⭐️ Total score | 3.11/5 (Rank #129) |
👍 Quality of life score | Okay |
👶 Family score | Okay |
🎒 Community score | Okay |
💵 Cost | 😝 Cheap: $948 / mo |
📡 Internet | 🙂 Good: 9Mbps (avg) |
😝 Fun | Good |
⛅️ Temperature (now) | 🌞 Perfect: 27°C80°F (feels 33°C91°F) |
💦 Humidity (now) | 🥵 Sweaty: 95% |
💨 Air quality (now) | 🌱 Great: 17 US AQI |
👌 Safety | Good |
👮♀️ Lack of crime* | Good |
🤝 Lack of racism* | Bad |
🎓 Education level* | High |
⚡️ Power grid | Good |
🌊 Vulnerability to climate change | Good |
💰 Income level* | Very low: $326 / mo |
🙊 English speaking* | Okay |
🚶 Walkability | Bad |
✌️ Peace (no pol. conflict) | Okay |
🚦 Traffic safety* | Okay |
🏥 Healthcare* | Good |
😄 Happiness* | Bad |
🍸 Nightlife | Good |
📶 Free WiFi in city | Okay |
🖥 Places to work from | Okay |
❄️ A/C or heating | Okay |
😁 Friendly to foreigners | Great |
🗯 Freedom of speech* | Okay |
👩 Female friendly | Bad |
🌈 LGBTQ+ friendly | Bad |
🎅 Startup Score | Bad |
🌍 Continent | Asia |
🚩 Country | Sri Lanka |
⏱ Average trip length | 23 days |
📡 Internet speed (avg) | 9 Mbps |
⛅️ Weather (now) | 🌧 27°C 80°F + 🥵 Sweaty (95%) = feels 33°C 91°F |
💨 Air quality (now) | 👍 17 US AQI 🍃 OK |
🔌 Power | 230V50Hz |
🚕 Best taxi app* | |
🚑 Travel medical insurance | ![]() |
💸 1,000 LKR in USD | USD 2.73 |
🏧 Suggested ATM take out: | LKR 100,000 = USD 273 |
💳 Cashless | 💵 No, cash only (esp. for foreigners) |
☕️ Best coffee place | Bites |
🚰 Tap water | 🚫 No, not drinkable |
👨👩👧👦 Population | 810,000 people |
👨👩👧👦 GDP per capita* | $3,910 / year |
⛪️ Religious government | Non-religious |
🏠 Apartment listings | Airbnb |
✈️ Best int'l air carrier | Sri Lankan Airlines |
💵 Cost of living for nomad | $948 / month |
💵 Cost of living for expat | $742 / month |
💵 Cost of living for family | $1,556 / month |
💵 Cost of living for local | $445 / month |
🏨 Hotel (median price) | $552 / month |
🏡 Airbnb (median price) | $1,046 / month |
🏠 1br studio rent in center | $371 / month |
🏨 Hotel (median price) | $26 / night |
🏠 Airbnb (median price) | $34 / night |
🏢 Coworking hot desk | $64 / month |
🍛 Dinner | $2 |
🥤 Coca-Cola (0.3L) | $1 |
🍺 Beer (0.5L) | $3 |
☕️ Coffee | $0 |
✅ Very cheap to live
✅ Pretty safe
✅ Lots of fun stuff to do
✅ Warm now
✅ Warm all year round
✅ Good air quality on average
✅ Spacious and not crowded
✅ High quality of education
✅ Roads are pretty safe
✅ Democratic
✅ Not many people smoke tobacco
❌ Freedom of speech is weak
❌ Pretty slow internet
❌ Too hot in the summer
❌ Very sweaty and humid now
❌ Difficult to do business
❌ Hospitals are bad
❌ People don't speak English well
❌ Not safe for women
❌ Not family friendly
❌ Hostile towards LGBTQ+
Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
Feels | 9334° hot | 9736° hot | 9535° hot | 10641° scorching | 10842° scorching | 10943° scorching | 10842° scorching | 10440° hot | 10440° hot | 10038° hot | 9736° hot | 9736° hot |
Real | 8228° very warm | 8429° very warm | 8429° very warm | 8831° hot | 8831° hot | 9032° hot | 9032° hot | 8831° hot | 8831° hot | 8630° very warm | 8429° very warm | 8429° very warm |
Humidity | sweaty 93% | sweaty 87% | sweaty 85% | sweaty 83% | sweaty 84% | sweaty 76% | sweaty 74% | sweaty 78% | sweaty 79% | sweaty 84% | sweaty 89% | sweaty 86% |
Rain | rainy 287mm | rainy 81mm | rainy 109mm | rainy 94mm | rainy 119mm | dry 45mm | rainy 65mm | rainy 79mm | rainy 96mm | rainy 150mm | rainy 274mm | rainy 155mm |
Cloud | cloudy 86% | cloudy 61% | cloudy 72% | cloudy 67% | cloudy 86% | cloudy 82% | overcast 93% | overcast 93% | cloudy 89% | cloudy 87% | overcast 90% | cloudy 63% |
Sun | avoid sun 7 UVI | avoid sun 9 UVI | avoid sun 9 UVI | avoid sun 9 UVI | avoid sun 7 UVI | avoid sun 7 UVI | avoid sun 6 UVI | avoid sun 6 UVI | avoid sun 7 UVI | avoid sun 7 UVI | avoid sun 6 UVI | avoid sun 8 UVI |
Remote workers | 0 people | 0 people | 0 people | 0 people | 200 people | 0 people | 0 people | 200 people | 200 people | 200 people | 0 people | 200 people |
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Based on Arugam Bay's cost of living, here's selected remote jobs that would cover your costs:
Really quite hectic and not a very nice city. I wouldn't spend more than a day or two here, not much to see, and there aren't many places to work/eat/see. You're better off heading down to the beaches for some sunshine and beach as well as much faster WIFI.
