Popup Cities in Chiang Mai, Local Community Insights with John Ho

In today’s episode, we’re excited to welcome John Ho, a community leader and coliving pioneer, currently making waves in Chiang Mai. From managing flooding crises to leading the charge on global coliving projects, John shares his insights on the future of popup cities, web3 communities, and upcoming events like Edge City Lanna and the Cross Border Summit. Don’t miss this deep dive into the ever-evolving landscape of Chiang Mai’s local and global initiatives!

John, thank you so much for coming on the show. Wishing you the best as Edge City Lanna takes off. Thanks for all the work you’re doing for the community

• Alt Chiang Mai Coliving + Coworking – https://www.altcoliving.com/
• Edge City Lanna – https://www.edgecity.live/lanna
• Schedule of Popup City Events – https://app.sola.day/event/edgecitylanna?tab=coming
• Living in Chiang Mai and want a day pass? – https://edgecitylanna.substack.com/p/lanna-tickets-for-thai-locals
• Coupon Code for 50% off: JOHN50
  

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√ Grab your tickets for Cross Border Summit 2024

Thank you John for being on the show, and thank you everybody for listening in.

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[00:00:00] Episode four hundred and forty four four four four global from Asia. We’re talking about pop-up cities and co-living Chiang Mai, and a little bit of floods. Let’s tune in today. Welcome to the Global from Asia Podcast, where the daunting process of running an international business is broken down into straight up actionable advice.

And now your host, Michael Micheli. Thank you so much for listening to or watching this [00:00:30] podcast. I’m here in Hong Kong airport, got a little pineapple infused orange juice or something like that. Just recorded a really cool podcast with John Ho, founder of Alt ch ma alt co-living. He’s also got a, a really interesting pop-up city happening here.

In Chang. Well, Chang Ma, where I’m going back to, it’s been a very interesting road show for the last three weeks. It’s finishing and we’re gonna go right into this show [00:01:00] talking about co-Living Co-working Chang Mai Digital Nomads, popups, cities, and more. So let’s tune in. Are you looking for USA banking solutions for your e-commerce business?

I am proud to say mercury.com is supporting the podcast here, third year in a row at Global from Asia. And we’re proud to say ’cause. We use ’em ourselves for many of our own Amazon brands and e-commerce brands and joint ventures with our US structures. And they’re super easy to do online application, no fees, [00:01:30] and they have great customer support.

Have helped us with trouble with Amazon Seller Central over the years about some receipts and statements and everything like that. So we’re so happy to say thank you, mercury for supporting our show, being a great service and supporting other e-commerce sellers. We’re really proud to say they’re a sponsor here and we also have a video tutorial as.

Well as an overview and a special link with a little bonus for you as well for us under certain conditions, check it out at global formia.com/mercury for that [00:02:00] information. Thank you for listening and thank you Mercury. Alright, thanks for tuning into a Global Formia podcast. This, this one, it’s been on my list for a while, and now it’s, it is even more relevant for a few reasons.

John Ho, founder at Alt Chiang Mai, friend and super connector in, in the Chiang Mai and Asia communities, really helping digital nomad and online entrepreneurs do, do business and, and make better lives for themselves. I mean, pe I [00:02:30] mean, how many, how many years now? I mean, how many people, you should almost say that, right?

Like we’ve helped X amount of people. Relocate or start, start their relocation life or, or something like that. I mean, it’s been quite a while. Yeah. I feel like there should be a dashboard of just different numbers to Yeah. To put on a portfolio or something. Right. The hours or, yeah. That would be really cool.

The, thanks for joining us to show. Thank you for inviting Mike. It’s been [00:03:00] four years. I, I’m not counting the days. I’m not good at counting the days. It felt like yesterday. We now have Alt Chang Mai and Alt Ping River. We have two locations since initial inception. Cool. The last time we counted, we have about 900 names on the database.

Wow. Of people who have either lived or worked at the first and second location combined. Wow. These are digital nomads, remote workers from all over the world, like literally all [00:03:30] over the world, and they’re young. They’re energetic, they’re talented, and they’re very keen and curious to learn, develop relationships, understand more about Thailand and, and just the whole space.

