My Experience Being a Digital Nomad in Bali

Published in

RunningRemote

11 min readJul 21, 2015

As I write this, I’m sitting in the shade a few meters from the ocean on a small island near Bali in Indonesia. I’m eating a banana pancake with chocolate syrup, and am wearing nothing but my bathing suit.

Earlier today, I went snorkeling and swam with sea turtles for the first time, along with countless brightly colored fish and beautiful coral. Off to my left, the sun is just starting to set over the ocean.

What I’m doing is trying out life as a “digital nomad”. I’ve been in Indonesia for about 5 weeks, and have about 3 left before heading to the Philippines for the first time to meet some of the people I’ve been working with for years, but so far have only met virtually.

At Time Doctor, this is one of our goals: to enable anyone to work productively whereever they are.

That might mean a Canadian like myself living & working in Indonesia, or it might mean someone working from home in their own city, as many remote workers do.

I chose Bali as a first digital-nomading destination on my CEO, and a couple of well-traveled friends. I’d told them all that I was looking for nice weather, ocean, surfing, easy socializing, stable internet, and opportunities for personal growth. Bali delivered on all points.

Traveling & working VS just traveling

Although there are obvious benefits to traveling without work (more free time, and a break for the brain from a full-time focus on work), I’ve found that there are also benefits to working while traveling:

1 — Meeting like minded people. There are a lot of digital nomads trotting the globe, and they’re not hard to find. There are groups online where you can connect with them, as well as co-working spaces (more on co-working spaces below).
2 — Avoiding travel fatigue. I meet a lot of travelers who are trying to cram in as many activities as possible into their short trips.

Check out this epic conference in Bali about Remote Work

Interlude: Let me show you what I’m seeing right now. I’ll just step out onto the beach and…
…I’m back. Here you go:

Back to the story: As I was saying, I see a lot of travelers desperately trying to fit in as many activities as possible before their trips end. I’d find their schedules exhausting. I’m happy to have a work routine for part of my day to keep me grounded, and then fit other activities into my spare time.

I’m also glad that since I’m working, I’m able to travel for a longer time, and more slowly. I like to think that I’m at least partially following Tim Ferriss’s travel advice — to “experience [the world] at a speed that lets it change you”.

Co-working Spaces

One of the best parts of traveling is meeting new people, and co-working spaces are a great way for digital nomads to do that.

A co-working space, in case you don’t know, is where you can rent desk space on an hourly or monthly basis. They often have faster & more stable internet than other places, have optional quiet rooms where you can work in silence, and hold interesting events.

I spent a couple weeks in a town called “Ubud”, and while there I often set up my laptop and worked at a co-working space called Hubud: Ubud Coworking & Community Space. Hubud has events happening almost daily, and I attended a few of their talks, lunches, and networking events.

I met all kinds of people at Hubud, from writers to startup founders to software developers, and from people on short vacations to true digital nomads like a woman from Greece who has been on the road for 5 years, financing her life primarily by freelancing through Upwork (formerly oDesk).

The inside of Hubud, early in the morning before the crowds arrived.

Another co-working space in Ubud that I visited and attended an inspiring talk at is The Onion Collective.

I also recently heard about Liv.it, a live-in startup incubator in Bali. I haven’t met the folks from Liv.it yet, but I hope to, especially since they’re Time Doctor users.

You can also check out companies like Coworkation. They are making the combination between work and travel not only possible, but inspiring and extremely rewarding both for yourself and your work.

The Economics of Digital Nomading

Let me start by saying that although I’m seeing that living long-term in a remote location can cost much less than living in modern Western countries, I myself am not saving any money on this 9 week trip. Not only do I still have my most significant expenses back home to deal with (rent & car payments), my constant moving-while-traveling has kept my expenses relatively high.

However, I’ve seen and experienced how to keep costs down while traveling and can offer some advice:

Eliminate expenses back home

To really live a cheaper life on the road, you’ll need to commit to it long-term so that you can significantly reduce your expenses back home. Depending on your situation, this may mean selling your house and car, cancelling your phone & internet plans, etc.

If you choose to rent out or sublet your residence back home, that’s also done more easily if your place is available long-term.

Stay in one place for a long time

Renting a place by the month can be much cheaper than renting a room at a “hotel” or “homestay”. I’m currently paying around $12 USD /day for a room with two beds, air conditioning, and the ocean a 46-second walk away (I just timed it). $12 is a small fraction of what I’d pay for a similar room in Canada, but in most of the parts of Indonesia that I’ve been, I’ve had to pay about double this price for a reasonable room in a convenient location.

Costs can be reduced even further by paying a monthly rate, and getting a place with more than just a bedroom & bathroom. If you have a kitchen & refrigerator you can also eat in and save on food costs: Other travelers have told me that the rates for houses closer to the center of this island (a 10–15 minute walk from the ocean) range from $150 to $300 USD per month.

Eat in

On this trip I’ve eaten out for every meal. At the places I’ve lived I simply haven’t had the facilities to do any food preparation on my own. Restaurant prices here are ½ to ⅓ the cost of restaurant food back home. They can be even cheaper if you eat at non-tourist restaurants. Once I had a filling lunch for about $0.75 USD, but didn’t eat there again because I was concerned about the cleanliness & food quality.

