Source: Wen Ji

"I have no money and am going back to find a job."

Chiang Mai On the street in the early morning, Jane looked up and said to me. Jane is 25 years old and from Yunnan. This wasn't the first time she had to interrupt her journey, return home, find a job, save money, quit her job, and then get back on the road.

She stayed in Chiang Mai for an extra long time this time, and she couldn’t remember how many times she had spent all her savings. She was curious about how other young people made money while traveling.

After all, in the philosophy of most people, survival is more important than faith, and travel is just the spice sprinkled on survival.

For a long time, people in ancient narratives have always had to leave their homeland in order to survive, travel to Guandong, go to Southeast Asia, and leave their hometown to seek life. In the digital age, foreign lands have become a part of today's young people's exploration of distant places and even their daily life - transnational digital nomads, a group that has emerged.

Chiang Mai, backed by Mount Inthanon, the highest peak in Thailand, and the digital nomads wandering under this ancient city, have their own set of ideas about survival and freedom. logic.

01 The lie of restarting life

“I knew about Web 3 when I was in high school. However, my two internships during college were at Internet companies. I found that I didn’t like the work pace of big companies, so I finally found a job before graduation. A Web 3 companies in the industry, until now.”

Zoe, a Shenzhen girl born in the 2000s, is the youngest member I met in the digital nomad community in Chiang Mai, and has the unique characteristics of Southeast Asian islanders. She has dark skin and has achieved the WLB (Work Life) dream of many people shortly after graduating from college. Balance) life and work balance, traveling and working in Dali, Shenzhen, Chiang Mai, Bali and other places with some friends in the same community, sounds like a life trajectory that only a white girl can have.

During my nearly half-year trip to Southeast Asia, I met Zoe, a rare example of someone who took the first step in her career and entered the digital nomadic life. And more young people aim to escape Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen and rebuild their lives in foreign countries in Southeast Asia.

Before this, I saw more homeless people who had gone through many twists and turns. Sometimes they were eager to explore, sometimes they were passively waiting. No matter what, they just settled down in a foreign country.

This is very different from the image of homeless people portrayed on social media platforms.

It is neither a labeled brave rebellion nor a meaningless "bullshit job", but the pursuit of personal spiritual and soul freedom. From then on, the sun, the beach, the sea, and the restart of life through digital nomadism.

This is not the so-called "disenchantment" of digital nomads. After hurriedly saying goodbye, watching Cangshan Erhai Lake and traveling around the world, I suddenly understood the meaning of life. I announced to the outside world that digital nomads are just a game to monetize traffic. In the end, I followed the old path of Douyin and Xiaohongshu of “selling courses and cutting leeks”.

Just like when Che Guevara traveled around the South American continent on a motorcycleHe wrote in his diary: "I feel that the person I am now is different from the person I was when I first set out." Digital nomads also have so-called "life moments."

In the dilapidated Malay passenger ship bumping in the wind and waves of the South China Sea, on the motorcycle passing through the changing shadows of the ancient city wall of Chiang Mai, in the back of the pickup truck speeding on the slippery road in the tropical cloud forest near the equator. middle. Every time you are in the wilderness of Southeast Asia and the hot and sticky air hits you, that familiar floating feeling will always come. In every unknown journey, it will suddenly come at a certain moment and then fade away quickly.

This makes many young digital nomads linger nostalgically.

Ferry at Malaysian port

However, even in Southeast Asia, trivial and helpless daily life is unavoidable.

The nomadic lifestyle is not a panacea for life. In Chiang Mai, a homeless city with low consumption, friends often complain to me about the difficulty of establishing a foothold overseas - because Party A has not settled wages for a long time, and when he was at his poorest, he only had a few hundred baht left on hand and had to rely on loans to get by. Difficulties.

Master Damika, an Australian Theravada Buddhist monk, said in "Good Questions and Answers": "Stricken by fear, people go to holy mountains, sacred forests, and holy places."

