Nomad List| 🏆 Nomad Score™ | 172 reviews |
| 💵 Cost | |
| 📡 Internet | |
| 😝 Fun | |
| ⛅️ Temperature (now) | |
| 💦 Humidity (now) | |
| 💨 Air quality (now) | |
| 👌 Safety | |
| 👍 Quality of life | |
| 🚶 Walkability | |
| ✌️ Peace | |
| 🚦 Traffic safety | |
| 🏥 Hospitals | |
| 😄 Happiness | |
| 🍸 Nightlife | |
| 📶 Free WiFi in city | |
| 🖥 Places to work from | |
| ❄️ A/C or heating | |
| 😁 Friendly to foreigners | |
| 🙊 English speaking | |
| 🗯 Freedom of speech | |
| 😘 Racial tolerance | |
| 👩 Female friendly | |
| 🌈 LGBT friendly | |
| 🎅 Startup Score |
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| 🌍 Region | Asia | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 🚩 Country | China | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ⏱ Average trip duration | 4 days | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 📡 Internet speed (avg) | 2 Mbps | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ⛅️ Weather | 🌥 25°C 77°F + 💦 Humid (79%) + 💨 5km/h = Feels like 27°C 81°F | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 💨 Air quality (now) | 😷 93 µg/m3 equal to 🚬 🚬 🚬 🚬 / day | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 💨 Air quality (annual avg) | 👎 82 µg/m3 equal to 🚬 🚬 🚬 🚬 / day | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 🔌 Power | 230V50Hz | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 🚕 Best taxi app | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 📱 Best wireless carrier | China Mobile | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 💸 10 CNY in USD | USD 1.41 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 🏧 Suggested ATM take out: CNY 1,000 | USD 141 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 💸 Tipping | No | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 💳 Cashless society | 💵 No, cash only (esp. for foreigners because WeChat is very hard to set up) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 💻 Best coworking space | Regus | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ☕️ Best coffee place | Starbucks | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 🚰 Safe tap water | 🚫 No, contaminated | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ♻️ Return rate | 0% of visitors return | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 👨👩👧👦 Population | 3,300,000 people | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 👫 Gender ratio | 👨 56% 👱♀️ 44% | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ⛪️ Religious government | Non-religious | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 🏠 Apartment listings | Ganji | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ✈️ Best short-haul air carrier | Hainan | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ✈️ Best int'l air carrier | China Southern Airlines | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| outdoorsfoodcultureno-beachairportwarm nowwarmhotslow internetcheap cost of livinglow crimehigh humiditymany menfriendly people | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 💵 Nomad Cost™ | $1,382 / month |
| 💵 Cost of living for expat | $1,080 / month |
| 💵 Cost of living for family | $2,575 / month |
| 💵 Cost of living for local | $736 / month |
| 🏠 1br studio rent in center | $452 / month |
| 🏢 Coworking | $71 / month |
| 🏨 Hotel | $479 / month |
| 🏨 Hotel | $22 / night |
| 🏠 Airbnb (298 listings) | $1,623 / month |
| 🏠 Airbnb | $53 / night |
| 🍝 Dinner | $3 |
| 🍹 Coca-Cola (0.3L) | $1 |
| 🍺 Beer (0.5L) | $3 |
| ☕️ Coffee | $4 |
Based on Kunming's cost of living, here's selected remote jobs that would cover your costs:
 | Director Of UI UX @ ThreatConnect |
 | Senior UI UX Designer @ Radformation |
 | Product Designer @ Clevertech |
Hanoi is great, it's bursting with culture, tasty food and beautiful people. I lived here for almost 3 months and loved it. Summer is really hot and air quality is bad so check what time of year you go! Make sure you hit up Sapa - get the overnight train, also Ninh Binh is perfect for a weekend trip!
🎒 Nomad 💵 Cost 📡 Internet 😀 Fun 👮 Safety 🌧 Feels 37° 99° 29° 84°✈️0.73881090803624$1,011 / mo7MbpsI lived and worked (at a law firm) in Chengdu for about 3 months. I absolutely loved the city! It's so different from east coast China, especially given the Tibetan influences in many areas. I had a company arrange my apartment and registrations, but was a seamless process. I am a white, American male who speaks a decent bit of Mandarin, and I found the locals to be incredibly hospitable. China is general is extremely affordable for a Westerner, and Chengdu offers the luxuries of any large, Western city/metro area.
🎒 Nomad 💵 Cost 📡 Internet 😀 Fun 👮 Safety 🌧 Feels 34° 93° 29° 85°😷AQI 63✈️0.85738173542723$1,006 / mo2MbpsCost of living over 1.000 usd? Is any of of this website went to Bangkok? You can live on a palace above 1.000 usd rent. Mine was 22.000 bahts and was in the party street, amazing building with jacuzzi, pools and even its own cinema..
