
My GF and I just opened the Digital Nomad House in Malta on a tiny rocky island - dagoebel
https://digitalnomads-malta.com/
======
amgin3
lol, what a ripoff. They claim they are "just covering costs" and the fee is
more like a donation.. I just did 5 minutes of research and you can rent a
nice 45 sq. m. 1-bedroom apartment on a daily basis, in a more central
location of Malta, for 1/2 the price they are charging for a "single private
bedroom". What a joke. Should call it what it is, a "hipster trust-fund kid
house".

~~~
fnl
At 50% occupation, alleged 8 beds, and 28/bed=224/day (underestimating, as the
single private beds are more expensive). 15days/month is €3360 per month,
double that at full occupation. Those numbers might sound reasonable in the
US, but in southern Spain that's about 3x the average income.

------
dagoebel
===> TL;DR: My Girlfriend and I opened the first "Digital Nomad House" in
Malta, a tiny exotic island belonging to the EU, 150km north of Africa.

We can host up to 8 digital nomads, who can work, live, sleep and enjoy their
"workation" in our Coworking-Coliving-Community-House in Malta. We are the
perfect place for bloggers, coders, hippies or all other remote workers who
just fast internet and a comfy desk to get into their zone. Plus the sun. Plus
the beaches. Plus the peace of one of the smallest countries in the world.

Merħba? What's that? Maltese! It is the officially language, next to English,
of Malta - one of the most exotic islands in Europe. Just 2 hours away from
all major European airports via RyanAir, most people never ever heard of this
country before, where everyone speaks English, living costs are low, internet
is ultra-fast (fiber everywhere!). 8 month of Summer a year, average yearly
temperature of 18°C. But what makes the Digital Nomad House unique is clearly
the sense of family and friendship - this should be not another fancy soulless
coworking space. #NoLatte #NoBikesOnTheWalls

So what's the idea: Coworking + Coliving + Community!

You will live in a charming Maltese house with spacious rooftops overlooking
the whole island, where we are having BBQ's in the evening and enjoy the sun
during the day! Whether you want to have your own private room (+ desk) or
prefer to sleep in our dorm, we’ll have you covered. If your brain shuts down
after 8 hours of hacking / writing, just dive into the clear blue water and
you feel refreshed for the next day.

Nevertheless, while spending more than one year on the island we couldn't find
a place of retreat for digital workers. That’s why we created the "Digital
Nomad House" in Malta in order to establish it as a long term hotspot for
digital nomads in Europe. Prices are fairly low, as we just try to cover our
costs as a non-profit.

Insellimlek (this is Maltese, too!)! Paula and Daniel

~~~
bbcbasic
Merħba? What's that?

Arabic loanword

~~~
ryanmaynard
I thought there was a gnat on my monitor. What is that thing on the "h"?

~~~
azernik
It's how Maltese represents the Arabic ح in the Latin alphabet.

------
randallsquared
[http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2017/03/08/519273713/...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2017/03/08/519273713/maltas-landmark-azure-window-rock-formation-
collapses)

------
SomeCallMeTim
IF I weren't already married and firmly attached to my current location, I
would _love_ to be a Digital Nomad.

I think the idea is wonderful, and I'm sad that it came along too late for me
to enjoy. Maybe after the kids are grown I'll try extended world tour
vacations that include work and play...

------
theparanoid
I moved to San Diego the day working from home could pay the rent. Haven't
regretted it at all.

~~~
Baeocystin
I've lived all over the world, including San Diego.

San Diego is what I miss the most. Yes, it is crazy-expensive to live there.
Dollars well spent as far as I'm concerned. Some day I will return.

~~~
irq
The traffic is at least twice as bad as you remember it. In other words, the
San Diego you remember living in no longer exists. I'm talking hour long
commutes to traverse 6 miles.

~~~
martalist
Is San Diego cyclist friendly? A ride would be about 1/2 that commute time!

~~~
Baeocystin
The problem with bicycling in San Diego is geographic more than
infrastructure. If you live and work in the same area, usually bicycling is
fine. But the entire city and surrounding areas are segmented off by large
mesas, hills, and mountains, with the connections between the areas mostly
done by freeway or 50+ mph access roads. So if you live and work in Mira Mesa,
fine. If you live and work in Clairemont, fine. But if you live in Clairemont
and work in Mira Mesa, forget it.

------
redbluff
When I was doing my 10 year work through Europe thing with my young family I
think our favourite time was the 2 lots of 3 months I worked at Bank of
Valletta. We lived in an apartment opposite the beach in Sliema.

The island was quiet, the people fantastic and the lifestyle amazing. Even the
massive storms smashing the water over the road and ground floor apartments
were incredible. We were also there when Etna went up, and had mounds of ash
banked against our balcony door.

Although looking at that photo, it looks like there has been more than a
little bit of development since were were there in the early 2000s. We left
just as they agreed to join the Euro zone, so I suspect the lovely old buses
and quaint roads may be gone.

Still, A+++, would live there again.

~~~
lobster_johnson
2/3 of Malta's east coast is pretty much a continuous sprawl of villages that
have evolved into your typical tourist traps, exactly like what you find
everywhere else in the world, with main strips lined with junk stores that
sell the exact same mass-produced souvenirs, and sports bars and McDonald's
and clubs and big, loud hotel complexes. (Meanwhile, a lot of shady stuff
going on in the background. Crackdowns on Italian mafia have seen a lot of
organized crime set up their base of operations on Malta.)

If you venture outside of these areas, Malta is beautiful. For me, Gozo (the
northern island) is where it's at. Quiet, authentic-feeling, adult, not a lot
of tourism. All the best diving spots are there, too. I hope it stays that way
and the big developments are constrained to the main island.

------
andrepd
I don't get this. Is this a hostel/guest-house? What's with the "Digital
Nomad" thing, what's special about it?

