The Digital Nomad Dream is Finished in Thailand

Well, the dream is over. At least in Thailand, anyway. Thailand was the perfect destination to be a digital nomad. The cheap cost of living, 5-year visas, amazing Wi-Fi everywhere, and the fact that we were welcomed with open arms made it ideal.

Thailand did it tough during the pandemic. When the borders finally opened, the locals were excited for our arrival. Visas were created, local businesses were gearing up for our return, and the whole working-online-from-anywhere-in-the-world thing actually seemed possible.

Three years later, however, it’s a different story. We are currently seeing a wave of people who moved out here when the borders opened in 2023.

Visa Uncertainty for Digital Nomads in Thailand

First up is visas. This is an interesting one because when I first moved out here 5 years ago, there were no digital nomad visa options. It was a nightmare for me. I had to set up a business here and I was on a business visa. It required a ton of paperwork and was extremely difficult to get.

Then they introduced the DTV visa, which is the dream visa if you want to be a digital nomad. You can earn an overseas income and live here legally. There are some hoops that you have to jump through for this visa, which we will get into, but overall, it was a fantastic visa for being a digital nomad here.

Not everyone wants to commit to a place. You don’t necessarily want a 5-year visa in the place that you’re in. You want to be able to move around. This is what a digital nomad is. You’re a nomad.

Many people love the idea of spending a bit of time in Thailand. Maybe you go to the Philippines, maybe you go to Indonesia, travel around Southeast Asia, and enjoy the experience of being able to work from a beach or from anywhere.

Now, Thailand has really clamped down on visa runs. If you enter on a tourist visa, there is uncertainty about how many times you’re allowed to enter per year. Ultimately, this turns people off Thailand as an option for a place to come and go because you have that uncertainty. Are they going to let you in when you arrive at the border?

Prior to all this, I knew people who had lived here on a tourist visa for years, basically just doing border runs. There wasn’t a DTV option back then, but you used to be able to do this as much as you liked. With this recent clampdown, they’re pushing people to move onto the DTV. It has undoubtedly had an effect on the number of people choosing Thailand as a destination.

DTV Visa Applications from Home Countries

Now, the DTV has recently undergone some changes itself. You used to be able to get it from anywhere. It was incredibly easy, but recently they’ve made it so that you have to apply from your home country. I haven’t lived in my home country for coming on 9 years now, so having to fly to Australia just to apply for this visa doesn’t really make sense for someone in my position.

The same is true for many digital nomads. For many people, this isn’t a huge deal. For someone in my position, it would have been a real pain to have to go to Australia just to apply and wait there for that visa. If you’re bouncing around and suddenly you have to go back to your home country, the cost and the expenses can be significant. I didn’t have a place in Australia, so I would have to stay in a hotel for weeks and weeks, or however long this process was going to take. This definitely makes the whole process of getting a DTV way less appealing for someone in my position.

The issue here is that neighbouring countries also have great digital nomad visa options. Places like Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia are alternatives. I know a few people who have moved from here recently to the Philippines because of the whole visa situation. It’s extremely chill there.

Speaking from my experience as a traveller and a digital nomad, the visa thing is by far the most painful process of all of it.

The Digital Nomad Dream Is Collapsing

Number two is that the digital nomad dream itself is collapsing. Back during the pandemic, when people were forced to work at home, many companies realised that they didn’t actually need people in the office. This is where the possibility of being able to work remotely from anywhere in the world really started to take off.

I know for myself that years before, it was really hard to find online work or anything that you could do remotely while I was living back in South Korea. Since the pandemic, this has really exploded.

What has happened in recent years is that many companies have done away with that. They want people back in the office. They want to bring the work culture together, and this is for various reasons. A lot of the time, it just doesn’t work. You see digital nomads who have work or meetings in the morning out drinking in the bars late at night. The time-zone differences have a real impact on things. I think, generally, most companies find that their people are more productive in the office.

