alain1405's travels on Nomad List

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20 Dec '15

10d

30 Dec '15

30 Dec '15
20 Dec '15

Siena

11°C

Italy

9 Nov '15

3mo

31 Jan '16

31 Jan '16
9 Nov '15

Stockholm

5°C

Sweden

2014

18 Nov '14

1yr

25 Nov '15

25 Nov '15
18 Nov '14

Budapest

12°C

Hungary

🗯 Forum replies

👍

155

👎

Any Apple users interested in beta testing my VPN service?

by @portable | 5yr 5 years ago | 19 comments

Hi,

I’m a digital nomad (coming up to 3 years / 30 countries), software developer and run a VPN network.

Over the past few months I’ve scaled up the VPN network to include a lot of new countries (and popular nomad destinations) including Thailand, Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Mexico, Chile and a load of others.

Several locations have been configured to route across Tier 1 networks to Europe and the US so should help improve international bandwidth. (often the problem with Internet access in some countries is that you have a great connection to local services within that country but poor international connectivity. By connecting to a decent VPN server located in that country and then routing across premium bandwidth you can often get significantly better results).

I’m wondering if any techy Mac/iPhone/iPad users in some of these locations would be interested in testing and providing feedback on the services. I’ll give you a free subscription and can work with you to give you the best connection. You’ll have a network of 50 servers in 30 countries to connect to, and with your feedback hopefully I can tweak the network to give the best performance for other nomads.

I’m not sure if I can post a link to the apps (don’t want my first post to be seen as spam) so reply to this thread if you’re interested.

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155

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✨ Recommended destinations

This is an algorithmic recommendation based on @alain1405's trips history to find places they haven't been to yet that other people with similar travels as them also went and liked.

Lisbon

Portugal

Lisbon is the next remote work hub of Europe. There's many reasons why I think that: 1) it already has somewhat of a startup/tech scene because of the annual Web Summit conference 2) which means internet is fast, and there's lots of meetups and it's easy to make friends 3) it's relatively affordable for foreigners compared to Spain and the rest of Europe 4) Portuguese people are super friendly, a lot more friendly than in the rest of the Mediterranean and Europe 5) Lisbon is ideal to go on day/w

⭐️ Overall Score

💵 Cost 😙 Affordable

📡 Internet 🏎 Fast

😀 Fun great

👮 Safety good

Tap to open

🌧 Feels 9° 48° 11° 53°AQI 25

$2,177 / mo

25Mbps

Bangkok

Thailand

Don't believe the prices on here for an apartment. 686 usd/month refers to an apartment in a high class condo, right in the city centre and seconds away from the BTS(train station). Just remember this, people working at supermarkets make 2 usd/per hour. If you want to live like a local, then you can save a lot of money. If you don't mind a 5-10 minute walk from the BTS, then you can easily get a one bedroom apartment for 300 USD per month, in a high class condo, plus with free golf cart ser

⭐️ Overall Score

💵 Cost 😙 Affordable

📡 Internet 🏎 Fast

😀 Fun good

👮 Safety good

Tap to open

☀️ Feels 29° 84° 28° 83°AQI 72

$1,464 / mo

25Mbps

Chiang Mai

Thailand

Chiang Mai used to be N.1 for the digital nomad life. It is still great and you can find really cheap apartments (300-400$) and restaurants (2-3$ for a main). Wouldn't recommend staying there during the burning season. The best area is Nimman, but it's also the most expensive. You can stay in the old city that's very nice but that gets noisy during the weekend for the night markets. Last but not least, very safe city. All in all would go back in a heartbeat.

⭐️ Overall Score

💵 Cost 😙 Affordable

📡 Internet 🏎 Fast

😀 Fun good

👮 Safety good

Tap to open

🌥 Feels 30° 86° 27° 81°AQI 87😷

$1,109 / mo

24Mbps

Prague

Czechia

My husband and I spent about 6 weeks testing Prague in Nov-Dec 2018 as we were considering it as a semi-permanent base of operations for the next year or two. Honestly it was great and we plan on leaving Malta where we have been for the past year. Pluses - transportation is very good and quite cheap, tons of restaurants, lots to do. People are more reserved, perhaps even a bit suspicious, so I would not say it was an OVERLY welcoming vibe, however there are a lot of expats from the US, CA, UK