~~~
rdtsc
> I don't get this. Is this a hostel/guest-house? What's with the "Digital
> Nomad" thing, what's special about it?

Hostels are for the poor students who want to see Europe. Digital Nomads are
the traveling full stack developers building microservices out of the latest
cool frameworks you read about on HN :P

It's the same as saying "here is a restaurant, lunch will be $7" or "here is a
bistro, lunch will be $40".

~~~
bbcbasic
But aren't digital nomads on the whole cheapskates, trying to arbitrage their
big paychecks against low cost of living?

------
latenightcoding
I wish I could start something like this in Nicaragua, Panama or El Salvador
(countries I know very well) but people are too concerned about safety.

~~~
kilroy123
Only in El Salvador! That's the one country, I will not go to. (I've been
living in Mexico and Guatemala the last 2 years)

Panama City, is basically the US. Very modern, safe, and hell they even use
the US dollar.

Nicaragua is ok and similar to Guatamala.

~~~
jacquesm
> Panama City, is basically the US. Very modern, safe, and hell they even use
> the US dollar.

I've spent time in the US, Colombia and Panama City. 'safe' would not be the
first word that springs to mind, neither would be very modern. Definitely
doable but 'basically the US' is sugarcoating it to a degree that does not
match my experience there.

------
andy_ppp
My friends launched a similar thing in Sagres Portugal a while back with an
emphasis on surfing if that's your thing!

[http://www.coworksurf.com](http://www.coworksurf.com) [shameless plug :-|]

~~~
virtualwhys
Spent 3 winters in the Algarve, near Sagres, waves vary between epic and
chop/slop depending on where you go.

Great thing about living on the tip of southern Portugal is that when it's
onshore on the west coast, hop in the car and you get cross/offshore on the
south coast and vice versa ;-)

Weather's of course great in the winter, tons of sun, dry and 16-20 degree
daytime temps. Internet's decent enough, and housing can be quite cheap if you
manage to avoid Airbnb (may it go down in flames). Rented a beautiful, modern
apartment with 15 foot high ceilings for 500 euros per month.

~~~
andy_ppp
Gah, makes me wonder why on Earth I'm escaping to rainy super expensive
Japan...

~~~
virtualwhys
Looking to do a far east trip starting later this spring. Have heard Japan is
indeed expensive, but don't want to skip it -- life is short.

As for cheap, have been in Mexico this winter staying at a boat-only
accessible village near Puerto Vallarta, $275 per month. Of course, since I've
been here the power has gone out (for hours at a time), and the 4G connection
is more like 3G+, which is better than the village internet that can't stay
connected for more than a couple of minutes at a time.

Price of paradise I guess (dry, has rained once, no mosquitos here in a
mountain river fed jungle on the Pacific).

------
romland
Looks fantastic, I read it all so you'd have me sold if my current situation
allowed me to nip down there!

But the reason I chime in is because I could not find an email address to just
say that there's a typo here: "Finding a save haven with a fast and<snip>",
save should probably be safe.

~~~
dagoebel
Sorry, just fixed the type and added the email address.

------
jlgaddis
The most important question is, of course, what's your Internet connection
like? :-)

I think this is awesome. If this were one year ago (when I was newly single),
I would've been on the first flight out to come visit for a month or so!

~~~
jessriedel
> 100 / 10 Mbit/s fiber internet

~~~
walrus01
That doesn't answer jitter, reliability, packet loss... There's lots of less
than stellar ISPs doing 100Mbps fiber with 1+0 everything and no UPS on any of
their nodes.

I did a brief search for the top ten Maltese ASNs, and there are not a lot of
routes in and out of there, and not much submarine fiber. This is to be
expected with any small island nation, however.

~~~
paulddraper
> That doesn't answer jitter, reliability, packet loss...

But what answer does?

My question is sincere.

When I ask someone -- friend, coworker, ISP -- about internet quality, what's
the answer I should be looking for? Always seems like a crapshoot to me.

~~~
walrus01
It is indeed a crapshoot. I'm lucky enough to work in network engineering in
an area where I can contact the tier-3 support for most of the local last mile
ISPs if something has gone seriously wrong. But there is immense variation in
residential internet quality even within the same company and AS. Some parts
of the Comcast network are rock solid, others are shit. Same for many adsl2+,
vdsl2 and docsis3 operators.

The other problem is that one person's perception of shit internet is very
different from another's. Less than 0.1% of ordinary internet customers know
how to use tools like smokeping and test to their own wholly controlled iperf
server on a 10GbE connection.

~~~
mirimir
> test to their own wholly controlled iperf server on a 10GbE connection.

Well, bouygues.testdebit.info, ping.online.net and speedtest.serverius.net are
on 10 Gbps, and only test one peer at a time.

[https://iperf.fr/iperf-servers.php](https://iperf.fr/iperf-servers.php)

------
Gys
Talked to some Spanish girls two weeks ago that moved their office from Malta
to Lisbon, because Malta was not exciting enough. Maybe it was because they
were single ;-)

So on the positive side, Malta is a good place to get some real work done :-)

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danielvf
Malta is beautiful. Best of luck!

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rdl
I'm seriously considering doing something like this in Kharkiv, Ukraine.

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supernumerary
typo here: "Daniel, kind of a coder for more than a decadem but dreams to be
the next Elon Musk, wannabe"

~~~
StavrosK
Why is this downvoted? There is, indeed, a typo there.

EDIT: Alrighty then.

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_RPM
Seriously using the term GF? What are you 5 years old? Hey guys, I can't spell
out the word girlfriend, and like to use GF instead.

~~~
minimaxir
HN titles have a limit of 80 characters.