In Asia, we are essentially a space provider. For living and working, but obviously community is the focus. So we also spend a lot of resources and effort to [00:04:00] facilitate those relationships when people are in our spaces and after they leave even so they have the sense of belonging and they really like Chiang Mai.

That’s my mission, that’s my personal mission. So they’ll come back again. That’s great. That’s great. And I’m recording here on the Hong Kong Sheen border. You’re originally, I hope I’m correct, but Hong Kong originally, right? Correct. Born and raised. Close of my wife, yeah. In Hong Kong. Moved to Chang my [00:04:30] seven years ago.

My wife is from here. I have two kids, so this is my new home. Loving it. Great. Yeah. Similar, similar for me. I, I mostly in Xen in China, 12 years total and yeah, four years now. And. So it’s great. I’m always deciding the order of my question list, but I think because it’s recent now this flooding, so we haven’t talked about it on our show.

It’s been because I’m getting messages like have they stopped this week? But like the last [00:05:00] couple weeks are like, are you underwater? Like my friends around the world think I’m like swimming in my house. I guess some were, luckily my house was okay. The road’s right in front. My, my daughter was playing in the.

The road, like up to her ankles and the water on the road, but yeah. Yeah. I know hit hit some of your stuff pretty hard. It seems. I mean, I’m, I’m laughing because I believe humor is the biggest ended up to, [00:05:30] to disasters and you always have to, or at least I try to look at the bright side of things. But this has been the, the biggest.

Natural disaster I’ve ever experienced in my personal life. Whoa. Really? Yeah. I mean, we’re not talking apocalypse scale and people dying left and right, but for Chang Mai, the city and for my immediate circle of friends and family and, and, and, and, and network, it has been detrimental in many [00:06:00] ways. I have to personally do multiple evac.

Operations throughout the last two weeks, because we have two hits. Yeah, it came close, right? Yeah. And the second one is actually the, the, the e even worse and, and the most serious one in recorded history or something like that. I, I don’t know the numbers. Fortunately, casualties are, are, are low. Maybe half of the city is affected, which is weird, right?

’cause if you’re living in the old [00:06:30] city, if you’re living in Niman, and if you’re not watching the news and you’re not going out, you actually don’t feel anything different. But I. If you’re on the wrong side, then everything is in water. A lot of places are still in water. Now we are focusing more on cleaning up.

I think one unique aspect that I’ve experienced and in Chiang Mai is the community effort of helping each other through this moment of time [00:07:00] because. Even before the flood hit for the second time, I’ve seen neighbors and just random people helping each other, providing resources, manpower, and all that, and I think that’s something very, very special.

I’ve had nomads checking in. From Europe and they were super impressed how coordinated we are, how organized we are, kind of managing the situation. One person was saying that if this were to be in France, not to [00:07:30] call them out, it would be a lot, it would take a lot more time and it would be way more chaotic.

Whereas I think all things considered were. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m feeling quite okay now, at least. Yeah. I mean, we’re chatting a little bit while this happened. I’ve been, I’ve been away. I feel a little bit guilty of my, by my wife and kids there, and they’ve been, but luckily it didn’t affect the house. But I, I, I’ve, I’ve been, I.

I mean, it’s just been nonstop rain all [00:08:00] summer, and I thought, I don’t remember it going into October. There’s always the rainy season. Usually it’s the summer. If I, I mean, you, you’ve been there longer than I have, but it seems like it’s just, but the whole world has been raining. Right. My parents in Florida, I, I hope they’re okay.

Even there’s a massive hurricane there again, like last night, or it’s just raining everywhere. I think even Italy, I heard somebody, they’re, they’re flooding. I mean, it’s, yeah, it’s kind of. Kind of scary. I don’t know what’s going on, but [00:08:30] it’s good. You’re okay and things, but yeah, Thai people in general like are very calm.

I think it’s the, maybe the Buddhist culture or they, they, they deal with whatever life throws at ’em, I think, and stay generally positive and, and moving forward. There, there’s, that’s, there’s definitely that cultural aspect that I really, really appreciate. Like take for example, my, my secretary, right? Her house was in water twice.