< p>In the original text, this sentence lacks context. People may be trapped in their comfort zone due to fear of the outside world, but for homeless people, a foreign country is not a utopia, and exploring outside is also a fear of following the daily routine.

Migrant young people who have lived in cities for a long time are tired of the three-point-one-line life, where everything is based on money and lacks a sense of meaning. They are anxious about the future and lose the present; In Mai, there are also many homeless people who live chaotically in an upside-down daily schedule, wandering around cafes and bars.

What can be confirmed is that in the ancient city of Chiang Mai, which has a strong Buddhist atmosphere with five steps on the first floor and ten steps on the temple, the lifestyle of many digital nomads is also difficult to escape the shackles of survival itself.

Alcohol, tobacco, how many places I have been, how many great people I have met, surface freedom cannot constitute the flow of life.

Monks and pagodas in local paintings

In 2021, the international consulting agency MBO Partners did a report on "Continuing to Search for Digital Nomads" "The Digital Nomad Search Continues" survey shows that most digital nomads will not continue their lifestyle for more than three years.

3 years, this time limit is a curse for these intruders who are confident that they have mastered youth.

02 Wilderness or track?

Compared with the bustling and overcrowded Bangkok, Chiang Mai in the rainy season with few tourists is a different world.

Get on a motorcycle and head towards the ancient cityWithin an hour's drive in any direction, you can see continuous green mountains and fields, occasionally dotted with dark and quiet ponds. In the evening, the noisy roar of the accelerator will also become silent as the sky becomes silent, and all that can be seen are large chunks of clouds above our heads. If you're lucky, the stars will appear behind the clouds blown by the mountain breeze. This has also led to Chiang Mai having always been regarded as an ideal place for meditation and seclusion.

Jun An, who is over 30 years old, moved from Dali to Chiang Mai last year. He and his place of work are hidden in the mountains on the outskirts of Chiang Mai.

At the foot of Doi Inthanon

Strictly speaking, Jun An is not a typical digital nomad because of his occupation No internet required.

If you look at it from the perspective of people who have lived in cities for a long time, Junno and his work may feel absolute freedom - he is a practitioner of body, mind and soul.

He will lead students in the wilderness to play the guitar, blow the didgeridoo (a traditional musical instrument of the Australian Aboriginal tribe, one of the oldest musical instruments in the world), dance and sing divine songs. Songs of the gods are arranged in the attic filled with the tropical atmosphere of Southeast Asia, lighting incense and herbs with different smells are arranged, leading people on a "spiritual journey".

Jun An is a music teacher in Dali. Whenever his life needs a little freshness, he will come to the rain forests of Southeast Asia and the mountains of Chiang Mai. Then he became a representative of wilderness and freedom in the eyes of others.

"So will these physical, mental and spiritual connections make your real life better?" My question is very utilitarian.

"Well, it will indeed happen." Jun An pondered for a moment. "I am more specific about what I want. For example, most of the people who come to participate in our spiritual ceremony are foreigners. My goal at this stage is to hope that more people can experience the spiritual world."

There are many aspects of experiencing the ceremony. Some of them are founders and investors of technology companies and people in the Web 3 industry. "Everyone generally feels good, and more than 80% of people will come again."

The connection between body and soul may break through the hierarchy, but participants But the physical, mental and spiritual courses are quite demanding - starting from 10,000 yuan per session. In Chiang Mai, the per capita GDP in 2021 will be approximately 135,991 baht (approximately RMB 28,000).

One of the core aspects of the relatively free life of digital nomads is geo-arbitrage, making money in dollars and yuan between the blurred lines of different worlds. Jun'an's life and career in Chiang Mai, where prices are relatively low, are indeed getting better and better as he hoped.

Outside of the Web 3 industry gathering area, the life of digital nomads is not as pleasant as imagined, especially for those whose careers are not suitable for remote work and want to become digital nomads by changing careers.