Either way, food is cheap, but in Canada I don’t eat out nearly as much. I estimate that my monthly food costs here in Indonesia are roughly equivalent to my mostly-eating-in food costs in Canada.

Get a reusable water bottle

In a lot of places (like here in Indonesia), tap water isn’t potable. Almost all the tourists that I see solve this problem by buying individual water bottles whenever they want a drink. This is not only bad for the planet, it’s also a waste of money. By buying water in 19L (5 gallon) jugs and using them to refill my re-usable metal water bottle, I pay less than one fifth the price per liter than I would otherwise. If I’m not staying in one place long enough to use up a 19L jug, I get restaurants to fill my bottle for me. They charge for that, but not as much as for bottled water.

Travel outside of the high tourist season

As demand rises, so do prices. We’re approaching high tourist season here in Indonesia/Bali, and I’m bracing myself for the increase in accommodation prices as I continue to move around.

Get a local SIM card for your phone.

It’s probably far cheaper than the travel plans offered by your carrier from home. It was for me. And I’ve found the 3G from my SIM card is often faster & more stable than the free wifi at the hotels & restaurants. Right now I have my computer connected to the web via my phone’s 3G.

Negotiate / haggle

This depends on where you’re traveling. Here in Indonesia, most prices are negotiable.

Check NomadList.com

It can give you a rough idea what living costs are in different cities around the world. However, be aware that even within one city, costs can vary significantly. I’ve found some of NomadList’s data for the Indonesian cities that I’ve visited to be not entirely accurate.

Here’s a comparison of some typical costs between Ottawa (Canada) and Bali:

Arranging Flights & Accommodation

For flights, use Skyscanner.com to compare which sites have the best deals, but also investigate smaller local airlines which may not be listed on Skyscanner. If you have concerns about airline safety, check this list. We’ll be publishing a more in-depth article soon about arranging cheap flights.

For accommodation, use Booking.com or Agoda.com, or if it’s not high tourist season then you may want to wait to look for a place to stay until you arrive at your destination. You can often find deals that aren’t listed anywhere online by talking to people and walking around.

What might you lose?

Although I painted an idyllic picture at the start of this article (and my experience has been idyllic at times), this trip hasn’t been all roses & butterflies. There have been ups & downs. Based on my experience, a few of the things you might lose are:

Real-life contact with friends & family back home. You’ll definitely lose that. Skype & emails just aren’t the same. Although I missed family & friends from home, I’ve intentionally limited contact with them so that I can be fully “here” rather than “there”.
Comforts & conveniences. At various points in my trip, the comforts that I’ve missed have included potable tap water, air conditioning, fast internet, hot water for showers, a refrigerator that I can raid anytime I feel hungry, sidewalks, street signs, and extended periods of silence.
A regular schedule & regular friends (depending on your travelling style). I’ve rarely had a regular schedule or consistent friends. I meet new people all the time, but soon afterwards, they leave. Or I leave. Such is life on the road. The transient nature of friendships has been the most frustrating part of travel for me.
Your health or sanity. There’s not actually much risk of literal insanity or death, but there can certainly be stresses placed on mind & body. I had a rabies scare that ended up being very expensive & kept me up at night. A friend I met while traveling is just now recovering from a case of dengue fever (a non-deadly but serious disease transmitted by mosquitoes). Another friend told me about being chased by 4 dogs down an unlit street at night in Thailand. Etcetera.
Your glasses. A monkey snuck up and stole mine off my face when I wasn’t looking, and I wasn’t able to get them back.

What might you gain?

A lot. Again, this list is based on my own experience:

New friends or business contacts around the world.
A deeper appreciation for your life & relationships at home — in part as a result of temporarily losing items from the “what might you lose” list above, but also as a result of seeing the way other people live, and experiencing different environments.
New ideas to implement when you return home. Ideas that wouldn’t likely have come to you if you weren’t traveling.
Great memories. Like surfing, watching traditional dance performances, snorkeling, riding a motorbike/scooter through remote back roads in the mountains, finding strange animals in tide pools, and sharing my salad with a small gecko that crawled onto the table one night.
New perspectives. As an example, I got a new perspective on the flexibility of marriage relationships while spending time with a happily married 63 year-old woman who was backpacking alone through Southeast Asia.
An expanded mind. I think this is an unavoidable consequence of new experiences.
A deeper appreciation of Time Doctor and the freedom that it can provide 😉

Upcoming opportunities to travel & work in Bali:

1 — Chance to go to Bali for a month for free

A company I met in Bali (Coupofy) will be sponsoring one entrepreneur to spend a month in Bali. Included is:

Round-trip airfare from anywhere in the world
1 month accommodation
1 month unlimited membership at The Salty Volt
Travel insurance
Mentorship & support

2 — Join 19 other entrepreneurs for a month in Bali with Project Getaway

Project Getaway is an annual month-long event in Bali for entrepreneurs from around the world. It’s hosted by Liv.it — one of the co-working places mentioned above. The number of participants in Project Getaway is limited to 20.

You can learn more on their about page, and can read & watch videos about their past events here.