You already know what a coworking space offers: fast internet, meeting rooms, a printer, a desk that is not your hotel bed. That part is easy to find.
What is harder to find is community, and that is what this list is about. Plenty of spaces claim to build one. I have firsthand experience that not all of them do. I established a coworking space in Vietnam and have been immersed in this world since 2015, which has given me a reliable instinct for the difference between a space with a community and a space with a community manager.
A few things that are not coworking spaces, despite the marketing. Hotels with a small, dimly lit business centre in the basement. Cafes that added the word to their Instagram bio but are still cafes, with cafe chairs and cafe noise. Spaces where everyone wears headphones and nobody has ever spoken to each other.
A good coworking space has an established, growing community where strangers quickly become friends. It is usually well located, which makes it a shortcut into a new city rather than just a room in it. When you are working remotely, that combination does something for your productivity and quite a lot more for your mental health.
Here are coworking spaces we would send a friend to.
🌱 Worldwide travel health insurance for nomads
🎯 At a glance
| Space | Where | Best months ☀️ | Shoulder ⛅ | Avoid 🌧️ | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🇹🇭 KoHub | Koh Lanta, Thailand | Dec to Mar | Nov, Apr | May to Oct (closed) | Island life and a tight community |
| 🇻🇳 Hub Hoi An | Hoi An, Vietnam | Feb to May | Jun to Aug | Oct to Nov (flooding) | Rice field views and daily lunches |
| 🇱🇰 Outpost Weligama | Weligama, Sri Lanka | Dec to Mar | Apr, Oct to Nov | May to Sep (monsoon) | Surf, wellness and sea breeze |
| 🇹🇭 Alt | Chiang Mai, Thailand | Nov to Jan | May to Oct | Feb to Apr (burning season) | Solo travellers who want a social circle |
| 🇹🇭 Punspace | Chiang Mai, Thailand | Nov to Jan | May to Oct | Feb to Apr (burning season) | Heads-down deep work on a budget |
| 🇮🇩 Outpost Ubud | Ubud, Bali | May to Sep | Apr, Oct | Nov to Mar (wet season) | Long projects, yoga and quiet |
| 🇮🇩 Tropical Nomad | Canggu, Bali | May to Sep | Apr, Oct | Nov to Mar (wet season) | Surf, coffee and a busy scene |
| 🇰🇭 Workspace 1 | Phnom Penh, Cambodia | Nov to Feb | Mar to Apr (very hot) | May to Oct (wet season) | Best value and a creative campus |
| 🇵🇭 Coco Space | Siargao, Philippines | Mar to Jun | Jul to Oct (surf season) | Nov to Feb (typhoon risk) | Island community and reliable power |
🗺️ Where these spaces are
#1 🇹🇭 KoHub in Koh Lanta in Thailand
KoHub, on the quiet island of Koh Lanta, is the closest thing Southeast Asia has to a coworking institution. It has been running since 2014, and the reason people keep coming back is not the facilities, though those are genuinely good. It is that the community has a family quality to it, helped along by an owner who takes a personal interest in whether your month on the island goes well.
Plan around the season: This is the one thing to keep in mind before booking flights. KoHub opens on 1 November and closes on 30 April, following Koh Lanta's dry season, and shuts completely for the low season. Turning up in July means finding a locked door.
Location: Koh Lanta, with its long quiet beaches, is a genuinely relaxing base. The nearest airport is Krabi International (KBV), and from there you reach the island by minivan and ferry, or by road across the two bridges. The journey is part of the experience, but budget half a day for it.
Community: Weekly events, social lunches and an on-site restaurant that delivers to your desk, which sounds like a small thing until you realize it removes the daily decision about where to eat and keeps everyone in the same room. The space runs 1 Gbps internet with backup power, which matters on an island where outages happen.
Prices: Day pass 400 THB. Garden bungalows next door if you want the whole thing sorted in one booking.
#2 🇻🇳 Hub Hoi An in Hoi An in Vietnam
Hub Hoi An sits among rice paddies on the edge of town, with glass walls and wide views over the fields. It is small, and that is deliberate. The result is a place where you know everyone's name within a week.
Location: Hoi An is known for its lantern-lit old town, its tailors and a beach ten minutes away by bike. The closest airport is Da Nang (DAD), 40km north, with direct connections to Bangkok, Taipei, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. A taxi or private transfer from the airport runs roughly 15 to 23 euros and is worth agreeing up front.
Community: Hub has been running since 2017 and added a coliving villa with a pool in 2023, about 900m from the workspace through the rice fields, with coworking membership included. The daily lunches are the engine of the place. The team is open about not welcoming corporate teams, on the grounds that they form cliques, which tells you how seriously they take the community side.
