Hardly working: Digital Nomad
When I first arrived in Luang Prabang Laos in July 2022 the town was still in the grip of COVID sedation. The country had only reopened to tourists a few weeks beforehand and the French colonial town centre with its stucco shopfronts and wooden shutters was all mine. It was here I allowed myself an unthinkable transgression: dare I turn this holiday with its splashes of cash, total autonomy and days of reading and meandering into a new lifestyle of remote work.
My instinctive repulsion against such flights of fancy ran deep. My father is a habitual dreamer and each family holiday - whether by beach or on road - would say at least once “You know, I want to get out of the rat race” and with touching earnestness gaze out as we drove through the Southern highlands or South coast and say wistfully “just look at the rolling hills.” In the next major town a real estate agent window would be found and each house on sale would provide a potential future. My mother’s teutonic practicality and steely self-discipline looked down on these daydreams as pointless extravagances which they were. Us kids were taught to do the same. Our lot was our lot and while we could loathe it we were not permitted to leave it.
This weekend I have returned to Luang Prabang to honour this flight of fancy only to find the place transformed. It is now teeming with French, British and German tourists. There are even some Australians. Commerce has scaled up to meet demand the once abundant cheap hotel rooms are a thing of the past.
And the noise. I am sensitive to noise especially when trying to work and think. The deep thought and introspection I had expected here has been shattered by large crowds, paper thin insulation and a near perfect proliferation of karaoke machines and tinny bluetooth speakers. At this very moment at 6am a man one floor below is clearing his nose with such sinal brutality I fear he may look into his tissue and discover the underside of his face peering back.
How cruel to discover the end my father’s dream has meet. Keep your dreams as perfect potentialities, children. Never ever chase them.
So what right did I ever have to expect exclusivity? Well, absolutely none. Past performance is not indicative of future results. But what I have discovered is that digital nomads and holiday makers make poor bedfellows - in this case sometimes literally. For we are elbowing for the same hotel rooms, jostling for the same plane seats, reaching for the same forks. The holiday maker’s will always have the edge - they can sleep late, they are not measured on productivity and they can drink.
Truth is this is not just a working holiday. Digital nomadry is infiltrated by the most absurd cliche. Top of that list is that all you need is a local sim and a laptop. This is backed up by a legion of instagram posts and images elsewhere. Google image search “digital nomad” right now. Man reclines on loungechair sitting on a white sand beach (always deserted but with high speed internet) while a roughly cut green coconut at arms reach on low table. The dappled light of a shading palm is filigreed over man and laptop as he concentrates on the screen. Is he working hard or hardly working?
Yet like most cliche’s its defined by what it omits - the laptop’s not on and just out of shot dad bellows at son for the fourth time that he should have eaten at breakfast and there absolutely will be no snacks until lunch.
In most cases, if you’re allowed to work from anywhere you have signed up to an implicit contract that states: judge me not on the time I spend at work but on my productivity. If you’re freelancing then you are running your own business and output is even more important. The integrity of a professional space is a brittle thing. Its demands of quiet and running internet are unceasing. This explains the advent of coworking spaces. It’s important to know this before escaping the rat race.