Why Chiang Mai

The answer is yes, you can, and there are real sacrifices attached that don't make it into most versions of this story.

There's also something I want to say before the pitch, because the genre this belongs to usually skips it. Most of society is pinned in place in one way or another, and that isn't a failure of imagination — it's structural, and it's necessary. Society needs stability to function at all. It needs people doing the nine-to-five. It needs people in hospitals and in every other service that has to be there on a Tuesday whether or not someone feels inspired.

Entrepreneurship should not be for everyone, and I don't think the version of this life I'm describing is either. I'd rather say that plainly than write another piece implying that anyone still at a desk simply hasn't worked it out yet.

With that said: Chiang Mai is a very good base, and base is the right word. I wanted to build a life, and I wanted to build it somewhere the cost of doing so wasn't the main constraint on everything else.

The specific list was short. Cheap food that's genuinely high quality. Cheap accommodation, if you know where to look. A network — enough people doing comparable things that you're not the only one. And nature that's actually beautiful rather than merely nearby.

Chiang Mai has all four, which is rarer than it sounds. Plenty of places have two.

I knew I wanted to move before I'd ever been. The first trip was a holiday in 2023 — Bangkok first, then north through the major cities to see what was actually there.

I ruled out Phuket without visiting it, which sounds unserious and wasn't. Beach life has never interested me. I already knew I wanted mountains, and no amount of coastline was going to change that. So I went north instead, and after Chiang Mai the decision stopped being a decision.