🎒 Nomad 💵 Cost 📡 Internet 😀 Fun 👮 Safety 🌧 Feels 43° 109° 33° 92°😷AQI 61✈️1.6953541486871$1,526 / mo17MbpsBe wary of LIES, lies everywhere. Lies like when a local restaurant tells you it uses clean filtered water. Assume that you will drink polluted water once in a while. It does not only include bacteria but also heavy metal. Drinking bottled water ? The most popular company, Nongfu, was caught using wrong norms years ago. Too many people were boycotting so they changed the traditional red bottle... and removed the English name. Lies like when they told you the internet speed using local servers. Local internet is actually not that bad, but since you would never use Baidu, Bing or any other unblocked search engine, then your VPN will throttle much of your speed and freedom. Add to that the fact that 2-3 times a year, a political meeting happens and they totally CUT all VPN access. Lies when you try to know the air pollution and the weather agency chose not to update the air quality index to play with the averages. It's still unhealthy but it got A LOT better these last few years. Lies like when you just try to know how many people live in Shanghai. Between 25-35 million people (depending on if you include migrant worker and nearby Suzhou soon to be connected by the same subway) means you get access to lots of stuff. Delivery is one (electronics, food). Subway is ridiculously cheap and modern. Taxis (just replace Uber by Didi) is also awesome and quite cheap. Lies like when you read my review and count as many bad points as good, but you still get Chinese people asking you why you hate China so much...
🎒 Nomad 💵 Cost 📡 Internet 😀 Fun 👮 Safety 🌥 Feels 41° 106° 33° 91°😷AQI 82✈️2.6289698520289$1,994 / mo2MbpsI lived and worked (at a law firm) in Chengdu for about 3 months. I absolutely loved the city! It's so different from east coast China, especially given the Tibetan influences in many areas. I had a company arrange my apartment and registrations, but was a seamless process. I am a white, American male who speaks a decent bit of Mandarin, and I found the locals to be incredibly hospitable. China is general is extremely affordable for a Westerner, and Chengdu offers the luxuries of any large, Western city/metro area.
🎒 Nomad 💵 Cost 📡 Internet 😀 Fun 👮 Safety 🌧 Feels 34° 93° 29° 85°😷AQI 63✈️0.85738173542723$1,006 / mo2MbpsGreat if you have a local connection to guide you, or you are okay paying more for a central hotel or airbnb. 75mbps internet is readily available for residents, and cheap and fast data plans and phones that can hotspot are also doable for work. Plenty of decent pubs, microbreweries, coffee shops and restaurants. Tons of amazing street food. Very few dance club type places and only a few spots for live music, comedy etc. Relatively quiet, but pleasant nightlife. Horrendous traffic, but good metro. Uber works well and loads of English speakers makes life easier here than elsewhere in India. Nearly impossible for a foreigner to get long stay visas let alone residency. But you could max out your tourist visa here and in India in general, though Bangalore is only convenient for being relatively tout free and English accessible with good Internet. Goa, Pondicherry, Mysore or Kerala are much more pleasant overall.
🎒 Nomad 💵 Cost 📡 Internet 😀 Fun 👮 Safety 🌧 Feels 32° 90° 27° 80°😷AQI 67✈️3.9234460657923$861 / mo5MbpsReally friendly and social people, laid back, easy to get around, food is good, 4g is great. Heavy clouds for the 4 days I was here in December, which was depressing as hell.
🎒 Nomad 💵 Cost 📡 Internet 😀 Fun 👮 Safety 🌧 Feels 46° 115° 32° 90°AQI 30✈️2.54389724298$2,032 / mo18MbpsHanoi is great, it's bursting with culture, tasty food and beautiful people. I lived here for almost 3 months and loved it. Summer is really hot and air quality is bad so check what time of year you go! Make sure you hit up Sapa - get the overnight train, also Ninh Binh is perfect for a weekend trip!
🎒 Nomad 💵 Cost 📡 Internet 😀 Fun 👮 Safety 🌧 Feels 37° 99° 29° 84°✈️0.73881090803624$1,011 / mo🌇 Also went here8 peopleI have been told it's the vanilla of digital nomads : easy, cheap, risk free. I loved it so much I want to move there ! Great food, great places to see and awesomely polite and nice people.
🎒 Nomad 💵 Cost 📡 Internet 😀 Fun 👮 Safety 🌧 Feels 41° 106° 31° 88°😷AQI 53✈️1.0490476220532$1,169 / mo🌇 Also went here10 peopleIt's possible to live in Hong Kong on the cheap. You've got to live far out in the New Territories, or on an outlying island. I spent a summer living happily on Lamma Island for ~$500USD/month in rent for one bedroom in a shared flat. Rent is really the only tricky part--everything else is relatively cheap.
