1. European Nomad Visas and My Reality
Recently, ‘Digital Nomad Visas’ from countries like Portugal, Hungary, and Mauritius—which grant residency if you can prove your online income—have become a massive trend. If my automated systems generate enough revenue, I’d love to live in one of those places for a year or so. However, as a native Korean who has been living here in Davao, Philippines, for 16 years, my vision of a true nomad’s life takes a slightly different form from the sophisticated European cities.
2. Why I Can’t Leave Davao: The Mountains, The Sea, and The Essence
The biggest reason I settled in Davao is the ‘nature.’ Rather than flashy activities, I find heaven in quietly hiking up a mountain or going fishing. Therefore, my first digital nomad master plan is to buy a 500-square-meter plot of land in Buda, a cool mountainous area near Davao, to build a simple cabin. If my budget allows later, I also want to own a small 200-square-meter beach house nearby. A life oscillating between two basecamps: the mountains and the sea.
3. The Ultimate Mobile Studio: An Old Truck and Starlink
But my ultimate, heart-pounding goal is something else. It’s about remodeling a sturdy old van or truck into my own ‘mobile studio.’ By mounting a mobile Starlink on the roof, any deep mountain or remote beach in the Philippines becomes a perfect office. Just loading my laptop and a secondary monitor into the car, feeling the breeze in the great outdoors while monitoring my automated systems. It is the moment when geographical constraints completely disappear.
4. The Tools to Make the Dream a Reality: AI and Automation
Right now, this is all just an imagination in my head. But to turn this imagination into reality, I am wrestling with Gemini, n8n, and lines of code every single day to build an unmanned automated blog and a massive pipeline of YouTube Shorts channels. In this [Nomad] space, I will record that fierce process, all the way to the moment I finally start the engine of my Starlink van.