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 😝 Cheap📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun good👮 Safety mediocreTap to open🌧 Feels 23° 73° 23° 74°AQI 17✈️12min$935 / mo8Mbps×Have been in Weligama since Feb 25th and now I'm still here with the COVID-19 curfew going on. Before the curfew starts I was eager to get out of here because 1) it's too hot mid-day 2) tuktuk drivers are waiting around every corner asking "tuktuk?" and always horn at you when you're walking by the street - super annoying and 3) it's difficult to find workable wifi 4) everything just seemed super slow and it was hard to be productive. But after the curfew starts I actually like it way better be
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 😝 Cheap📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun good👮 Safety mediocreTap to open🌧 Feels 33° 91° 28° 82°🥵AQI 17✈️14min$854 / mo8Mbps×Sri Lanka is a great country to visit and explore on vacation, but it is not good for nomading. The internet is the worst I've experienced in 3 years of travelling around SE Asia. Usually I would supplement terrible wifi with mobile data but I found this also terrible. I visited several places in Sri Lanka, including supposedly up-and-coming nomad destination Welligama. There are very few cafes that are fit for working (almost none with AC/power), Western food is expensive (and so is Sri Lankan
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 😙 Affordable📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun good👮 Safety goodTap to open🌧 Feels 32° 90° 27° 80°🥵AQI 17✈️17min$1,363 / mo7Mbps×Stayed a whole month in Fort Kochi area, eventually going to Ernakulam (downtown area). It is unarguably very different than rest of India, much more cleaner and with friendlier people. Beaches aren`t nice for bathing but are a great choice to catch sunsets everyday. Cost of living is dirty cheap and public transport is good. They even have a subway crossing the city with reminds me the BTS in Bangkok. Actually, Kochi to me is like a small and boring version of Bangkok, which is good if you need
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 😙 Affordable📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun bad👮 Safety goodTap to open🌧 Feels 34° 93° 29° 85°AQI 165😷✈️56min$1,040 / mo10Mbps×I visited Prague on more than one occasion and tried something new each time. I really wanted to enjoy it, but unfortunately it turned out to be one of my least favourite cities. Perhaps it was just me, but there was an overwhelming sense of distrust and dislike towards foreigners, you have to try pretty hard to blend in if you want to experience the life of a local & avoid the tourism. I met some wonderful people and and there’s some cool communities to be part of, but another extended stay
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 🧐 Pricey📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun great👮 Safety goodTap to open🌥 Feels 1° 34° 4° 40°AQI 23✈️10h$3,264 / mo20Mbps×Stayed for 2 weeks after almost a year n a half in LatAm. Beautiful city; great food options- especially for Asian food lovers. Plenty of authentic Thai, Vietnamese and Chinese options for about 50% of what you would pay in a Western city. Decent hostels will cost $11-$15 weekdays and between $18-$30 on weekends.... Good internet; beautiful architecture and people but it is true Hungarians can be very cold at times. Overall a good stay with many destinations just a quick and cheap flight/tr
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 😙 Affordable📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun mediocre👮 Safety mediocreTap to open🌥 Feels 4° 39° 6° 43°AQI 72✈️10h$2,371 / mo30Mbps×Sri Lanka is a great country to visit and explore on vacation, but it is not good for nomading. The internet is the worst I've experienced in 3 years of travelling around SE Asia. Usually I would supplement terrible wifi with mobile data but I found this also terrible. I visited several places in Sri Lanka, including supposedly up-and-coming nomad destination Welligama. There are very few cafes that are fit for working (almost none with AC/power), Western food is expensive (and so is Sri Lankan
