2019 — Fiverr at 3 AM
Started in a home office in Islamabad, grinding WordPress gigs on Fiverr. 18-hour days. Bad internet. Good pay, by PKR standards.
Nomad Journal
AI automation engineer.
Pakistan born. Bali based.
I run a boutique automation studio from a rotating coworking chair across ASEAN — Bali, Chiang Mai, KL, Saigon. Clients in New York, London, Sydney. Delivery is async. Output is senior-grade. And yes, the Wi-Fi is faster than most Western cities.
Currently in Bali, Indonesia
The arc
How a kid from Islamabad ended up shipping AI systems from a warung in Canggu.
2022 — The agency pivot
Launched SkynetJoe. Moved from "one-off gig" to "retainer + system". First AI chatbot for Cardiva Motors, first n8n pipeline for Nomad CEO.
2024 — First passport stamp
Kuala Lumpur for a week, then Bangkok. Realised my laptop worked equally well from a coconut shack as a serviced office.
2026 — Based in Bali
Currently Canggu + Ubud. Clients across 4 continents. Delivery async. Personal life fuller than it ever was in one city.
Passport stamps
The ASEAN rotation.
These are the cities where I have lived for 30+ days and shipped client work.
🇵🇰
Islamabad, Pakistan
Where it started — PTCL home office, 18-hour dev shifts, first Fiverr gigs.
🇮🇩
Bali, Indonesia
Current base — Canggu & Ubud. Fast 4G, coworking everywhere, sunrise at Uluwatu.
🇲🇾
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Nomad visa + banking run. Best infrastructure in ASEAN.
🇹🇭
Chiang Mai, Thailand
The OG nomad hub. Quiet focus weeks. Nimman coffee shops ship code.
🇻🇳
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
$300 lofts, $2 banh mi, and client calls from rooftops.
🇵🇭
Manila, Philippines
Next. English-speaking devs, underrated fintech scene.
Nomad stack
The kit that makes this life possible.
Every tool earns its weight in my 30-litre bag — or it gets cut.
Core Dev
- Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context)
- Cursor + Claude Code
- n8n self-hosted
- Next.js 16
- FastAPI
Communication
- Calendly timezone-aware
- Loom async videos
- Slack Connect
- WhatsApp Business
- Gmail + labels
Infrastructure
- Hostinger VPS (Singapore)
- Cloudflare DNS + CDN
- Vercel + Railway
- Supabase
- Tailscale mesh VPN
Finance + Legal
- Wise multi-currency
- Payoneer for Fiverr
- Stripe Atlas (Delaware C-Corp)
- Fiverr Agency + Upwork
- Xero + BaseQ accounting
Travel + Gear
- M3 MacBook Pro 14"
- DJI Mavic 3
- Peak Design 30L
- Starlink Mini (backup wifi)
- Noise-cancelling IEMs
Hire a senior AI engineer who happens to surf on Thursdays.
Async-first. Timezone-friendly. Senior-grade delivery. That is the nomad advantage, passed to your stack.
Book a discovery call →Questions
The nomad FAQ.
Where are you based right now?+
I am a digital nomad originally from Pakistan, currently based in Bali, Indonesia. I move across ASEAN — Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines — every 2–3 months, depending on visa and client work.
Can you work with clients in my timezone?+
Yes. ASEAN sits at UTC+7 to UTC+8 — that overlaps with AU mornings, EU evenings, and US west-coast late nights. Most of my delivery is async: Loom videos, shared docs, and Slack threads. Calendly handles the sync calls.
Is the internet reliable enough for serious work?+
Bali has 100–300 Mbps fiber in Canggu and Ubud. I also carry a Starlink Mini for remote trips. Over four years nomading ASEAN, I have had fewer outages than when I lived in a "tier 1" city.
Why Pakistan → Bali, not Pakistan → Dubai or London?+
Cost of living gives me runway to take bigger creative risks. Bali is the cheapest place on earth where you can walk into a coworking space at 8 AM and meet the founder of a Series-A startup. The signal density per dollar is unmatched.
How do payments and taxes work?+
Clients pay via Stripe (Delaware C-Corp), Wise transfer, Payoneer, or Fiverr/Upwork escrow. Pakistan FBR tax residency, with the Delaware entity handling global invoices. No client has ever had a transfer issue.
What is the nomad stack you actually use?+
M3 MacBook Pro, Claude Opus 4.7 + Claude Code, n8n self-hosted on Hostinger Singapore, Supabase for data, Cursor for editing, Loom for async review. The full list is in the "Stack" section above.
Do you take nomads / solopreneurs as clients too?+
Some. Mostly agencies, DTC brands, and B2B SaaS. If you are a nomad founder shipping something interesting, email me — I filter by signal, not budget.