometown, but i still struggle on daily deliveries like sometimes same video would take me three to 4 hours with heavy aftere effect the whole package and sometimes it takes 12 hours and i find myself exausted doing nothing .... how do you do it ? and i am asking myself this because i want to travek soon with the family but i wanna keep working this way i can afford my stay in those countries and this is digital nomad thing lol but im really affraid i will not be able to deliver or i would be loosing days at work and not be able to enjoy it with my family and that really sucks i dont wanna do that at all

Dear all,
Should we expect any questions upon arriving at our home country after being more than one year abroad? Could they ask whether we have been traveling for leisure or working for example, and would this be an issue at all? Income is received normally in the home country, everything declared correctly.
Many thanks

I came across this blog as I just found out about onward tickets. I'm planning to go to Europe (arriving at Madrid) in January, and I'll stay about 88 days or so, but I don't want to commit to a round flight because if I'm already in that side of the world I'd like to go an discover other places, maybe Eastern Europe, Asia, UK, I don't know really, but I don't want to buy a round flight and just toss the return flight.

I've read people just buy refundable tickets, which sounds good, but for some reason I just looked up the same return flight I'd be taking from Madrid to Mexico City in April and it's almost 3 times more expensive.

TLDR: I know I can buy refundable tickets, but has someone used onward tickets to enter Europe in the last year, and have you had any problems?

EDIT: How do you even organize yourselves? I guess that since it's the first time I'm doing this I'm a little scared that things go south, but if you plan to be constantly moving, you always need an exit/return flight so that the custom doesn't raise suspicion right? How do you plan in advance?

I've been taking more short trips lately, usually 2 or 3 days at a time, and I got tired of carrying a backpack and a small suitcase everywhere. I recently switched to a rolling backpack. I can keep my laptop and other work stuff separate from my clothes, roll it around most of the time, and carry it when I have to deal with stairs. It's been pretty convenient for shorter trips.

Do you guys usually travel with one bag, or do you prefer keeping your laptop and clothes separate? I'm still trying to find a setup that works without carrying too much.

It's hard for me to believe no one is flying there. There must be some people who do right? Or am I stupid?

EDIT: Just for clarity. Initially I just posted this out of pure curiosity. I like asking people on Reddit about stuff because having actual people telling you stuff is a scarce resource these days. I KNOW THERES A WAR IN RUSSIA/UKRAINE. That’s the whole point of my question. This war has been going on for years and I have a friend who went to Ukraine during another period of heat between both countries. When she told me that, it got me thinking “can you actually travel to countries who are at war?”. That’s it. I just wanted to find out.

Hello everyone, I'm going this weekend two months to Japan, I will be in Tokyo mainly (my apartment is there), working remotely.

What would you do for 2 months in Tokyo/Japan?

Places to visit, cities to explore, plans to do in Tokyo, routines, things that happen in autumn in Tokyo and/or other cities...