Her [00:09:00] car is totaled and maybe there’s two bikes plus the car, and she’s still coming to work. She stays positive. I don’t know what is the financial damages. Right? And, and I don’t, I don’t think she’s. An anomaly. A lot of them are just dealing with this, with just a sense of, well, that’s life. And, and I, since I moved here, this is some, like, this is a big learning for me.

There’s, [00:09:30] there’s things that happen and like you said before, the recording. It’s just our attitude on how to respond to it or how to react to it. And, and there’s a tie way of Oh, really seeing things sometimes. I’m like, wait, really? But yeah. And, and they, they seem to be happier. They seem to be more at peace.

I think there’s something to learn from that. Oh, yeah. I’ve, I’ve learned a lot in, in the, from Thai people too. I mean, [00:10:00] I mean, there’s some, I don’t even wanna get pol, I try to get political, but even their, their leadership, they don’t have much they deal with. They kind of have learned to just deal with what they served maybe and make the best of what, dealing with it, it seems like.

But yeah, I, I’m very. Impressed of Thai cultures and patience and perseverance. So it’s, it’s amazing they made it. ’cause remember it was like a few weeks ago, there was the Chang Rai, [00:10:30] which some people might confuse with Chang Mai, but a little bit north. That was the first one to get hit with the flooding.

It was pretty major, and it didn’t really hit Chang Mai that time, and then it came down the last couple weeks here in October. Early October. Yeah. So I’m glad you’re. You’re cleaning up. If I could help out, I’ll be back to back this weekend. So keep me posted. Yeah. Thank you. We’re good. Uh, I think there’s more people that need more immediate help, so let’s, let’s [00:11:00] see what we can do.

Okay. As a, as a. A community. Right, true. That’s what exactly what you’re saying. I mean, go into the next, next let’s, yeah, move on to the trends. I mean, I think you’re hitting a, hitting a, a trend, right? With the co-living and the community of this. You, over the time you’ve been doing this, it seems like it’s still an uptrend, right?

I mean, digital nomads and people leaving their, is there some kind of insights you’ve seen already over the time you’ve been doing it? [00:11:30] Yeah. So there’s a big, there’s a very interesting phenomenon pre and post Covid in Chiang Mai pre covid. It has already been identified as a very well known destination for a lot of digital nomads.

And I wanna say they started the whole movement. They’re usually freelancers. Younger people want to figure out life. They come here because it’s cheaper. People are nice and there’s good infrastructure [00:12:00] for them to do the things they want to do. But post covid, it’s what is what got really interesting, because obviously the notion of remote work, uh, work independently, and then you have the gig economy.

All these things aggregated that kind of transformed the, the whole population of what are the type of people who would [00:12:30] like to and are able to work remotely. Because I think that number just kind of. Multiplied because it’s company policies, because of people’s mindset. Just there’s a drastic change in that very short period of time.

So then we witnessed a big uptick and a change in terms of the type of people and the volume of people coming into Chiang Mai and doing all sorts of different types of work in, in [00:13:00] alt, in other coworking spaces and the, the activities they’ve been doing right. And the biggest difference that I notice is the remote workers, because now even if you’re working in a corporate job, some of the employers or the company policies allow people to work either fully remote or partially remote, and then the employees themselves are exercising this, right?

So that they’re [00:13:30] looking for places that they can. Kind of move around, travel and work at the same time, but they demand a higher quality of workspace or living spaces, right, so that they don’t have to spend too much time looking for these spaces. And obviously when they travel, they have the same issue with the, I want to say gen one of Digital Nomad, which is loneliness.

Because this is often a [00:14:00] solo act. And when you’re doing this over a longer period of time, it’s, it, it becomes real, that it’s actually harder to make friends or to stay in touch with friends because you’re constantly moving. Mm. And, and so by providing them a space where people with a similar mindset, with a similar background.

Can be together and, and form different types of [00:14:30] relationship, becomes a value proposition that places like us is offering to to, to the digital nomads and remote workers because they really appreciate it and, and that’s their experience. And you can tell from their reviews, I talked to them personally.

I’ve witnessed different types of. Relationships being formed, whether it is just work, romantic relationship, friendships, all kinds, right? And it’s [00:15:00] beautiful. People ultimately are like humans are sociable animals, right? And so if they are lonely and there’s a solution for it. In a capitalistic way, then there’s a marketplace to offer these services.

