Why are people less interested in Malaysia's Digital Nomad Visa compared to Thailand's?

Food and weed

I lived and worked in KL. It's a physically pleasant and clean city. Malaysians are also wonderful people. In terms of nightlife and decent food, it's the end of the earth.

Bars, Clubs, and Restaurants are generally poor. Nightlife is so restricted, it's like a school youth club. 95% of restaurants are Western owned. Malaysian food is very difficult to find.

On the positive side, dating is much more straightforward than Thailand. Malaysian women aren't interested in money. They're friendly and share a British sense of humour. The local Muslim Malay women are very Western thinking - you'd never know they were practising Muslims.

In short, Western ownership of commerce, plus huge taxation and control around alcohol and nightlife make KL one of the dullest cities I've ever lived in. It's also more Western than London.

It's specifically targets those only in IT fields.

"The new visa has been designed specifically to attract digital professionals to feed and grow the local digital economy. One of the requirements is to demonstrate that you work within an area of digital expertise, including IP, digital marketing, digital content creation, cyber security, digital currencies, and software development. While this may be clear from your employment contract, you should also supply an up-to-date resume as part of your application that highlights your expertise and experience in a digital field."

As an online tutor and educator, I cannot qualify for this. I love Malaysia and immediately considered it, and was disappointed.

Malaysia is a bit conservative tbh. Lived there for 8 years. Predominantly Islamic country. There are fun things to do though but there are limits. In Thailand there’s no limits people are friendlier religion doesn’t dictate anything and there’s generally more freedom

We're looking to take the 180 days in Thailand and then bounce the other 6 months to Vietnam/Malaysia/elsewhere.

I haven't travelled to Malaysia yet, but we'll give it a try. Travelling with my wife and 3 kids. Honestly Vietnam is quite appealing

The only Malaysia drawbacks is a Muslim majority country, it’s… kinda unappealing to us as non-Islam people, great place to visit but wouldn’t stay there for long term nonetheless, for that sole reason, I do not hate anyone but its just preferences.

It's pathetic that two beautiful countries are being pitted against each other here. Each country has pros and cons. But both countries are beautiful and special.

Muslim country?

Unpopular take but I would live in Malaysia 100 times over Thailand for different reasons.

The thing is that the digital nomad visa in Malaysia takes months to be approved and you can only renew it once, so 2 years in total. After that, there are ways to stay longer but it's either by investment or opening a company.

So DTV wins for the simplicity.

Lived in both countries, Thailand wins in all possible ways.

Maybe because we are gay?

Quality of life is so much higher in Thailand.

Malaysia is my favourite country, but even I’m considering applying for the DTV visa instead of the De Rantau pass.

1. Easier application. Malaysia can take up to 3 months with a lot more paperwork.

2. De rantau is 1+1 year whereas DTV is 5 years.

3. Malaysia has 90 day visa on arrival so I already normally stay 150 ish days per year anyway so why bother going to the extra effort for a longer term visa. Thai was 30 but now 60 so a longer term visa makes sense there.

4. Tourism. Most people from Europe/ “The West” would go to Thailand as their first stop in Asia. They fall in love with it because they party, meet people and see new things the first time. Then just keep returning. Malaysia isn’t on their radar as much.

5. Networking or “monkey see monkey do”. Other digital nomads are already in Thailand so they go visit.

6. Home comforts. People love coffee shops and avocado toast which the thais have catered for. Malaysia doesn’t really cater to foreign tastes in the same way.

7. Like others have said, the availability of cheap alcohol is probably a factor for many.

8. Housing. Cheap condos that can easily be rented short term are already set up for digital nomads in Thailand. In Malaysia it’s very tough to get anything less that isn’t a 1 year lease.

Saying all that, I do still love Malaysia but I do see why people go for Thailand

Secondly, I do think a lot of people are interested in Malaysia.

There are, as you'd expect, a fair few differences between Thailand including advantages and disadvantages, as far as living there goes for a foreigner.

Some of the advantages include:

1. A more educated population with a higher level of English proficiency; most educated people speak English well, unlike in Thailand

2. Better infrastructure (OK, not by that much...Thailand's infrastructure is decent, but Malaysian roads are still in better shape, better designed and there are fewer accidents as a result. There are also far more expressways).

3. Foreigners can own land and houses, in most states, at least in the cities, which contrasts with Thailand

4. Immigration is much easier than Thailand

5. Foreigners, especially westerners, stand out less as Malaysia is quite multicultural, unlike homogeneous Thailand - you have Indian, Malay and Chinese groups as well as a large community of Eurasians making up 1% of the population; in Thailand, Eurasians (luk-khreung) are still strangely considered "exotic", "somewhat foreign" making them feel alienated in their own country...this is starting to change somewhat, but not fast enough

6. A lot more imported food stuffs and other items from abroad and imported goods are much cheaper than in Thailand, which applies hefty taxes