Another path to becoming a digital nomad appeared. There was almost, I don’t know, this wave of a roadmap that happened. Start an online business. Launch a digital product that you can sell. Work from anywhere in the world. Start a personal brand, an online presence, and social media. This is something everyone was doing. Selling online courses. This was the dream, and you could do it from a beach here in Thailand.

This worked really well for many people at the beginning, but eventually it became oversaturated. How many people can create courses about the same things? The first ones in are usually the most successful, and for everyone else, it’s basically a race to the bottom.

Online Work and Content Creation

The third big wave that I saw was people wanting to move overseas, start a YouTube channel, and thinking that this is a really easy way to earn a living and be able to travel the world. This is a fantastic way to make a living. I make a wonderful living, but this is not an easy thing.

I’d made close to 100 videos over a 2 to 3-year period without earning a single cent. I do think people’s expectations of how quickly it would take off and how quickly they’d be able to earn didn’t quite align with the reality.

For me, this was my passion. This is something I love doing. I made 100 videos for free. I had a genuine interest in making videos, being a filmmaker, and photography and videography. I really enjoyed all of it.

This is still definitely a viable path. You can become a content creator in 2026 and beyond, but it’s much more difficult. It’s far more competitive now, so you’re going to have to do something really different to be able to stand out.

Back when I decided to become a Thailand YouTuber, there were three or four of us taking this really seriously. Now, it seems just about every second person you see is walking down the street with a GoPro.

Thailand’s Expat Community and Foreign Residents

Number three is one I actually feel quite strongly about, and that’s that there isn’t a great expat community here. There are wonderful people here. I have amazing friends, but there are also a lot of incredibly toxic people and a lot of people who cause problems.

I will give you an example. When I lived in South Korea, I was on an expat Facebook group that was incredibly helpful. You could post any question in there. “My visa is expiring and I need to update my address. Where do I go to do this? How do I do this?” People would be super helpful in the comments. Everyone was sort of looking out for each other.

Here, if you’ve been on any of the Facebook, especially the expat Facebook groups here, it’s an incredibly toxic place. There was a guy who posted a week or so ago about having all his personal belongings stolen from him. He was robbed in the street, and the comments below were awful. People were accusing him of all sorts of things and saying really nasty things to him personally.

This is someone who had just been through something incredibly difficult, basically just looking for support from fellow expats.

We all know the stories of the grumpy old men who live down here in Pattaya, down by the beach, drinking in the bars all day and complaining about everything, but this is a real thing. This stereotype exists for a reason. There are a lot of jaded people here and a lot of grumpy old men here. Unfortunately, that spills through to online spaces where you do look for support from your fellow expats.

This is just a sad reality of the world today and the internet, where everyone is a hero behind the keyboard. I can tell you from my own experience that when I first moved here, I found this quite disappointing.

How Foreigners Are Viewed in Thailand

Tying in with this, it’s not just expats but foreigners in general and how we’re viewed here. Foreigners cause a lot of problems here. We’re in the news a lot. There are fights, crime networks, and all sorts of horrible things happening recently. While Thailand does attract some wonderful people and people looking to reinvent their lives, it also attracts the bottom of the barrel.

The Cost of Living in Thailand

Number four is the cost of living. I have absolutely done this topic to death lately, so I’m going to approach it from a different angle.

This condo block, or apartment building, is Valle. I think it’s Valle 2. My mate Sam used to live here 3 and a half to 4 years ago. He had a studio room in there and was paying just 6,500 baht to live there.

He had a great place. It was a decent size, he was on a high floor, and he had a view looking out towards the ocean. You could see the beach for 6,500 baht back then. That was a steal.

I asked the office how much a room costs now. They said around 10,000 baht. Could you get a cheaper one? Highly likely. You can always bargain and negotiate over the prices here. But just that jump alone in the last few years is quite staggering.

Something else to factor in is the strength of the Thai baht. Back then, 6,500 Thai baht was around 260 Australian dollars. With the current exchange rate, 10,000 baht is now 420 Australian dollars. This is a big jump because if you’re from Australia, you’ll be earning in Australian dollars. That big increase, along with the strength of the Thai baht, hits you twofold.