Yeah, right, and, and I guess, yes, there’s a bigger demand. And I think there will be a bigger demand. Obviously people say, oh, the copper jobs are gonna be like taking back the employees and all [00:15:30] that. Yeah. That was my next question actually. I’ve been hearing this. I don’t know. You’re the one I would like to ask, but Yeah, you’re asking Yeah, that’s my next follow up.

But you’re saying it already, that’s what I’ve heard a little bit. I, I, is that, is that the case? It seems like you’re saying it’s not. I think the genie is out of the bottle. Yes, maybe bigger corporates are trying to dial it back, but there’s [00:16:00] also new companies that have full remote policies, especially start tech startups, right?

So I see founders with a small team of 10 to 15 people, and they’re just all over the world, and they don’t have the fix office space. And these are sprouting out left and right. Yeah. So if you look the, the, the entirety of the workforce, the global workforce. Nobody has data on it yet, or at least I don’t think anyone has accurate data.

But I want to make the case and say, sure, you can. You can dial back on those [00:16:30] policies that you enabled during Covid, but there’s also a demand from the workforce and the employees that they want more flexibility. Right. And if the employers are not able to meet those requests, then you can’t capture those talent pool of people who.

Want flexibility, so there’s always going to be a push and pull. Right, and I personally believe it’s just going to be an uptrend for employees [00:17:00] and also people who don’t want to be tied to a full-time job. Right? We talked about the gig economy for many years by now, people just want to have their own business.

It’s easier with AI technology. Freelancers have more tools than they’ve ever had at a cheaper cost to just enable themselves to be solopreneurs, right? So that’s my, that’s my opinion. I’d agree. Yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, just. To take some of [00:17:30] my, my, yeah, my thoughts like maybe the big corporates might push, but then those people might leave those companies.

Right. So it’s a, it is a push pull. We’ll see how it, how it plays out. But I, I heard like Zuckerberg or Facebook’s trying to pull people back in. If I, I don’t have data, but I’ve been hearing this. I think some of ’em are trying to bring them back in, but. Like you said, Jeanie’s added a bottle and I think most people I’ve been doing it for for like a long time, and I think most of the people I work with, it’s one of their top reasons they [00:18:00] work with us is because they’re remote and they can travel and have flexibility, and we use that in our, our offers.

We don’t even really have fixed hours. Of course, we kind of hope people are in. Within certain times for like chats or, or calls, but people can work times they like and, and it’s become like an advantage for us over other employers options is they, they do that and not to say that all the jobs are like, are can be, I.

Operated remotely, but there’s a big [00:18:30] portion of it. I don’t know about you, but I enjoy working remotely. I would love to enable my staff to work remotely, if possible, at a, to a certain extent. Right, and, and there’s a learning curve, right? People need to be disciplined if they’re being allowed to work remotely.

Some people are able to do it, some people can’t, right? And, and, and, and people need to adapt, but that’s like any kind of change. Yeah. So I think we’re [00:19:00] still in this transitional phase where there’s a lot happening. I’m on the receiving end because I Yeah, agree I’m operating this type of business, but I’m, I’m getting information and data points on a daily basis, the types of people.

Who are interested in, in this modality of, of ecosystem. Right. And it’s, it’s very interesting conversations I have with people. It’s great. [00:19:30] This is, this is fun and I agree and I think it’s only gonna continue. I. To go up. I mean, I think if the big companies really forced, they’ll just lose talent, I think, in my opinion.

They might just get, which they do normally anyway. Bigger companies usually don’t have the more hungry, creative kind of people anyway, in my opinion. So those give more of a disadvantage. And the The smaller, nimble, yeah. Ones will be the ones that. Probably grow and succeed more. Great. So let’s move on [00:20:00] to this, this newer concept, these pop-up cities in Chiang Mai and, and Edge City Laa specifically.

I know it just kicked off and you’re super busy and it was also horrible timing with this flood to, to start it off. But I was listening. We understand a little bit about, I think there’s a few parts, like what is a popup city in an edge city itself? Yeah, this is also very new to me, so if I said something incorrect, please forgive me.