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 😙 Affordable📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun good👮 Safety goodTap to open🌧 Feels 32° 90° 27° 80°🥵AQI 17✈️17min$1,363 / mo7Mbps×Super expensive city, with some nice tourist attractions. Wouldn't recommend staying here for a longer time as price levels are almost Parisienne. Also, you can easily see all the good spots within 3 days or so. Pros: - nice tourist attractions (quite a couple of them) - many food options - people are open & friendly Cons: - hella expensive - limited vegan food options - you should at least understand some Dutch or French to survive here
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 😳 Way too expensive📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun mediocre👮 Safety mediocreTap to open🌤 Feels 7° 45° 9° 48°AQI 25✈️11h$5,460 / mo26Mbps×Just arrived in KL, we are 30/35yrs+, a married couple and digital nomads, and wow.. What a city! This is the New York City of Asia. These appartments are epic. Grand views, very affordable, luxurious! You would pay 10-fold for the same deal in NYC or Tokyo or Dubai. And the food is fantastic. Indian, Malay, Indo, Chinese, American, European. The world is here!
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 😙 Affordable📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun bad👮 Safety mediocreTap to open🌧 Feels 33° 91° 27° 80°🥵AQI 33✈️3h$1,822 / mo🌇 Also went here3 people×I really liked Chiang Mai but I can't put my finger on why. I'll try to remain unbiased so here goes. Chiang Mai is a dirty place with horrible pollution levels. English speaking is okay. I did really enjoy a balance of simple, risk-free living at low cost and acceptable quality of living. Many places only accept cash but plenty accept card. There's lots to do and it's fun exploring on a moped/motorbike. It feels as easy as Canggu with more modern appointments to get by as a westerner a bit easi
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 😙 Affordable📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun mediocre👮 Safety goodTap to open☀️ Feels 31° 88° 29° 84°AQI 152😷✈️3h$1,354 / mo🌇 Also went here2 people×Not gonna lie, I was pretty curious and kinda hyped before I came to Singapore. However, within 24 hours all of my curiosity turned into disappointment. Yes, Singapore is clean by any standards but especially by Asian standards. And yes, you have shopping malls, fancy skyscrapers and free toilets everywhere. But beside from that Singapore is boring and has no soul. It just seems like Singapore tries to copy interesting parts of other countries and their nature. Take Cloud Forest for example wh
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 😳 Way too expensive📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun good👮 Safety greatTap to open🌧 Feels 32° 90° 28° 83°🥵AQI 21✈️3h$5,034 / mo🌇 Also went here3 people×Skip this place and go to Bali right away. This city only looks beautiful in tourism videos but ugly in person. It is dusty and smelly.
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 😙 Affordable📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun good👮 Safety goodTap to open🌧 Feels 33° 91° 28° 82°🥵AQI 102😷✈️4h$1,563 / mo🌇 Also went here2 people×Dubai is good if you’ve figured out a way to pay 0 income tax and live in 2 places (away doing vacations during the summer) - bonus if you don’t spend money on alcohol. Nightlife is amazing, especially if you’re a woman. Free unlimited drinks for ladies, open bar, no catch, in two clubs in Media One Tower on Thursday. There is no place in the world that offers this. My female friends love Dubai because of these types of deals lol. The easiest way to waste money here is by buying drinks.