🎒 Nomad 💵 Cost 📡 Internet 😀 Fun 👮 Safety 🌥 Feels 44° 111° 32° 90°😷AQI 67✈️1.6225613074847$2,941 / mo🌇 Also went here14 peopleCost of living over 1.000 usd? Is any of of this website went to Bangkok? You can live on a palace above 1.000 usd rent. Mine was 22.000 bahts and was in the party street, amazing building with jacuzzi, pools and even its own cinema..
🎒 Nomad 💵 Cost 📡 Internet 😀 Fun 👮 Safety 🌧 Feels 43° 109° 33° 92°😷AQI 61✈️1.6953541486871$1,526 / mo🌇 Also went here13 peopleGreat city for working that is incredibly cheap and has great cafes to work at. There's plenty of activities and social events so making friends was easy. Sadly food quality and air quality is very poor and there is a lack of nature nearby. I recommend staying here three months to half a year if you want a big city life but longer than that and you will get bored. Also stay out of district one as outside of it everything is cheaper and there's still plenty to do.
🎒 Nomad 💵 Cost 📡 Internet 😀 Fun 👮 Safety 🌧 Feels 42° 108° 31° 88°😷AQI 78✈️2.1795990636372$1,021 / mo🌇 Also went here10 peopleBe wary of LIES, lies everywhere. Lies like when a local restaurant tells you it uses clean filtered water. Assume that you will drink polluted water once in a while. It does not only include bacteria but also heavy metal. Drinking bottled water ? The most popular company, Nongfu, was caught using wrong norms years ago. Too many people were boycotting so they changed the traditional red bottle... and removed the English name. Lies like when they told you the internet speed using local servers. Local internet is actually not that bad, but since you would never use Baidu, Bing or any other unblocked search engine, then your VPN will throttle much of your speed and freedom. Add to that the fact that 2-3 times a year, a political meeting happens and they totally CUT all VPN access. Lies when you try to know the air pollution and the weather agency chose not to update the air quality index to play with the averages. It's still unhealthy but it got A LOT better these last few years. Lies like when you just try to know how many people live in Shanghai. Between 25-35 million people (depending on if you include migrant worker and nearby Suzhou soon to be connected by the same subway) means you get access to lots of stuff. Delivery is one (electronics, food). Subway is ridiculously cheap and modern. Taxis (just replace Uber by Didi) is also awesome and quite cheap. Lies like when you read my review and count as many bad points as good, but you still get Chinese people asking you why you hate China so much...
🎒 Nomad 💵 Cost 📡 Internet 😀 Fun 👮 Safety 🌥 Feels 41° 106° 33° 91°😷AQI 82✈️2.6289698520289$1,994 / mo🌇 Also went here14 peopleDefinitely an underrated place for nomads - Huge city with a small town feel. Lots of different neighborhoods to appeal to different types of people: some commercial, some hipstery, some historical, some modern. Food and rent is cheap (and the food is damn good). People are very friendly as compared to other big Asian cities. You can also get easy work as a tutor and make good extra cash. I survived for five months tutoring and doing other English related work for max 12 hrs a week (leaving me lots of time to work on other projects). You could also easily get a full time teaching gig but that defeats the whole nomad idea i guess. My favorite area is Gulou, or the Drum Tower. Old, local style with ancient buildings and some great cafes.
🎒 Nomad 💵 Cost 📡 Internet 😀 Fun 👮 Safety 🌫 Feels 37° 99° 33° 92°AQI 42✈️2.7942804127578$2,186 / mo🌇 Also went here12 peopleI think KL will be the next hub for nomads. It's affordable, safe, convenient, has decent Internet and has decent weather. (Yes it's hot during the summer but it gives you a good reason to be inside and get your work done) Mostly it's quite chill, not as hectic and messy as other major SEA cities like Bangkok, Hanoi and Jakarta. There's not that much to do, but Malaysia has wonderful nature and getaway places, accessible with cheap AirAsia tickets from KL.
🎒 Nomad 💵 Cost 📡 Internet 😀 Fun 👮 Safety 🌧 Feels 44° 111° 32° 90°✈️3.2464580446343$1,340 / mo🌇 Also went here9 peopleThe Diet Coke of Asia. Zero crime, English spoken everywhere. Reliable public transport. Some nice spots for off-the-beaten-path walking and hiking. But also clinical, authoritarian, money-minded and very costly. Companies and shopkeepers will always do what's good for them (or makes their own life easier); not what's good for the customer. People avoid eye contact and are generally overworked and miserable. After a while, crossing over to Malaysia's neighboring Johor will, warts and all, feel like a breath of fresh air ("Yes! Space! I can move! I can breathe!").
