John Ho grew up in Hong Kong, got culture shocked in California, married a Thai woman, and now runs two colivings in Chiang Mai. He also thinks he spent five years building digital nomad bubbles.
In this episode we talk about what culture actually does to a person. Why he still calls himself a Hongkonger, what Jackie Chan really represents, and how a Cantonese obsession with using every square meter shaped the first coliving he built. Then we get to the harder part. John admits the spaces he built made nomads comfortable and nothing else, and explains what he is doing about it.
We also cover the Network School shutdown in Malaysia, why he thinks it happened, and the win-win-win alternative he is testing in Chiang Mai. Plus loneliness, and his blunt question about it: everyone agrees community matters, but will you actually pay for it?
What we cover
- Why culture is identity, and what Hongkonger still means after ten years away
- Culture shock in California, Japanese after that, and third culture kids at home
- Jackie Chan, the golden era, and kung fu as a pragmatic career move
- No money no talk, and fitting thirty rooms into a space the architects said was too small
- Traveling to people instead of landmarks
- Meeting nomads in Chiang Mai before the word was common, and why he is not one
- Cosmolocalism, and why a pop-up village refuses to be portable
- Four September tracks: AI, solopreneurship, food, and a futures lab
- The admission: five years of building comfortable bubbles was not enough
- Membrane instead of bubble, and the visa and tax pathways Thailand still lacks
- Kotohira, population seven thousand, learning to host nomads
- Network School, Edge City Lanna, and what happens when you skip the neighbors
- An AI agent and a bunker, and the loneliness nobody pays to fix
- Wednesday runs, and how a community outgrows its founder
Timestamps
John Ho and his projects
- LinkedIn — where John is most active and easiest to reach.
- Instagram — travel photos, coliving life, and the Hongkonger hashtag in his bio.
- Alt_Coliving — his two Chiang Mai spaces, Alt_ChiangMai in the Old City and Alt_PingRiver in Wat Ket.
- Cosmo Local CNX — the month-long pop-up village bringing global talent and Thai locals together in September.
- The Extended Stay — the newsletter where John published his Network School piece.
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