I’m from hospitality [00:20:30] background. I spent nine years in my previous life doing events, catering, management in, in hotels, and the the conventional format of. Let’s call them remote gatherings is usually set in a hotel or a fixed venue space for a rather short period of time, from a day to two to maybe the longer ones to be one week, right?

If you are involving a big [00:21:00] group of people, we’re talking hundreds right now. We fast forward to. Maybe two years ago with the first inception of, in Montenegro, uh, initiated by Vitalic, the, the founder, one of the creators of Ethereum himself. And, and I think there’s an, there’s like a realization or this, this interest in creating pop-up villages.

And, and essentially what they are [00:21:30] is you have the organizers realizing that, hey. Having a longer period of time with a group of people that they identify as their own tribe to work, live, interact together. Co live is a good idea because they see the magic happening within that space and that period, and they want to experiment on it.

Like what [00:22:00] are the social effects, the benefits? The outcome of these social experiments because now we have technology, now we have remote workers who can be away or be anywhere, right? So the notion of building these pop-up villages, at least for my knowledge, is number one, very new, number two, still experimental because we don’t know whether.

It is net positive or [00:22:30] net negative to multiple parties, and there’s a lot of people trying it out. Case in point in Chiang Mai right now, other than Edge City, Lana, I think they’re the biggest organization with the big, with the most participants. Last time I saw the number, we have almost 300 tickets sold of different types that is coming in for the whole month.

There’s simultaneously. Maybe six to 10 more [00:23:00] of these popup village types. Shanghai W, invisible Garden, pagoda for Sea, all these names, right? I can’t even keep track of it, but everyone is trying to do their own format of a popup village slash city. And it’s interesting because all of a sudden in this, in this month long period, and this precedes.

Defcon, which is happening in, in November [00:23:30] 15th in Bangkok. Right. Which is one of the biggest crypto conferences in Asia. I don’t know if, how many people are attending that one? I heard 10,000. I, yeah, it was thousands. Yeah. I went to one in Europe this summer. A C, and it was th it felt like thousands. Yeah.

It’s correct. Yeah. But we have, and don’t quote me on this, at least 500 to a thousand people coming in and, and, and being part of these pop-up cities in Chiang Mai. And if I remember correctly, this is also the first time [00:24:00] all the different organizers of pop-up cities are in Chiang Mai at the same time because of Defcon.

And it’s fascinating. It is great. Yeah. So, so they. There’s the living part and there’s the activity part. So it’s like, are they in, is it connected to Oling ma or is there people living? Is a separate place like a hotel or is it like apartments or is it, are they living together? And then they’re also like [00:24:30] working and events.

I’m even, I’m gonna try to. We trust out by next week and others getting the word out. But I’ve seen others in the local communities or not, maybe in sort of crypto space. I mean, I’m, I’m on, I’m also in crypto and eCommerce, but I’m trying to also grasp what it, what it is, but I think it’s a series of activities, right?

That you participate in. So it goes [00:25:00] beyond alt. The activation is actually in our second location, Alting River, not in Altai. So what App City Lana has created is using Alting River, our second location as an anchor, and they build a framework around it, a physical. Framework with speaking venues with a venue that’s providing breakfast and lunch with hotels that [00:25:30] they’ve booked out surrounding and different venues for people to socialize.

And so they’ve literally created a pop-up village by activating multiple venue spaces and within that framework, and this is all walkable. There’s a program that constantly evolves throughout the whole month. So they’re using an app called Social Layer to enable participants to create their [00:26:00] own events of different types.

You have yoga, you have hackathons, you have health clinics, you have just like social gatherings, Sunday dinners. We have an opening ceremony tonight. There’s gonna be some product, there’s gonna be high level speakers discussing a topic like cities of the future. There’s a main track on longevity that they very fo very much wanna focus on health [00:26:30] and, and everything is kind of co-creating during this period.

And you see a constant change of activities. People’s involvement. ’cause it goes beyond the main organizers themselves. So they’re really enabling the participants to be part of the organizing group. And a lot of interaction is happening among these people. And then there’s cross pollination of these different pop-up cities.

So then [00:27:00] during the closing. Week. There’s also collaboration of these organizers and coming in together and saying, can we do something together? And so from a, from a traditional events management perspective, a, a guy like me, this is like, what is happening? It is pretty wild. Even I think I, I think we both are trying to.