Bargaining for Affordable Places to Live

There are still plenty of great, affordable places to live. We did some pretty aggressive bargaining to get Sam the rate that he had when he moved here a few years ago. He paid 6 months’ rent up front, which is a really great way to do it. A lot of landlords might not want to go with your deal, but if they know they’re going to get a big stack of cash today, suddenly the keys and the contract appear.

This is an older-style apartment building and you are quite a fair way back from the beach, but there are also great facilities here. The place has a pool, and along the bottom of the building there are little restaurants, bars, a laundry place, and somewhere you can rent motorbikes from. There are a lot of facilities available to you if you live in a place like this.

The real issue is getting a good deal on one of these places. It’s getting harder and harder. We dealt directly with the owner of one of the apartments, and there was quite a bit of back and forth. When he offered six months’ rent up front, they were quite happy to lock in that deal.

Thailand still is a very affordable place to live, but it is falling behind some of its competitors in the region for digital nomads. If you look at places like Vietnam and the Philippines, the bang for your buck in places like that is much better than what you find here.

Is the quality of life better? That’s going to depend on the individual. I do, however, think that for people who are true digital nomads and bouncing around from place to place, this has a real impact on how long people stay in Thailand, if at all.

The Difficulty of Accessing Services in Thailand

Number five is the difficulty of accessing services here. A lot of these things make no sense to me. I’m going to vent here a little about my frustrations over the 5 years of living here because some of these are just beyond ridiculous.

First up is the whole banking situation. I could talk all day about this. I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that you can have a 5-year visa to live in a country and not be allowed to have a local bank account.

If you are on the digital nomad visa, the DTV visa, you are not eligible for a local Thai bank account. I use my local Thai bank for everything. I use it to pay my rent and all my bills. More importantly, the ATM fees for using a foreign card here are absolutely ludicrous.

Thailand has some of the highest ATM fees in the world. There used to be a way around this. You used to be able to take your local card inside the bank and they wouldn’t charge you a fee. I don’t know if you can still do that. I’ve heard people say that that’s no longer an option here.

In my opinion, the ATM fees are ridiculous. The fact that you can’t have a local bank account to pay all of your basic living expenses just makes no sense.

To quickly explain how all the bills work here, I get all my bills digitally. My electric bill, water bill, internet, and phone can all be paid directly through my phone banking app. The fact that you can’t get access to all of these basic things needed to live here is ridiculous.

Getting a Thai Driver’s Licence

Following on from that is getting your driver’s licence. While you can do it, it’s not the easiest process. The best way to do it is to convert your Australian licence. If you have a local licence from an approved country, you can convert it into a Thai licence.

The thing to watch out for here is that a lot of the agencies that take care of this do it the dodgy way. They put their address instead of your address because you need a residence certificate. Again, this is just a whole extra hoop that you have to jump through. You have to get yourself a residence certificate and find an agency that will be able to do it with your address the right way.

While it seems like such a simple task, this is actually quite difficult here.

Tax Residency for Digital Nomads in Thailand

Number six is something everybody loves to talk about here, and that is tax. If you’re in Thailand for more than 180 days out of the year, you are, or you’re supposed to become, a tax resident.

There is a whole lot of confusion around this, and rightly so. A lot of the policies change. There are rumours they’re going to change, and there are announcements, but they’re not actually implemented yet. This is constantly changing and evolving, and it’s really hard to stay on top of it.

A real issue is that if you come here on the DTV visa and stay more than 180 days, you’re not given any of this. You need to proactively go out, get yourself a tax ID, register yourself, and then take care of everything by yourself.

Given the difficulty of all of this and the fact that there is very little follow-up, I’d be very surprised to hear if many people on the DTV are actually registered and paying tax here. Just a fun fact: only 19% of the population filed a tax return last year. It seems that there’s very little follow-up either way.

Lucky for some, those of us who were here before the DTV and all of that don’t have a choice.

