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Comment by throwawaysleep | Hacker News Reader

I get that everyone should follow the law, but how would they ever distinguish you from a tourist unless you blogged about it?

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One obvious way to 'fuck up' is to do work with or for a local company. I've also heard rumors that they sometimes check co-working spaces and pick up any 'tourists' that have been renting space there for an extended period of time.

But basically as long you work for a foreign company or clients and don't draw attention to yourself I doubt they care too much.

I've heard of people in Indonesia(Bali) getting caught because they post in public Facebook groups about the work they do, like "Hey guys I'm a yoga instructor/web designer/surf teacher/English teacher and I'm available for hire!"

Thats interesting. I would also find it interesting if they distinguished between e.g. yoga instructor/surf teacher since they are working locally (sounds pretty illegal to me) and remote work like web design. Has anyone further info?

People do blog about it and encourage others to work as "digital nomads".

There was a startup founder on HN circa 2017 that blogged about bouncing between Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore.

Working in Singapore on a tourist visa is particularly stupid because they will actually enforce their laws.

If you don't plan to stay long, sure, but if you start making an interesting life over there, you might be interesting in regularizing your situation.

I don't think "whether you'll be caught or not" is the only reason to follow the law.

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