I think we’re both pretty innovative maybe, but yeah, it does seem even new for me too, so I’m also grasping it. I’m on the site too. Edge City [00:27:30] Live slash Lana. We’ll link it also in the show notes, but yeah, there’s a lot of people, there’s all these different places. I mean, it’s, it’s the, the tickets like.

Like a whole package seems like food and of course co-working co-living like activities. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a, a very comprehensive package here and yeah, and, and I’ve only started talking to some of the participants here. I, I was at Edge Alda in, in California and in June just trying to [00:28:00] observe. What they’ve been doing.

But the individuals coming to this pop-up village, uh, are, are very interesting people. A lot of them are coming into Chiai for the first time. They, they specialize in different fields, not solely on crypto or Web3, and everyone just has a lot of curiosity to be part of this one way or another. Mm-hmm.

We’re welcoming locals to participate. And yesterday I [00:28:30] already have a couple local people who bought the tickets. Great. You can buy day passes, you can apply and, and get a a month pass so that you can just be part of everything. And if you have. Special skills and, and you’re talented and someone can endorse you, you can even get a scholarship to, to attendees at a big discount or for free.

So I think, I think what the organizers are trying to do is they want to include as many people as possible, as long as they have the same vision and they understand what Edge State 11 is trying to do here. Okay. [00:29:00] Yeah, it’s, it’s really cool. It’s really cool. So. The next question is, yeah, the future, I guess the popup cities, maybe the future of these, maybe we’re all, you’re, maybe you’re even learning on learning.

I mean, I, I guess like you’re saying in some of your answers already, we’re still experimenting and, and I think everybody, all the different stakeholders, participants, local organizations are still finding the right model or we’re still, we’re still very early to know like the future, [00:29:30] but do you have any kind of ideas of the trends maybe pop up cities and co-living and this whole.

Nomad world, it’s, I am personally very happy that the local government is actually involved in having conversations with Alana organizers and seeing how they can collaborate and, and work together to really. Have Chiang Mai on the map for a broader audience of digital nomads and, and remote worker. You and I already [00:30:00] know this, the, the Thai government actually launched a new visa called the DTV destination, Thailand visa dial.

Yeah. Destination talent visa and, and that sole purpose is to attract more foreign talents coming in and staying for a longer period without going through the hoops of staying. Yeah. The hoops staying here long. Many of us know the hoops. Right. And, and many of my known that friends are applied for it.

They got approved for it. Everyone’s super psyched to, to, [00:30:30] to, to, able to stay here longer and just in, to integrate with, with, with locals, right. I, I see this as a very positive signal for the city itself. There’s a lot of curiosity, but like you said, everything is still envir. Like it’s, it’s experimental and so, and this kind of.

Organized chaos in their environment. Like people are asking me so many questions, I don’t have the answers to everyone, but we’re, [00:31:00] everyone is trying to figure out what this means for Chii and for my own business. And again, just being an optimist myself, I think this is great for the city because if people.

Have a net positive experience. After all these popup cities being in Haii, then people are just going to tell other folks who are also digital nomads and remote worker and be like, Hey, I had a great experience [00:31:30] in HAII with this event. We all should do more. Right? And, and so the city itself will be the beneficiary of this, and I don’t know what will happen afterwards.

But again, I’m an optimist, so I, I believe there will be, that’s, I mean, that’s, that’s entrepreneurship. Yeah. Innovation. Innovation. This is what it is. Like experimenting. Innovating. Uh. [00:32:00] Usually when you put really cool, creative, talented people together over a certain amount of time, especially this long of a time of powerful things happen, and even in small, even in small meetups, I’ve seen it happen, and especially in larger, longer term ones, I could only imagine the relationships and the networking and the powerful effect that’s gonna have on the community.

Yeah. A lot of the intentions these popup cities have resembles [00:32:30] what ALT is trying to create. I think ALT is more anchored into Chiang Mai because we have spent a lot of resources in building the spaces, right. But we’re also only, we have a certain capacity to. Facilitate a smaller group of people.

