Thanks for the post, I now feel like I want to do similar thing sometime in my life. Is there any other interesting, safe, cheap place where you could live comfortably using at most $1000/month?
you could merely survive for much less in thailand
Accordingly, I will go to Bangalore, then further south.
You can do well with 1000 eur/m per person tho.
For example, Google: living costs london cluj
(I was outsourced to Cluj, Transylvania in Romania. I recommend it. 250 Euro/month for a nice, central 50 m2 apartment. People are nice, it is safe. Different. Beautiful women. Mountains, but no sea. University city. The food is very good, but could be more international -- a few sushi places and one(!) Indian. If you want more info, add a comment and your email in your profile.)
If I had a choice personally, I'd go for Japan. For culture/food.
Isn't that too expensive? I have no first hand knowledge, just what I read sometimes about it
Therefore, I will make my corny joke: you don't want your software written in a place that sounds so similar to "kludge". :-)