🎒 Nomad 💵 Cost 📡 Internet 😀 Fun 👮 Safety 🌥 Feels 42° 108° 32° 89°😷AQI 80✈️3.5239446898485$2,816 / mo🌇 Also went here12 peopleSpend a few hours and learn the Korean alphabet (not that hard) and Google some names of Korean dishes + it's spelling in Korean. It will help a lot as most restaurants only have Korean menu's and often without pictures. As mentioned previously on the reviews, it's a little hard to eat alone, but Gimbab Chonguk (김밥천국) is everywhere and 24/7 - no one will bat an eye. Also look for places that "specialises" in dumplings, They are usually "alone-eating" friendly. And so are ramen places as well as Korean "chinese" restaurants - Jajangmyeon (자장면) is very good and super addictive. Bibimbab restaurant places are fine too. Actually, it's not that hard to eat alone in Korea. The "group" meals are generally quite obvious and will be things like BBQ. You'll figure it out. Do Get used to kimchi and spicy food otherwise you'll end up eating the same thing all the time. Be adventurous. Challenge yourself and eat an octopus alive (산낙지). If you're really brave try 보신탕 before authorities close them all - I haven't but a lot of Weagukins (foreigners) secret do. Cafe's generally have really good wifi, as you would expect from one of the most connected countries in the world. Expect to pay $4-6 for a latte and maybe even more at Starbucks. Best cafe's are usually around Hipster areas and Universities. Indie owned cafe's are awesome. Nightlife is great, probably amongst the best in Asia. Can get very expensive especially at night clubs in Gangnam where it would could be like $10 for a beer - in that case you can still get drunk for $2 with soju just outside at 7Eleven. Winters are stupidly cold and summers can be brutally hot & humid. Go between April and June or September to October. They have cherry blossoms in spring which is beautiful and so are the autumn leaves. Lived here for many years. It's a cool place and vastly underrated. Seoul is continuously becoming more expensive and cost of living will soon be comparable with places like Tokyo.
🎒 Nomad 💵 Cost 📡 Internet 😀 Fun 👮 Safety 🌥 Feels 37° 99° 31° 88°😷AQI 59✈️3.5883756154561$2,393 / mo🌇 Also went here9 peopleI like it here better than Canggu. It's more walkable, more cheap warungs, more convenient. You could find all kinds of shop catering to different type of visitor, from cheap to luxurious. Not a party place if you're looking for it, which made it even more perfect. More female than male, great for dating.
🎒 Nomad 💵 Cost 📡 Internet 😀 Fun 👮 Safety 🌥 Feels 37° 99° 30° 87°😷AQI 88✈️5.2962160953163$2,086 / mo🌇 Also went here9 peopleI have been living in London for over 2 years as a student. It's ridiculously expensive. However, there are options. What I like about the city is you can find many events anytime you want. It's active all year 24/7. There are so many foreigners and tourists which make the living more vibrant and less racist. London has sub-communities which I think is a good thing. Those communities bring their cultures, ethics and foods. Public transportation and restaurants are great. I used to spend 3-4 hours in Costa or Nero cafe without interruptions. Though if it's raining or summer season it could be hard to stay long. On the negative side, the UK suffers from slow and old bureaucracies making life difficult sometimes. It's not easy to open a bank account or to rent. The government systems are slow. Also, you will feel depressed in winter when the sunset is before 4pm and the temperature is 0c. All in all, everything is great about the city except the affordability and the winter.
🎒 Nomad 💵 Cost 📡 Internet 😀 Fun 👮 Safety 🌥 Feels 25° 77° 23° 73°AQI 36✈️11.572606983382$3,868 / mo🌇 Also went here8 peopleBest city in the world! You can certainly live the Nomad life in NYC for a lot less than 5k a month! I've been doing it since December 2018 for around $2500/mo. AirBnB is the way to go!
🎒 Nomad 💵 Cost 📡 Internet 😀 Fun 👮 Safety 🌧 Feels 43° 109° 33° 92°AQI 34✈️16.927561615911$5,419 / mo🌇 Also went here10 people✅ Affordable to live
✅ Very safe
✅ Warm in the spring
✅ Spacious and not crowded
✅ Easy to do business
✅ High quality of education
✅ Safe for women
❌ Slow internet
❌ Not much to do
❌ Very humid now
❌ Bad air quality year round
❌ Not many nomads go here
❌ Difficult to make friends
❌ Hospitals are pretty bad
❌ Roads can be dangerous
❌ Freedom of speech is weak
❌ Not very democratic
❌ People don't speak English well
❌ Hostile towards LGBT
❌ People smoking tobacco a lot
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