7. More foreign brands / chain restaurants / fast food stores (if that is your thing) - Thailand is very business unfriendly towards smaller or medium sized foreign chains (and/or Thais don't like trying new things, don't like foreign food / foreign chains they aren't familiar with) hence why A&W, Carl's Jr, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf (and others including Santa's) have all failed in recent years, but are thriving in Malaysia

8. Easier to do business in

9. Somewhat cheaper (except for things like alcohol)

10. More family friendly, with lots of family seating areas, few seedy/nightlife areas

Disadvantages:

1. No real dry season; it rains all year-round in Malaysia (though southern Thailand is largely the same) with maybe 1-2 months of "dry" weather, usually around March-April, with minimal rainfall

2. Alcohol not as widely available (though it's easy to find in the supermarkets, convenience stores and Chinatowns in the main cities such as Kuala Lumpur and Penang) - there are however no afternoon sales bans, which is good (despite being a Muslim country)

3. Strict Muslim culture (in the eastern parts of the country especially), although parts of southern Thailand aren't too different (Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani)

4. Locals are friendly, but I get the feeling that especially among the ethnic Chinese middle and upper classes, there is a level of jealousy / resentment towards westerners, especially amongst the older generation, who see one or two incidents of foreigners behaving badly and thus stereotype all foreigners this way (Thais are starting to become this way too, though) - don't get me wrong; I don't think this means that ethnic Chinese Malays in general have an anti-western attitude any more than Thais might have (especially in light of tons of recent news of badly behaved foreigners)

5. Not as much nightlife...basically very little nightlife except for drinking beer with your meal at Chinese restaurants in east coast cities, but OKish nightlife in Penang and Kuala Lumpur, which do have bars and clubs

6. Strict rules pertaining to relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims, particularly along the East Coast but even in general - this presents no issue among non-Muslim couples or friends though

7. Somewhat less corruption, which also means that certain laws are stricter and/or more strictly applied than in Thailand, which means you can't get away with flouting traffic laws as easily as in Thailand for example

8. Water fluoridation - Malaysian tap water is fluoridated. It's unfluoridated in Thailand, so health conscious residents would need to install a filter that removes fluoride when living in Malaysia, whereas in Thailand, there's no need because tap water is unfluoridated (however, it might still make sense to install some filters as there's a lot of chlorine and other nasties in the tap water here, just that its not as bad as Malaysia)

It's just not fun there 🤣🤣

That's a great question.

First of all, this is the Thailand DTV group and thus no one is really talking about other countries' digital nomad visas in here.

Secondly, I think the criteria for being granted a digital nomad visa for Malaysia is stricter than for the DTV.

The DTV is a surprise though - prior to it being offered, you only had the extremely restrictive LTR, which is made for rich expats with requirements not too dissimilar to qualifying for an investor visa for the USA (and other western countries)!

Thailand normally goes overboard with unrealistic requirements.

So I think the first reason is because Malaysia's requirements are more stringent.

I stayed in KL once (around 2018) pretty much in the city center for a week in an Airbnb, and the owner advised me not to go down certain alleys at night around my condo because of high risk of getting mugged. This would never happen anywhere in Thailand. Last time I went to KL...

I've brought up the issues I saw with Malaysia in another group, which I do really like, and was as nice as possible, but the locals were almost all very rude.

- One of the big issues was the food quality outside of KLCC was extremely bad, and every bite of chicken had bones chopped up into it. If it wasn't for the Shangri-La and Halab Restaurant, the trip would have been ruined.

- MM2H visa requirements are way too high, malls are dying off, but the locals don't see any problems with the lack of foreign income.

- Publicly, Malaysia says they have 38 million tourists per year and Thailand over 35 million, but does that include Singaporeans coming across the border for weekly grocery shopping? I think it does by the look of it. I am very experienced in both countries, and there is no way Malaysia receives more tourists than Thailand in my opinion.

- Malaysians are boycotting Western franchise brands but don't have quality or sufficient replacements. It woulden't be a problem if they had replacements but everything seems to be failing there and Malaysians gang up on you and tell you to F-off online when you try to figure out why in a polite manner. The issue is they know there are severe post COVID economy problems but refuse to admit it and act like everyone else is the problem. Bangkok shopping malls are all packed but Kuala Lumpur malls are mostly empty.

- I do hope the situation improves in Malaysia but the government needs to find longer term residency solutions for the foreign productive working class and not just wealthy people who woulden't want to live in Malaysia full-time since they have a lot of other options. I think the the MM2H requirements are one of the main issues that is causing Malaysia to not develop as Thailand.

- On a positive note it's the only country in Asia I am aware of where foreigners can own land which is really nice. I would like to buy a home and settle there but with the MM2H requirements; renting in Thailand is the better deal. I would be interested in Malaysia if I could get residency there. The MM2H requirements are too high for a single person but are greatly exacerbated for unmarried foreign couples wishing to reside in Malaysia which doubles the already too-absurd requirements.

which pass do they have?

Thailand is cheaper and not a Muslim country where alcohol might be banned. Thailand does ban alcohol on Buddhist holidays, but that can be worked around…

I wouldn't like to live in Malaysia, visit 2-3 days is okay