The Weather in Thailand

Number seven is, you’re not going to believe it, the weather. The irony of me saying this with this spectacular clear-blue-sky day today, right in the middle of the wet season, is that the weather isn’t as great as everybody thinks.

If you come from somewhere like the UK, where it’s cold and miserable and drizzles every single day, then this is definitely a step up. For me, after living here for 5 years, I miss seasons. I miss anything that’s not hot. The heat really does get to you eventually.

It’s frustrating that wherever you go, anytime you go outside, you’re going to start sweating. You have to wash your clothes after you wear them one time, even if you just wear them down to the local supermarket and back.

I’m quite into fashion. I like clothes. I like wearing hoodies and jeans and things like that, but you just don’t. I have shorts and a T-shirt by default every single day.

The Heat and Wet Season

The heat isn’t just a thing. The wet season is something you would hear me complain about quite a lot, but it will rain every day for about 6 months. A lot of the time it’s quite manageable. It will hammer down, especially living in Bangkok, for an hour or two, and then that’s it.

The problem is that it’s unpredictable, and it can ruin your day or move your whole plans around by a couple of hours. The unpredictability of the weather means you know it’s going to be hot and you know it’s going to rain every single day for 6 months of the year. It gets old.

If you’re sitting somewhere now where it’s cold and rainy and you’re looking at a beach with blue sky, you’d be thinking, “I’m an idiot.” That’s completely fair. I wasn’t expecting this kind of day. This is one of those rare days, and I do actually love it when it’s like this.

But if it’s hot, sweaty, and raining all at the same time, it’s not a fun time.

When the Shine Wears Off in Thailand

Number eight is that the shine wears off. This inevitably happens to everybody. You come out here on holiday and Thailand is amazing. If you could spend every day here, your life would be complete.

What ultimately ends up happening over time is that the little things that start out as minor inconveniences become a real headache. The funny thing about this is that it’s usually the smallest things. Dual pricing, not being able to just get in a taxi and have them put on the meter, and not knowing if you’re going to get your condo deposit back when you move out of your place.

These little things will wear down on you over time. All of the grumpy old men you see sitting around in bars complaining about everything loved this place at one point. That’s the reason they wanted to move here. But all these things make you jaded over time.

The hard part is navigating that and knowing, when coming in, that you’re going to have to deal with these things. You have to set an expectation that that’s just how life is going to be.

Why Thailand Is Still Home for Me

So, what are my thoughts and feelings about all of this? For me, I wish the DTV was around when I was first coming out here and I didn’t have to jump through all the hoops that I did to get everything set up here. On the flip side of that, I was able to do everything legitimately. I have a bank account. I got my driver’s licence set up. Everything for me is by the book, and I have no concerns. I can sleep easily at night.

On all of that, I am glad that I’m not going through the whole DTV process now and that you have to go back to your home country. That would have been a tough thing for me to do, especially when I wasn’t living back in my home country.

The cost of living, while it has increased here quite drastically, has been matched by an increase in my earnings. So, for me, I’m still comfortable. I still live a wonderful life here. While I’ll complain about it, I’m not too affected by it.

So, has the shine worn off for me? Honestly, a little, but I’m very realistic about this. I lived in South Korea for a few years before here, and the same thing happened. The shine wears off there, too, and there are things that frustrate you about living there. I knew that coming in. I never expected to move here and for everything to be roses all the time.

Moving Somewhere Else Does Not Fix Everything

You’re always going to have these challenges. I also know that moving somewhere else doesn’t fix that. It may fix it for here, but you’re going to experience the same things. I’m about to move to Japan. I’m extremely excited to move to Japan, but there will be things that drive me crazy about living there, too.

For me, and I think the most important thing, the positives far outweigh the negatives. I absolutely love living here. I’m not leaving here because I dislike Thailand. I’m just looking for the next adventure.

I absolutely love this country. I think Thailand is an amazing place to live for a digital nomad. Are there better options out there? Quite possibly. But for me, this is home.