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Comment by Alex3917 | Hacker News Reader

I spent a few days there a couple years ago. Ubud is a cool place, with incredibly good and cheap food and housing. But the reason that costs of living are cheaper may not be entirely disconnected from the fact that life feels cheaper in general. Not only is there currently a rabies epidemic among the wild dogs that are everywhere, but there are a million other random ways to get killed, everything from falling into giant unmarked holes in the middle of the sidewalk to getting hit by motorbikes.

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This is something that I can't get first world people to understand. It costs more to live in a third-world country. And I mean that literally. It is cheaper to vacation in third-world but try running a business there.

Here is an example:

- Imported products have high tariffs. Electronics and Cars are usually more expensive than the US.

- No Good Transportation Hubs/Companies like DHL to move things around. Broken and corrupt customs.

- No trained professionals to repair electronics.

So What gives? I had to pay around $200 to fix a Wifi issue on a Macbook; and the worst part? Wait for 3 months until the replacement was shipped.

Let's not then get to the other issues: Health, Public Transports, Schools, Taxes, etc...

I visit Singapore for shopping and getting electronics repaired...

Is Singapore a 3rd world country?

It costs more to live the same lifestyle you had from your home country. If you cook and eat local food, don't indulge in expensive imports, use fans instead of aircons 24/7, drive a moto and not a car etc. Too many expats move out here and live in expat ghettos where it is expensive. Move to an area that is at least 10km from the nearest Western Style coffee shop and you'll find it's a lot cheaper. Sadly, two weeks ago a chain coffee shop opened across the street from the university where our office is, so there goes the neighborhood....

As for electronics? Stay away from ecosystems like Apple, they are expensive everywhere. Twenty years ago, our Thai office used Macs because we needed to run Japanese software that only ran on Macs. We needed to go to Penang (in Malaysia) to buy new Macs or get them fixed. But the prices there were about the same as in Hong Kong. Was it as easy going down to Golden Shopping Center in HK? No, but life was a lot more pleasant and overall a lot cheaper. We moved shop to Phnom Penh five years ago and haven't had any serious problems running a cloud service here except for the power outages.

That's Apple and Oranges. We are comparing same lifestyles in different countries. Otherwise the comparison will not hold.

Collecting Government stipend from a wealthy country, living in a rural area, and using nothing but free government services will make life less expensive even for the minimalist lifestyle.

But that's not the point here. The point is, is it cheaper? The answer is obviously: No!. If it was, people will move to "arbitrage" out there money/lifestyle. That's what happened with Thailand. That's what is happening with Cambodia.

Yes, at least 6x in my experience trying to replicate a Western way of life in Asia. Japan and HK being notably challenging in terms of costs.

I spent 3 weeks there in October with friends and thoroughly loved it, in the same breath also loved coming home. [yes...I can drink water out the tap and it won't try to kill me!]. I think the dogs have improved in the last few years with a concerted effort to clean things up in that regard [errr.. don't want to think what that actually means].

We spent 10 days on the Sayan Terrace area in Ubud and could certainly see the mental wellness qualities of coding overlooking a stunning vista. That said the latency was pretty terrible back to servers located in the states (quite iffy internet) + power up and down; as opposed to North Kuta where at least internet was more solid.

If younger me were trying to do something hidden way for a while coding; and location didn't make a difference, and you wanted to limit costs... it certainly would be a consideration.

Stunning beautiful country, with a lot of litter, a healthy dose of asia-traffic-chaos, lovely, lovely people, cheap cost of living. You would just have to have a bit of a strong constitution about the odd thing you'd see. Of course, you'd have to not get sucked into getting into Island time and loosing productivity to Bintangs...

> But the reason that costs of living are cheaper may not be entirely disconnected from the fact that life feels cheaper in general

Of course the low costs of living are related to the general economic situation, most people there are very poor by western standards and Bali infrastructure is at it's limits and has poor safety.

It's overly pessimistic view but if you didn't like it then you can consider other parts of the world. May be Patagonia, or Kenya ? I never visited both of these countries but would love to hear from other engineers.

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