141–150 of 191 posts
1000$ is supposed to be enough to live in lots of european countries as well. Eg. Estonia, Greece, Austria
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>EDIT: Of course, I'm not exactly familiar with the visa situation since I don't actually need it. Based on the OP, it seems pretty complicated, but still worth the hassle. I lived in Thailand for several years and 'bootstrapping' your business there as a foreigner without a work permit is breaking the law. You need a work permit to do ANY type of work in Thailand and although working out of sight is unlikely to get…
>Getting a work permit in Thailand is very very difficult. Foreign owned businesses have to employ Thai citizens and require silly amounts of registered capital deposited in Thai banks. It's marginally easier if you are an American. It may sounds silly, but Thais are very scared of seeing foreigners taking over the country. This thinking is the most noticeable in lower-class Thais. I believe the result of this thinki…
> The enterprise loves C# coders. But that’s not necessarily the best language for a startup stack. Why? It's quite easy, much more powerful, performance is great! Jeffrey Richter in his book "CLR via C#" says it's often more fasten than even compiled C/C++. Have you heard about Entity Framework and ASP.Net MVC? It's growing like a mad thing, a lotta features, improvements and so on. Maybe the license price is high?…
Living in Argentina is quite cheap too if you are from North America or Europe, the currency is devaluating so hard dollar is actually 10 to 1, meaning you can rent a nice place for $200 (no pool just a normal appartment), good thing is though, there are no prostitutes and such, and you wont get charged so much for beeing foreigner, Argentina is full of europeans forgeigners so nobody can really say if you are from A…
Why not north?
It's something weird of Argentina as a country, 50% of the population lives only in the capital, Buenos Aires. The capital has always had a lot of power (they used to have access to the only port of the city, so they kept ALL the taxes money, while all other provinces received none and were not allowed to have a port).
So, only people in Buenos Aires were rich, everyone else was poor, what made the south "not poor" is the fact that basically nobody lived there (because of "La conquista del desierto" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquest_of_the_Desert), people moved south from Buenos Aires to find new customers, find new oportunities and just avoid the "city life".
Also, the south is full of international tourism, cities like Bariloche are full of immigrants and a beautiful Apine-styled architecture, tourists and outsiders are treated quite nicely :)
The north on the other hand has a very native south american culture as there are a lot of immigrants from Bolivia and Peru which have a strong native south american lineage, people is closed-minded and isn't really used to outsiders.
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Honestly, who cares? Work permits are to make sure you don't steal jobs from the locals. Working on your own project has nothing to do with that. So while it may be breaking the letter of the law, it's certainly not breaking the spirit of it. My point being, you shouldn't have ethical issues with it -- it's like driving 57 in a 55 zone. I know people who have been deported for not having the right visa -- a phone cal…
Most of the time I would agree with this sentiment, I don't think you're morally wrong to work on your own project while living in other countries without a proper visa; it's definitely not breaking the spirit of the law. Heck, you're spending your money here, all the better. It's obviously less of a risk if you work from home than a co-working space where you could be easily targeted if a random check does happen (a…
Those shared work spaces could be subsidized to encourage locals so taking advantage of that is problematic.
It would be different if he was just building his product, no business entity and no local hires...
I've lived and built two companies in Thailand over the last 14 years. Before your pop your Macbook Air in a backpack, read my points. 1. Bangkok is not cheap. If you want to have a life that resembles anything you're used to coming from a Western country, you're going to live in Bangkok and you're going to live in a relatively expensive part of the city. Yes, you can live in a concrete block with plastic furniture a…
I've spent the last half year on extended trips to Thailand (a few weeks at a time) and other countries in SE Asia to work on side projects and just decompress a little bit.
I've been staying in slightly more rural beachside communities. On Phuket that means anywhere besides Patong, and on Koh Samui that means anywhere besides Chaweng.
In the 2-3 months (accumulated) that I've spent in Thailand I think I've seen maybe one lady of the night. Like you said, if you're seeing a lot of it, it probably means you're seeking it out.
I spent 10 years living in Japan and I honestly think you'll be exposed to far more dodgy sex-industry stuff walking around Shibuya for 1 night, than a month in Thailand if you live a normal lifestyle.
Also want to make the point that Thailand != Bangkok. Same goes for other countries in SE Asia - if you're going to bootstrap just remember you don't necessarily have to swap your western city for an Asian city :) I quite enjoy hacking by the beach!
I regularly travel out to Eastern Washington (close to the border by Montana) and the area is very rural and prices relatively cheap for rent (and house prices are not unreasonable if you're looking to buy). No one will come bug you if you live in the woods, and Satellite internet (while not perfect) is decent as long as you're not doing anything too bandwidth intensive. You can also always live near a bigger city and get Cable internet.
As far as food costs go, if you can fish, hunt and grow a vegetable garden, you can be self-sufficient most of the year.
I'm not saying everyone needs to go out and live that lifestyle, but I just wanted to challenge the assumption that you couldn't live for less than $1000 a month in the US. A lot of people do, and aren't necessarily poor or bad off either.
The article seems to imply that it is impossible to live for less than $1000 a month (internet included) in the US in a remote area where you can focus. I regularly travel out to Eastern Washington (close to the border by Montana) and the area is very rural and prices relatively cheap for rent (and house prices are not unreasonable if you're looking to buy). No one will come bug you if you live in the woods, and Sate…
Thanks for the post, I now feel like I want to do similar thing sometime in my life. Is there any other interesting, safe, cheap place where you could live comfortably using at most $1000/month?
Turkey. It's cheap, the variety and kinds of food is incredible and there is no racism at all since all western and asian cultures are mixed there. And the universities are completely free in Turkey, which leads the middle class grow faster and provide the companies dozen amount of engineers every year
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I know colleagues (engineers) who were detained and kept under "hotel arrest" in Indonesia for being on the customer site without the correct working Visa (our guess - a tip off) I worked in Thailand on assignment for a large company there and we got a wind that the authorities where going to come in on a certain day and check every single foreigners passports. We were told even that we had the correct Visa, work fro…
Are you sure about that with Japan? The visa-free entry (at least for Americans) allows business. > A visa is NOT necessary for US passport holders visiting Japan for a short-term stay of less than 90 days with the purpose of tourism and business. http://www.us.emb-japan.go.jp/english/html/travel_and_visa/t...
On a different note, they do check the frequency of re-entries (on a tourist visa) as I know of one peer who was put into a room at the airport and questioned after re-entering a few times in one year. So if your "doing business" a couple of times a year with a few months in between, it may still look suspect.
Additionally I know of a guy's wife who was deported on re-entry after the 3rd time. She wasn't working and was banned from re-entring for 11 months.