Something in the ether
Fire season in Chiang Mai cyclically deflates digital nomad community
From the end of March to mid-April, the air quality in Chiang Mai often blasted past 300 on Swiss technology platform IQair, making it “Very Unhealthy”, and prompting a mask recommendation from the platform.
Chiang Mai’s blockchain and SEO community has submitted its bid to host the 2024 edition of Ethereum Foundation’s Devcon in Southeast Asia.
Fire walls
“It’s empty here compared to the high season in Chiang Mai”, says Yellow co-working space co-founder Patricia Sirkia, commenting on the dozens of clients occupying almost every corner of the building’s specialized subsections, save for the new YouTube studio.
“With the smoke, everyone leaves,” laments Sirkia from the co-working in Nimmanhaemin neighborhood, a tech nomad hub.
In cafés, restaurants, writing workshops and communication platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram and Discord, Chiang Mai digital nomads speak of mass desertion during peak fire season in the northeastern region, usually from mid-March to mid-April.
Many users share their dismay at air quality through screenshots of IQair real-time measurements. They compare wing-side footage caught on planes landing in Bangkok or thick riverside smoke clouds filmed from the shores in Chiang Rai.
Compounding challenges
Punspace founders Vichaya and Euam Sirisanthana closed the first of their three co-working locations in the city, operating at 10% capacity during the pandemic, thus avoiding high rents in Nimmanhaemin neighborhood.
At high season, between October and February, Punspace has around 100 monthly members, which drops to 50 during the normal season, and to 35 during fire season, according to Wiang Kaew manager Pongsatorn Raktin.
“Customers leave for Bali during the burning season”, he says.
On its Instagram account, Punspace advertises the air quality in their office space, the meter running from an ‘Unhealthy’ 181 PM2.5 measurement outside to a harmless 12 inside.
Hot Spots for Westerners
“There is a cycle. There’s smokey season, which is the least favorable, especially for Westerners”, says Alt_ChiangMai co-living space co-founder John Ho, whose target audience is “digital nomads and remote workers”.
“I’m from Hong Kong. We have shitty air all year round. It’s still bad here. I’m not sugar-coating it. But we’re less sensitive to it.”
“We still have remote workers and digital nomads in this region”, Ho says. “The Taiwanese, the Koreans, the Japanese, Singaporeans, Malaysians, Hong Kong. We don’t notice the difference. We don’t know enough about it to be afraid of it.”
The Hong Kong entrepreneur notes that these seasonal fires go back decades, but have only recently attracted negative attention from Western media.
On the ground, there’s not much you can do but adapt, he says.
“The government has very little control. It’s seasonal. It’s geographical. And it’s geopolitical. You have countries around us burning, regardless of our regulations. You can’t do anything about it.”
Nodes in a network
John Ho keeps building the community during fire season, with weekly events ranging from salsa to yoga and Wim Hoff-inspired ice baths.
Alt_ChiangMai is also building a second space, “up-cycling” a COVID-abandoned building 5 km east of its current location.
The new place is funded through community crowdsourcing. The owners are selling 40% off their shares to small investors, with a minimum buy-in at USD $5K, John Ho says.
“We’ve raised 60% of the money we need to spend on equipment, renovation, building the co-working space, registering the company, everything. Within four months.”
In the meantime, John Ho hosts speaking events focusing on business founders. On March 24th, ShakeSphere & SoldOutt founder Dave Malhotra (pictured with microphone in the above photo) shared tips with Western start-up founders on how to do business in Thailand.
The next guest will be AirDeveloppa founder and CEO Roberto Weiser, developing air purifiers in Chiang Mai with a blockchain-centered crypto-reward app.
ETH, THB, THC
A graphic designer, a web developer and a software developer walk into a bar. After the usual introductions (‘Where are you from? Invested in Crypto?’), they end up speaking in code, quite literally.
With foreign currencies providing a more comfortable lifestyle for a longer time, many digital nomads can stretch the purchasing power of their finances and work on or invest in riskier, time-consuming projects they might not be able to leverage back home.
All over the city, in marijuana-smoke-filled bars and more formal meet-ups, crypto generates mixed feelings of recent losses and steadfast dedication.
Patricia Sirkia is hoping Chiang Mai can attract Devcon 7 during the rainy season, between September and October. “There’s a very strong SEO and blockchain community in Chiang Mai”, she says.
The “Ethereum conference for developers, researchers, thinkers, and makers”, will take place in Southeast Asia in 2024. Competitors like Bangkok, Bali, Taipei and Hong Kong had till March 13th to submit their bid.
The except-for-COVID annual gathering takes up a big chunk of Ethereum Foundation’s 10 M$ or so event envelope, labeled Devcon.
Recent editions, eventually attracting thousands of enthusiasts, have taken place in Osaka, Japan (2019), Prague, Czech Republic (2018) and Cancun, Mexico (2017). This year’s Bogota, Colombia conference marked Devcon’s post-COVID return.
Writing prompts
Longer-term digital nomads say these ‘crypto-bros’ don’t necessarily represent the entire community, as some nomads have been living in and around Chiang Mai for years, sometimes decades.
A writing group meets on Tuesday afternoons in the Yellow conference room, free from the eager networking vibes found elsewhere in the city.
In between 45-minute sessions of personal work, held in silence, nomad veterans share their insights about reincarnation, ego, and love of the word.
It’s a love that spreads to Wednesday night’s writing workshop at newly-opened Off The Wall.
Stuck at home during the three years of COVID, English poet Kieron H. attended the workshop, sharing inspired literature from the quirky, unassuming prompts ranging from ‘Everything is Cake’ to ‘Why Satan Hates Bring Your Kids to Work Day’.
He’s just landed in the city, returning to his pre-COVID decade-long travel in the region. Working as an English teacher for Chinese kids online, the poet supports his lifestyle with various such hustles, and spreads poetry whenever he can.
I met her on the beach in a magical place.
Stars shot in the sky and we sang in the sea.
And swam in the plankton, that lit up for me…
Excerpt from Kieron H’s ‘I Met Her on the Beach’
The poet’s performance acts as a seamless bridge between the writing workshop and the ensuing karaoke night.