I guess I can kind of relate to this notion because I am one of these people and I choose to live in this country because of a lot of factors. The main ones I am concerned with are
- safety
- affordability
- ease of visas
- quality of internet capacity
I think this is pretty universal for anyone trying to live anywhere. The internet part of it is pretty important for people that work online though, and there are a lot of us here.
A lot of people have this grand idea that they are going to sit somewhere exotic and tippy tap away at their keyboards all day and I guess that is true but the reality of it is that you are probably either going to sit at your own house and do this, or you are going to be in an overpriced coffeeshop to make it happen.
"overpriced" is a relative term of course because our overpriced coffeeshops are still dramatically less overpriced than ones that are in my home country. Hell, I saw an advertisement for Starbucks that my friend sent me from Los Angeles and the store was trying to state that a coffee and a half sandwich for $10 is a good deal somehow.
I am in one of the "overpriced" coffeeshops right now in Da Nang, and it is pretty nice with quiet music and decent seating but a standard hot cappuccino is more than $2 and to me, based on where I live, that is overpriced.
People in other countries probably want to slap me for saying that but honestly, we don't really pay that much for coffee here and when you have to, it gets under your skin.
The connection here is a lot faster than at my apartment and that is a big selling point of all these places. There were 4 other diginos in the cafe at the same time as me.
There is my $2.20 cappuccino. I only say this is expensive because Vietnamese street coffee, which is much stronger than this is, costs around 30 cents. So paying 6 times that much for what is in my mind essentially the same thing, seems excessive.
There are scores of shops just like the one I am in now and at any point in time there are a ton of expats in there plugging away at their computers. This is a big business here and all of us do it.
I could work at home, but I don't really like to. I get more done in public because I am not going to go down a YouTube Shorts rabbit-hole for 2 hours like I will at home.
When it comes to Vietnam ranking 6th in the world, I was kind of surprised to find out that it was that low. Above it was Georgia in number one spot (the country, not the US State), then that was followed by Peru, South Africa, Thailand and Malaysia. I was kind of shocked to see South Africa on there at all due to the political climate of the place and also because I remember reading that there are frequent black and brownouts with the electricity. This doesn't seem very conducive to getting work done online but whatever, I didn't make the list, Holafly’s Digital Nomad Friction Index 2026 made the list.
As shocked as I was to see South Africa on the list, I was also surprised to see that Thailand is still up there in the rankings. THere are a ton of diginos that have moved here to Vietnam in the past few years that are here specifically because Thailand doesn't really make it easy for digital nomads to get visas there. In Vietnam it is a question of don't break any big laws and you can stay here about as long as you want to. From what I hear from my friends in Thailand, they state immigration there is borderline hostile towards them when they try (and often fail) to renew their visas.
I can only speak towards Vietnam, but I am intrigued by Croatia and Georgia and might check them out in the future. I will not go to South Africa and can't really imagine anyone that would seeing as how we have a rather large Saffa expat community here that is fleeing the politics and violence of that country. Thailand and Malaysia are fine but they are both shockingly hot countries and both of them are more expensive than here, which is also a shockingly hot country.
I suppose one day it would be nice to spend a bit of time in both Georgia and Croatia. I'm not going to learn any other languages though. Perhaps next year we can go and have a look at those.
If you have any experience in either one of those countries I would appreciate any information you can give me! But in the meantime, well done Vietnam on making the top-10. This country just keeps making the news more and more frequently for what are mostly good things!