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 🧐 Pricey📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun mediocre👮 Safety goodTap to open☀️ Feels 24° 75° 24° 76°AQI 114😷✈️5h$3,658 / mo🌇 Also went here2 people×What can I say that hasn't already been said? Canggu has so much energy and excitement. I think that's partly due to the cost of living plus the weather. People are very nice here but expect general life for the locals to revolve around tourism. You're not going to get an authentic Indonesian cultural experience. It's definitely not perfect and not an easy place to live but considering how cheap it is what can you expect? I think the pros outweigh the cons and cons are plentiful (dirty, cash soc
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 😙 Affordable📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun great👮 Safety goodTap to open🌧 Feels 35° 95° 29° 83°🥵AQI 83😷✈️5h$1,960 / mo🌇 Also went here4 people×Honestly, this is an awesome place to be if you're actually trying to get work done. It's a bit of an older vibe than Canggu, and there's certainly a big chunk of yogi's kicking around — but I liked it much better than Canggu and found it less pretentious. Plus, you can drive down there in 45mins whenever you want some beach or party vibes. As others mentioned, there's some great coworking spaces, cheap warungs, some really nice spots to stay cheaply if you go just outside of the mad tourist
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 😙 Affordable📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun great👮 Safety goodTap to open🌧 Feels 33° 91° 27° 81°🥵AQI 83😷✈️5h$2,065 / mo🌇 Also went here2 people×Taxis in Istanbul are a big problem even for locals. Public transport is convenient and comfortable. If you need to call a taxi, I recommend using an app. "Bitaksi" can be used. Agree with the taxi driver using google translate and negotiate in advance if necessary. Always make public transportation your first choice. There are millions of refugees in this city against a registered population of 15 million. A significant number of asylum seekers do not have any registered documents and this cre
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 😙 Affordable📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun mediocre👮 Safety mediocreTap to open🌧 Feels 7° 45° 9° 48°AQI 24✈️9h$2,202 / mo🌇 Also went here2 people×Stayed for 2 weeks after almost a year n a half in LatAm. Beautiful city; great food options- especially for Asian food lovers. Plenty of authentic Thai, Vietnamese and Chinese options for about 50% of what you would pay in a Western city. Decent hostels will cost $11-$15 weekdays and between $18-$30 on weekends.... Good internet; beautiful architecture and people but it is true Hungarians can be very cold at times. Overall a good stay with many destinations just a quick and cheap flight/tr
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 😙 Affordable📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun mediocre👮 Safety mediocreTap to open🌥 Feels 4° 39° 6° 43°AQI 72✈️10h$2,371 / mo🌇 Also went here3 people×How the f is this city in the #1 spot for europe? Is the Warsaw city council paying for the spot? I spent a month here mostly to help during the ukraine refugee crisis. This was the most meh city I've visited in my life. People are incredibly cold. They have this attitude (I was about to write slavic, but actually I've been to other slavic countries and they've been really friendly, so I don't want to bunch them together) kind of a cold indifference, but you can never tell if they're purposeful
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 🙂 Okay📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun mediocre👮 Safety goodTap to open🌧 Feels -1° 30° 2° 35°AQI 38✈️10h$2,721 / mo🌇 Also went here2 people×I visited Prague on more than one occasion and tried something new each time. I really wanted to enjoy it, but unfortunately it turned out to be one of my least favourite cities. Perhaps it was just me, but there was an overwhelming sense of distrust and dislike towards foreigners, you have to try pretty hard to blend in if you want to experience the life of a local & avoid the tourism. I met some wonderful people and and there’s some cool communities to be part of, but another extended stay
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 🧐 Pricey📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun great👮 Safety goodTap to open🌥 Feels 1° 34° 4° 40°AQI 23✈️10h$3,264 / mo🌇 Also went here2 people×Nomading here is tough because there are no reasonable Airbnbs and finding a short-term apt is difficult. You have to ask yourself, is it worth coming to Barcelona? It's probably the dirtiest city in Spain, and a bit sketchy. There's more beautiful and cleaner cities like Seville where you can find a reasonably priced Airbnb.
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 😳 Way too expensive📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun great👮 Safety goodTap to open☀️ Feels 13° 55° 13° 56°AQI 53✈️12h$5,439 / mo🌇 Also went here2 people×Pros - Great digital nomad community - Lots of sport and social meetups - Great laptop-friendly coffeeshops - Beautiful outdoors, beaches, activities etc Cons - Difficult and expensive with accommodation during summer season - Cars allowed to drive on small walking streets in city center (like all over PT) On the surface Lagos seems like a sleepy place with not much going on, but as soon as you find the meetups, coffeeshops and various nomad activities such as beach volleyball on praia da luz
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 😙 Affordable📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun bad👮 Safety goodTap to open☀️ Feels 13° 55° 14° 58°AQI 11✈️13h$2,092 / mo🌇 Also went here2 people×I'm currently in Lisbon and I must say that this city has been very overhyped in terms of cost, food and overall fun. There are a lot of issues where foreigners like myself are driving up the rent and we are solely blamed for this. The larger issue here is the Portuguese government is not using these tourism dollars towards their people. I'm staying in Alfama and there is 'fuck tourists' spray painted in a few places but in order to come and stay here we are being asked to provide our informatio
⭐️ OverallAll 💵 Cost 🧐 Pricey📡 InternetWiFi 🙂 Good😀 Fun great👮 Safety goodTap to open☀️ Feels 13° 55° 13° 55°AQI 6✈️13h$3,456 / mo🌇 Also went here4 people×