Jane, who has traveled abroad many times, knows how to calculate her daily living expenses carefully. She will look for everyoneLook for purchasing opportunities and ask other homeless people how to make money.

When the accommodation price of Mad Monkey (a well-known affordable youth hotel chain brand in Southeast Asia) exceeds 300 baht (approximately more than 60 yuan), the hotel and hotel accommodation software will be opened immediately to find a replacement. She keeps her daily meals within 100 baht, and she rarely participates in activities such as Chiang Mai’s popular elephant protection and watching Muay Thai competitions.

Chiang Mai local band performs for flood relief

And another example of a relatively smooth transformation, Alian, who resigned from a major Internet company .

On social media, an important theme of Alian’s self-media channel is to explore how digital nomads around the world make money to support their global travel life.

“Taught myself Web for more than a month 3. Development. I quickly mastered the three-piece front-end package and REACT, blockchain development, and Solidity development. I also listened to industry podcasts like crazy, participated in online conferences, and watched the news. I built some simple small projects and put them on GitHub, and wrote them carefully. I created a LinkedIn Profile and thought about joining the community and doing some simple projects first, accumulating practical project experience and then slowly changing careers. I didn’t expect to be able to chat directly with the founder. God, maybe it’s the sincerity that impressed the big guys. At the end of August, I got the opportunity to join the project team. Everything starts from 0 to 1, starting from the intern.”

In Ripples of Water. Next to the swimming pool, under the bright floor-to-ceiling windows, homeless people like Alian will each guard a table, facing the work tools, typing on the keyboard, quietly and with an urgent atmosphere, as if they are back in the university library. Postgraduate entrance examination study room.

If we say that the digital nomads who have come to Chiang Mai will have some of the unique depth of East Asian people and faces full of stories. White people who have lived in Chiang Mai for a long time have a sense of relaxation that is hard to imitate. Traveling to Southeast Asia and flying to Australia on a WHV (Working Holiday Visa) seems to have become a trend for young people in Europe and the United States to spend their youth exploration period.

Foreign backpackers and Chinese tattoos on their backs

The French guy William I know occasionally takes on remote part-time jobs with unemployment insurance benefits, so he can wander around Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand for half a year without worrying about the gap period; The Australian punk boy works for two to three months a year, then rides a motorcycle bought in Laos and travels around Southeast Asia for more than half a year; the New Zealand girl I met at the youth hostel in Chiang Mai does not have to worry about retirement issues at all, even if Even if you have never worked or paid personal insurance, you can receive a pension without any difference when you retire.

Chiang Mai has exquisite shared spaces with a petty bourgeois atmosphere on Nimman Road, as well as dark rooms in low-rise old buildings near Pinghe River. They are just like Western white people holding high-exchange currency and using Western high-tech products. Welfare enterprise classes complete their "geographic arbitrage". Different languages ​​in Chiang MaiDigital nomads in the cultural class also have their own wilderness and tracks, but some are born into what others see as a "wilderness".

Anyone’s narrative is not only derived from themselves, but also from the history and culture behind it.

As the French writer Eripon said: "This place I tried my best to escape from: a social space that I deliberately alienated, a spiritual space that served as a negative teaching material when I was growing up. How to resist is still the hometown that forms the core of my spirit.”

Unique Buddha worship in a temple in Chiang Mai

Acknowledging that certain cores still continue as an integral part of the body and mind may be the first lesson for digital nomads who go abroad.

03 Back to the real present

"In the endless monsoon rain, the otter may turn into a whale again." This is a sentence from the Malay-Chinese writer Huang Jinshu, because the ancestors of whales evolved from fish coming ashore. It is a mammal, but it has returned to the sea for various reasons. Its closest relative is the otter.

The rain in Malay is like a giant whale returning to the deep sea over and over again, while the rain in Chiang Mai is full of the rhythm of life. After each rain, the green outside the window becomes more vivid, and the ancient city walls become more vivid. A bit thicker.

