I’m writing this for anyone under the spell of the digital nomad highlight reel, and for my younger self, who confused suffering with adventure. This is the story of when I stopped asking, “Where should I go next?” and started asking, “What do I need to thrive?”
Siargao, a surf island in the southern Philippines, gave me two of the best pandemic years of my life, until it started telling me it was time to leave.
I arrived there in 2020 after traveling across Asia and the US. I was living out of a single carry-on, swimming in the open sea, and working remotely with a hospitality group’s social media team. I was also moonlighting for travel and lifestyle publications, including writing a column about the island life I was living in real time.
I’d often escape to the quieter northern part of Siargao. It’s less touristy, with small beach towns and empty stretches of sand, which helped me find that long, slow breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
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Packing up again
Two years later, a super typhoon hit. In the aftermath, while doing disaster relief on an island cut off from the outside world, something became clear: I was someone the island had been generous to.
I decided to give Bali a try. Canggu, a beach town on Bali’s southwest coast, was recommended by a friend, who praised its creative community and fast internet.
But the Canggu I arrived in was different. Post-pandemic overcrowding had turned the infamous “shortcut” road through the rice fields into a parking lot.
I watched motorbikes tip into the muddy fields almost daily. There were tourists who had decided Canggu traffic was a perfectly good place to learn how to ride. It was beautiful and hilarious, but exhausting.
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Over rooftop sunset beers, friends told me about their trip to Thailand, and helped me decide where to go next with a very helpful tip: Go to Phuket to network; go to Chiang Mai to focus. I wanted to focus, so off to Chiang Mai I went.
My mantra was “have desk, will write.”
Every place I’d lived had left its own friction in that desk: power outages, dropped connections, traffic that turned a 10-minute errand into an hour-long ordeal. I’d spent years chasing belonging and meaningful work while the basics kept slipping out from under me — reliable electricity, stable internet, safe roads.
I started asking myself if the desk was enough.
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Leaving Bali behind
Chiang Mai is a city of about a million people in northern Thailand, surrounded by mountains and temples. When I arrived in 2023, I noticed something unfamiliar. I wasn’t braced for something to go wrong. Life felt easy in a way it hadn’t in years.
My first long-term apartment was a former Russian ballet school near the Ping River. It charmed me completely, until the river overflowed during the 2024 rainy season — the worst flooding locals said they’d seen in 80 years. That familiar thought arrived: Is this place kicking me out, too?
The answer was finding a different part of Chiang Mai. I anchored my days to barre classes and evening walks at a reservoir on the grounds of Chiang Mai University.
Feeling safe as a solo female traveler matters too. Here, that quiet safety is a form of infrastructure.
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Symbols to stay in Chiang Mai
I knew the place was right when every little thing was telling me to stay. My balcony has a view of the mountains, I hear singing birds, and I watch yellow butterflies flock to a flowering tree every morning.
The Destination Thailand Visa, a long-stay option for five years, has made it easier. It comes with a built-in reset every six months, when I’m required to go out of the country. This reminds me that it’s an arrangement rather than a commitment. At 41, I get to be in a peaceful place without a declaration of belonging, but with something more honest.
Have desk, will write. But also: have barre class; have a walk by the lake; have a coconut auntie two doors down; and have a neighborhood where the back of my head doesn’t feel watched. Have a city that flooded (and fills with smoke two months out of every year), but still feels worth coming back to.
It took five years, three countries, and several beautiful islands to figure out where I want to be — for now, at least.
