Two years ago, I land­ed in Bangkok with two suit­cas­es and one goal: put my­self in an en­vi­ron­ment that could pour back in­to me.

I had al­ready spent years build­ing dig­i­tal­ly. Cana­da gave me my ear­ly ex­po­sure to sol­id ecosys­tems and tech­nol­o­gy. Trinidad and To­ba­go gave me prob­lems to solve, lead­ing to Droid Is­land, e-com­merce, dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, con­sult­ing, me­dia and now the wider Digipreneur jour­ney.

Af­ter a decade back home, I want­ed to be­come the stu­dent again and be clos­er to the com­pa­nies, tech­nolo­gies and busi­ness mod­els shap­ing the next wave of the glob­al econ­o­my.

Thai­land has com­plete­ly over-de­liv­ered.

Bangkok feels like home

I no longer think of my­self as some­body “stay­ing in Thai­land.” Bangkok is home.

The Des­ti­na­tion Thai­land 5-year Visa (re­new­able every 5 years) gave me sta­bil­i­ty while still al­low­ing me to trav­el. I can leave Thai­land, spend time else­where in Asia and come back to the same home and rou­tine.

It al­so changed my de­f­i­n­i­tion of a dig­i­tal no­mad. I am not liv­ing out of ho­tels or fly­ing to a new coun­try every few weeks. The part of my life that is portable is my in­come.

What Bangkok costs, and what it buys

In my first year, I paid 19,500 baht per month, about US$589, for my con­do.

I signed a lease with­in 3 days of ar­riv­ing. Some peo­ple spend one to three months in ho­tels and Airbnbs look­ing for the per­fect neigh­bour­hood. I want­ed some­where work­able so I could set­tle down and learn Bangkok nat­u­ral­ly.

My cur­rent con­do is a brand-new, one-bed­room, 32-square-me­tre unit for 14,000 baht, about US$423 or TT$2800. I am five min­utes walk­ing to the BTS (Sky­train), True Dig­i­tal Park and Cloud 11. I low­ered my rent and im­proved my lo­ca­tion.

Elec­tric­i­ty av­er­ages around 1,700 baht, rough­ly US$51 and my ACs run 24/7 as I work from home. My mo­bile plan costs 600 baht/US$17, and my 500/500 Mbps home in­ter­net is an­oth­er 600 baht. I rarely cook, and around US$10 per day can cov­er three meals us­ing neigh­bour­hood restau­rants, Grab, mar­kets and pre­pared food.

But the re­al sto­ry is what low­er fixed costs buy back: time, en­er­gy, room to think, room to save and room to say no to work I do not want.

I have more days where I sim­ply do not work. I go to the gym, swim, walk around Ben­jakit­ti, get a mas­sage, sit in an on­sen or take a few days in Koh Phangan or any of Thai­land’s long list of is­lands to choose from.

That head­room has be­come one of the most valu­able parts of liv­ing here.

A dif­fer­ent bench­mark

Liv­ing in Asia has changed the way I think about my ca­reer.

The Caribbean still looks West by de­fault. We look to the Unit­ed States, Cana­da and the Unit­ed King­dom for mi­gra­tion, ed­u­ca­tion, tech­nol­o­gy and pro­fes­sion­al val­i­da­tion.

But our bench­mark needs to ex­pand.

Chi­na changed the way I think about tech­nol­o­gy. Across Asia, I am see­ing pay­ments, EVs, ro­bot­ics, dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture, tourism and con­sumer ex­pe­ri­ences that make me ask dif­fer­ent ques­tions about where the fu­ture is be­ing built.

Run­ning a Caribbean-fo­cused busi­ness from Bangkok al­so forces me to un­der­stand dig­i­tal busi­ness at a lev­el that is dif­fi­cult to fake.

Pay­ments, dig­i­tal banks and wal­lets have to work. Clients have to be served re­mote­ly, mon­ey has to move across bor­ders, and time zones have to be man­aged. If those sys­tems fail, I feel it per­son­al­ly. That makes me bet­ter at teach­ing what I teach.

Where the hard parts went

Peo­ple of­ten ask me what the hard­est part has been. I strug­gle to give them a dra­mat­ic an­swer.

My busi­ness was al­ready dig­i­tal be­fore I moved. I had spent years learn­ing e-com­merce and in­ter­na­tion­al pay­ments. Trans­la­tion apps make the lan­guage bar­ri­er man­age­able. Im­mi­gra­tion has been straight­for­ward in my ex­pe­ri­ence.

Even the 11-hour time dif­fer­ence with Trinidad has be­come nor­mal.

Five in the evening in Trinidad is four in the morn­ing in Bangkok. Some­times I wake at 3 or 4 AM for meet­ings while the Caribbean is fin­ish­ing its day. By 8 AM here, much of the West­ern Hemi­sphere is go­ing to bed.

I plan my sleep around it and take few­er meet­ing-heavy projects. More of my work hap­pens be­hind the scenes: strat­e­gy, re­search, con­tent, web­sites and sys­tems. That gives me more con­trol over my time.

How does my life feel?

I could rent a much big­ger home in Thai­land, but I live alone, and my 32 square me­tres work for me.

I am less in­ter­est­ed in ac­cu­mu­lat­ing things and more in­ter­est­ed in whether my life feels good.

It feels good to eat well with­out spend­ing a for­tune. It feels good when a friend sug­gests do­ing some­thing and mon­ey is rarely the im­me­di­ate rea­son to say no. It feels good to trav­el and to have time.

I have lived in en­vi­ron­ments where the cost of main­tain­ing your life de­ter­mines how hard you have to work just to keep every­thing run­ning.

Thai­land has giv­en me more breath­ing room.

Nowhere is per­fect, but Thai­land is per­fect for me right now.

My life needs to be portable

I am not telling any­one to move to Thai­land. I am doc­u­ment­ing an al­ter­na­tive.

I have been build­ing dig­i­tal­ly since 2016, op­er­at­ing ful­ly dig­i­tal­ly since around 2018 and talk­ing pub­licly about dig­i­tal op­por­tu­ni­ties for years. That his­to­ry mat­ters be­cause this move did not hap­pen overnight.

Now I have two years of proof that the mod­el can trav­el.

I do not know if I will live in Thai­land for­ev­er, and I do not need to know. What mat­ters is that if I leave one day, I want my busi­ness, skills and in­come to move with me.

Even if some­body ul­ti­mate­ly wants to re­turn to the Caribbean, spend­ing a few years else­where can change them. You can learn, save, build, see in­dus­tries dif­fer­ent­ly, de­vel­op new skills and re­turn with more to con­tribute.

That is what these two years have taught me.

Dig­i­tal skills cre­at­ed porta­bil­i­ty. Porta­bil­i­ty cre­at­ed op­tion­al­i­ty.

Keron Rose is a Caribbean dig­i­tal strate­gist and dig­i­tal no­mad based in Thai­land. He helps en­tre­pre­neurs build, mon­e­tise, and scale their dig­i­tal pres­ence while ac­cess­ing glob­al op­por­tu­ni­ties. Vis­it keron­rose.com to learn more about the dig­i­tal world.