Xiaoxia can be regarded as the "otter" in Chiang Mai. Her first job after graduation was as a bank teller in a small city in her hometown. She has a stable career and lives "on the shore" day after day. "My daily job is to help the elderly apply for cards and collect pension insurance benefits. I can fully imagine what the future will be like."

So Xiaoxia chose to return to the sea.

Tioman Island and South China Sea in the rain

“Cross-border e-commerce was very popular at the time, and I happened to be good at English and applied for an English customer service position. . The boss is a foreigner, and the workload is quite relaxed. He gradually became familiar with the industry and started to work on his own.” I took on some cross-border projects and took on remote positions. After having more freedom with money and time, Xiaoxia wandered around digital nomad communities such as Anji, Jingdezhen, and Dali, and then Singapore, Penang, and Chiang Mai.

After Xiaoxia chose to become a digital nomad, her work and life were getting better. So when she suddenly decided to return to China to work at the end of the year, people around her were surprised. “When I go back, I can work in a senior management position, and this The positions can be connected to some resources through the company's platform, and some of the tasks currently being cooperated with will not be thrown away. "Xiao Xia looked very excited.

Most people vaguely feel that it was a long time ago that they were so happy because of their work. Nowadays, people tend to become impatient with the daily present and believe that a better life must be in the future. Finally, in one dry and solidified day and night after another, I left my job and my friends behind, and looked around blankly.

ENJOY THE LIFE Chiang Mai Street Graffiti

Said Xiang Biao, the spiritual mentor of young people Everyone is living a suspended life. It doesn't matter whether they can enjoy themselves now, but the moment when the future may collapse.

In her case, being a homeless person or not is not the main thread of life. , just choose on your own initiative

People who have lived in cities for a long time have invested a lot of imagination in the life of homeless people, just like the line from the movie "Into the Wild": "It is undeniable that 'No one is immune'. Bondage' always makes people feel exciting and happy. Because along with it is an escape from history, oppression, rules, and those tiresome obligations and responsibilities. The so-called absolute freedom. ”

It is impossible for people to be surging all the time, and everything will eventually return to the mean.

Lotus in the moat of Chiang Mai

But for Xiaoxia, when she chooses to jump from the shore back to the sea, it means that a "baby whale" can migrate from the warm tropical breeding area to the pole Foraging.

Zi Ji, who is used to seeing young people coming and going, never cares about where the people who enter the community come from, what they are doing, and where they are going. She thinks that she hardly cares. Communities naturally embrace all kinds of people Come in.

The game house left a brand new PS5 here, and then someone contributed "Black Myth: Wukong" and "Elden's Ring"; Lao Ai, who is in the hookah business, made a Jiancheng purchased two sets of hookah equipment, which makes every night The shisha bureau has become a regular night program in the community, and even the shisha masters have been passed down to the fifth generation. Local employees in Chiang Mai in the community can decorate flower gardens, courtyards and other decorations according to their own preferences, and there are little surprises hidden throughout the public spaces. /p>

Play "Black Myth" in the community

"See what it will become. ”

In addition to cooperating with DNA, NCC, 706 Youth Space, Shanhaiwu, Wamao and other homeless communities and Web 3 communities, Ziji also plans to include some feminist communities in the next step. “I don’t really want to give it to the inn. Label it, or the community itself, which welcomes any normal human being. "

The homeless are mobile, including the community itself. Some people have left, but still want to come back. Some are always there, but there is no special reason.

"Suitable for the homeless People from the community have been here for a long time without realizing it. ”

Chiang Mai University at the foot of Suthep Mountain

At the end of the rainy season in Chiang Mai, it was also a week before Jane left Chiang Mai and returned to China. Finally, I asked her if she had found a new job. There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone:

“I wish I could become a digital nomad soon. ”

"You don’t need a lot of money."

"It’s enough to be able to support yourself."

Note: The characters in this article are pseudonyms; the pictures are all taken by the author