[throwawaysleep]

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

[dagw]

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.

[neither_color]

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!"

[svnsch]

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?

[digianarchist]

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.

[jeromegv]

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.

[drusepth]

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