Whereas I think when you really zoom out and enlarge the effect of building communities, then how big can it go and how do you organize that? [00:33:00] Right. That’s fascinating for me. I want to know what are the potentials of, of these community efforts and how can it benefit the city and, and two missions that I want to mention here, talent.

Financial resources. I think these are the two very important factors that Chiang Mai really want to, I’m not speaking on behalf of Chiang Mai, but that this is my personal mission. I wanna get more talent. I want to get more resources, financial [00:33:30] resources, investments of any type into Q Mai. Awesome. Right?

And I think this is something that we can work together. Yeah. There’s a lot of startup bru chain. Mike can work together. These pop-up villages can, can facilitate that process and bring in more of these people. So I’m, I’m super psyched. I’m so about this. Get me pumped. Yeah. I mean that’s, yeah. Honestly, COVID really put a, like, its its taste.

Even I’ve been on this road show, I think it’s like we’re all still like kind of [00:34:00] getting back to the normal after. Everybody keeps talking about before covid, after covid. I’m just tired of that story. Like before, after. I think we just wanna move on like this. Sounds like a good way of, yeah. Yeah. And you’re doing the, the, the, what is the, what is conference called?

Cross Border Summit. Yeah. And, and you’ve, you’ve kind of moved that whole operation from China to Chi Mai, and I love that, right? Because you mm-Hmm. You’ve had that experience. You have your network. I think that’s also another group of talent and resources [00:34:30] that you can bring into Chi Mai. If more people like me and you can do similar things in their own ecosystem.

Like, imagine, imagine what Shanghai can become. It is exciting. It’s true. And yeah, like you said, the, the visas and the, the, the Thai government seems to be open opening up for this. So that’s, that’s very positive. All right. Uh, I know you’re super busy, but it’s been a pleasure to have you on this, on the show finally, and this story and inspiration for people to take [00:35:00] action.

So. I guess a few links I mentioned earlier, edge city.live or Live slash lana, LA, NNA is for the public city. And then your alt cowork alt co-living dot com. Right. A lt and then co-living dot com for your, your main, the main business that year round. Anytime people wanna rent to work or live, they can do so.

And you have two locations now there. It’s, it’s really amazing. [00:35:30] Yeah. Awesome. Come find me. Fine, dude. Yeah, my nose. John, I really appreciate you, what you do for the community and, and, and always look out for me too. I appreciate that. So thanks, thanks again for your time today. Good chat. Save the date Cross-Border Summit.

2024 is coming back. 2020 threes was epic. Never got such great feedback. And all of our events, summit 2024 we’re planning already a year in advance. It is a full week, uh, of amazing things. There’s pre-event, [00:36:00] post events, workshops, trainings. Elephant sanctuaries. We have a lot of amazing things here in Chiang Mai, Thailand again, so I would love to see you there.

We’ve already pre-sold some tickets to previous people. We will be opening up tickets soon. Subscribe to get updates at 2024 dot cross border summit.com. Also, check out videos and testimonials from last year as well as all of our years we did ’em in China, and this will be our sixth one. It’ll be great to meet you there [00:36:30] and network and make some great relationships.

I can’t wait. November, 2024. Alright, thank you John. I hope everybody enjoyed that show. It’s, it’s very inspiring, changing, it really is changing lives, giving people a platform and I can understand the point, but being lonely, right? Working online. Actually I got, I got past that over time with Covid. I got used to working alone, but it’s a really good time.

To network with other people, connect with other [00:37:00] people. This devcon is like one of the biggest crypto events, these popup cities, of course, cross Border Summit, Canton Fair Road shows, all kinds of stuff happening these days. So you have no excuse, but to be lone, not to be lonely. So. I hope you enjoyed, and I am gonna board my plane in a couple hours.

Thank you so much for watching. Get some work done here. Make things happen. Maybe go to all Co-Living, maybe go to these conferences, join us across [00:37:30] Border Summit. Take action, right? Don’t, don’t blame others. Don’t be a victim. We have to take responsibility for who we are. Yeah, and I hope, I hope maybe this show or something I say or or John says, or others over these years and years of shows helps you.

Thanks again for watching. Have a great day. Bye-Bye. To get more info about running an international business, please visit our website@ww.global from asia.com. That’s ww.global from asia.com. Also, [00:38:00] be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed. Thanks for tuning in.