Six Reasons Serious Entrepreneurs Should Consider Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia is one of the most popular places for backpackers, travel bloggers, and digital nomads to travel, play, and even start a location independent business. There’s no doubt that the low cost of living in Southeast Asia has made it an attractive place for those just starting up. Here are six reasons to consider Southeast Asia for your personal or business base of operations:

Quality of Life

Southeast Asia has some of the top amenities expats cite when looking for a new home overseas: good weather, shopping, quality food, and interesting culture. Weather in much of the region is excellent year-round, with high temperatures during the day, pleasant temperatures at night, and plenty of humidity.

For entrepreneurs seeking a fast-paced environment with lots of hustle, Hong Kong, and to a lesser extent Singapore, fit the bill. More laid-back environments can be found in the Philippines, Indonesia, and here in Malaysia. I sometimes call Malaysia “the United States of Asia… in a good way” due to its diversity. You can find anything you want here.

Ease of visas and Taxes

A lot of countries worth doing business in make obtaining a visa relatively easy these days. Europe is full of countries that offer entrepreneur visas for people starting companies there.

Malaysia, Cambodia, and Vietnam, in particular, offer friendly tourist visa regimes for perpetual travelers who want to come and go. While Vietnam requires a visa, it’s easy to get and is good for 90 days. Malaysia offers the same 90 days visa-free to most nationalities and is one of the easiest countries to enter.

If you’re feeling a bit adventurous, Cambodia offers the ability to extend a tourist visa to a one-year business visa for $300, allowing you the opportunity to come and go as you please.

And if you want to settle down in one place, Malaysia’s MM2H visa program is among the most straightforward on earth. Singapore also offers qualified business owners the chance to become resident there and even work toward citizenship, although you will be required to pay taxes to qualify.

Access to Wealth Havens

Hong Kong and Singapore are two of the world’s greatest wealth havens, and living in Southeast Asia puts you within close reach of both of them. Flying from Hong Kong to Singapore takes about four hours and is relatively inexpensive; flights to either city from within the region are prevalent and cheap.

Hong Kong is a great place to set up an offshore company if you run a business whose customers demand a world-class image. While many digital nomads can get by with a company in a tax haven like Belize, many larger businesses have reasons to consider planting their flag in a more stable place.

Greater Personal Freedom

If you want to be left alone without the threat of being ticketed or arrested for something as innocuous as not pulling over far enough, Southeast Asia will suit you well. While not technically part of Southeast Asia, Hong Kong was recently rated the country with the greatest personal freedom.

Easy International Travel

Kuala Lumpur is not only one of the most affordable cities from which to travel, it’s also one of the best connected. Malaysia Airlines and Air Asia are both based here and fly practically anywhere you want to go in the region or internationally

New service is constantly being added, such as ultra-cheap, non-stop flights to Seoul and non-stop service to London. Additionally, Middle Eastern carriers like Emirates, Qatar Airlines, and Turkish Airlines offer frequent service here at reasonable (and occasionally dirt cheap) prices.

Elsewhere in the region, Singapore offers excellent connectivity as well. Singapore’s Changi airport is one of the most efficient in the world and has just about every airline on earth flying there. Singapore is also home to low-cost airlines like Scoot and Tiger Air that serve regional destinations.

Proximity to New Markets

From the frontier markets of Myanmar and Cambodia to emerging markets like Vietnam, to middle-class and wealthy nations like Malaysia and Singapore, it is hard to find more potential in such a diverse region. There are companies here that are literally copy-and-paste western business concepts, namely online businesses.