⭐️ Overall Score

💵 Cost 😙 Affordable

📡 Internet 🏎 Fast

😀 Fun great

👮 Safety okay

Tap to open

🌤 Feels 2° 36° 4° 38°AQI 42

$2,357 / mo

30Mbps

Singapore

They say you get what you pay for. After having traveled the previous 4 months in India, Cambodia, VietNam, Myanmar and Thailand, Singapore was so easy! The subway system is a marvel, streets signs were easy to read, everyone speaks English (that just makes it easy for me as an English speaker) it is safe, clean, and parks are gorgeous. I was there as COVID 19 was breaking out fairly fast and that put a damper on my time but I was so happy to be there anyway and plan to go back. For digital

⭐️ Overall Score

💵 Cost 🙂 Okay

📡 Internet 🚀 Super fast

😀 Fun good

👮 Safety okay

Tap to open

🌧 Feels 37° 99° 29° 84°🥵AQI 58

$2,918 / mo

87Mbps

Barcelona

Spain

During winter is quite safe plus much cheaper. Some nightclubs are free and yet there is still a lot of people. Great por lgbtq+ community.

⭐️ Overall Score

💵 Cost 🧐 Pricey

📡 Internet 🏎 Fast

😀 Fun great

👮 Safety okay

Tap to open

🌥 Feels 11° 52° 12° 53°AQI 33

$3,044 / mo

39Mbps

Berlin

Germany

Berlin is overall a great city to be. Food is cheap and everywhere, easy to go out and have fun/meet for business. Rent has crept up but still far better value than where I came from. Internet: 36 EUR/month get me 450/40 mbps (cable -> DOCSIS 3.0) Public transport is 2.70 EUR/ticket. No woman I know has said they felt unsafe. Some really odd, xenophobic sounding comments on here. Biggest downsides IMO: service quality at restaurants - not that people are rude, but they don't seem to particular

⭐️ Overall Score

💵 Cost 🧐 Pricey

📡 Internet 🏎 Fast

😀 Fun great

👮 Safety okay

Tap to open

🌥 Feels 2° 36° 4° 39°AQI 104😷

$3,150 / mo

29Mbps

London

United Kingdom

London is the best city in the world - you just can't do it on a budget. It's got an amazing tech scene but ALSO world class media, fashion, finance, art industries and many others. If you don't want to live in a tech / expat mono-culture then it's for you. It is a genuine melting pot with a huge range of nationalities and cultures living together (the US has a large number of nationalities but there seems to be hard segregations between them geographically, economically, culturally - so they

⭐️ Overall Score

💵 Cost 🧐 Too expensive

📡 Internet 🏎 Fast

😀 Fun great

👮 Safety okay

Tap to open

🌧 Feels 4° 39° 6° 42°AQI 38

$4,193 / mo

20Mbps

🚩 Flags collected (3 of 276)

🌍 Top countries

Hungary

⭐️ Overall Score

💵 Cost 😝 Cheap

📡 Internet 🤬 Unusably slow

😀 Fun very bad

👮 Safety very bad

Tap to open

1yr

Sweden

⭐️ Overall Score

💵 Cost 😝 Cheap

📡 Internet 🤬 Unusably slow

😀 Fun very bad

👮 Safety very bad

Tap to open

3mo

Italy

⭐️ Overall Score

💵 Cost 😝 Cheap

📡 Internet 🤬 Unusably slow

😀 Fun very bad

👮 Safety very bad

Tap to open

10d

🛬 Most visits

Budapest

Hungary

I stayed here for a month in July last year. There's lots of cool aspects to the city but I hated it when I was there. The city has a problem with British stag parties, so if you look like you're a British male and speak English expect to be treated with disdain (it's fair enough) The Hungarians can just generally be unfriendly, especially bartenders. It's a weird experience waiting to be served while 3 people ignore you. Or buying the same drink and getting charged whatever they want (700-1500

⭐️ Overall Score

💵 Cost 😙 Affordable

📡 Internet 🏎 Fast

😀 Fun good

👮 Safety okay

Tap to open

🌤 Feels 7° 45° 8° 47°AQI 70

$1,541 / mo

44Mbps

Stockholm

Sweden

I absolutely love living in this city. It's very clean, safe and things generally always work! This is something I miss when I travel to other cities in Europe and rest of the world. Also co-working spaces are growing tons. Though night life might be pretty "boring", it truly is what you make it. Get to know other expats and friends through meetups or friend of a friend, and you'll have an awesome time here!

⭐️ Overall Score

💵 Cost 🧐 Pricey

📡 Internet 🏎 Fast

😀 Fun good

👮 Safety okay

Tap to open

🌧 Feels 2° 36° 5° 42°AQI 23

$3,500 / mo

36Mbps