Worth knowing: the space is small and runs a waiting list in peak months, so book ahead. Members get 24/7 access, but first visits are Monday to Saturday, 09:00 to 17:00 only.
#3 🇱🇰 Outpost in Weligama in Sri Lanka
Outpost Weligama sits on Sri Lanka's south coast, a few minutes from the beach, with a rooftop balcony, a pool and a cafe downstairs. It is the most relaxed space on this list, and the sea breeze does a lot of the work.
Location: Weligama is a surf town on the south coast, walkable and unhurried. Fly into either Colombo Bandaranaike (CMB) or Mattala Rajapaksa (HRI), then take a taxi or private car. From Colombo, the southern expressway makes it around a two-and-a-half-hour drive.
Community: Outpost leans into wellness without being precious about it. Yoga, community events and a genuinely international mix of members. Sustainability is more than a line on the website: there is a zero-waste program and a plastic-free policy, and members are directed to local community projects.
Worth knowing: private booths are charged by the hour on top of your pass, so factor that in if you take a lot of calls. Open daily 07:00 to 22:30.
#4 🇹🇭 Alt in Chiang Mai in Thailand
Alt has quietly become the benchmark for community-led coliving in Chiang Mai, and it earns the description. The events calendar is the thing: yoga, ice baths, a sauna, member-led workshops, talks with local founders, and social outings, running week after week rather than appearing on a website and never quite happening.
Because the coliving side involves many members living on-site, the social texture is different from that of a drop-in space. If you are landing in Chiang Mai alone, this is the fastest route into a circle of people.
Two locations, and they are not interchangeable. Passes are not shared between the branches, so pick your side rather than assuming you can drift between them.
Alt_ChiangMai is in the Old City at 129 Intrawarorot Road, Tambon Si Phum. Coworking and coliving under one roof, a short walk from the Sunday Walking Street, surrounded by temples and food.
Alt_PingRiver is the quieter site across the river at Soi 1, Chiang Mai-Lamphun Road in Wat Ket, an area that has become the city's informal nomad quarter. Purpose-built, with 26 ensuite rooms, meeting rooms, soundproof call booths and a podcast room. Pick this one if you want to think rather than socialize.
Both open Monday to Friday 09:00 to 21:00, and Saturday to Sunday 09:00 to 18:00.
Getting there: Chiang Mai International (CNX) connects to most major Asian hubs, and both sites are a short Grab ride from the terminal.
Prices: Day pass 320 THB, week pass 1,600 THB, 15 day pass 3,500 THB. Hot desk from 4,000 THB a month, dedicated desk from 5,500 THB. Private offices from 17,000 THB a month.
#5 🇹🇭 Punspace in Chiang Mai in Thailand
Let us be straight about Punspace, because it is a different proposition to Alt. This is not where you go to make friends. It is where you go when you have a deadline. Punspace opened in 2013 as Chiang Mai's first coworking space and has stayed focused on the unglamorous business of giving you a good chair, fast wifi and quiet. For a lot of people that is exactly the right trade.
Locations: Two branches, both in the Old City. Wiang Kaew occupies a renovated soda bottle factory with a big courtyard and mature trees, open daily 09:00 to 18:00. Tha Phae Gate is an industrial-style loft steps from the historic gate, with a coffee shop downstairs, open Monday to Saturday and closed Sundays. Members get 24/7 access to both, including holidays.
Note for anyone working from an older guide: the Nimman branch has closed. The two Old City branches are the active ones.
Getting there: From Chiang Mai International (CNX), either branch is around 20 minutes by taxi or Grab.
Amenities: Meeting rooms, Skype rooms, lockers, monitors, showers, air purifiers, printer and scanner. Free coffee and tea.
Prices: Day pass around 289 THB. Check their site for current monthly rates.
#6 🇮🇩 Outpost in Ubud in Bali in Indonesia
Ubud is the cultural center of Bali, set among rice terraces and temples, and it draws a different crowd to the coastal towns: quieter, more yoga, more people working on something long-term.
Locations: Outpost runs two sites in Ubud. Nyuh Kuning is the original, opened in 2016, with an air-conditioned focus room and video call booths downstairs and an open-air collaborative space upstairs where evening workshops run. It is open 24 hours. Penestanan is the newer site, where coworking and coliving sit under one roof, set among rice terraces with a rooftop workspace and a pool. One membership covers both.
Location: Ngurah Rai International (DPS) in Denpasar serves most major Asian cities and several Australian destinations. From there it is a 1 to 1.5 hour drive to Ubud depending on traffic, so pre-book a transfer.
Community: Weekly events, workshops and a monthly social. The internet runs on multiple providers with several lines, which is the sort of redundancy that matters in Bali.
Two honest notes. The Penestanan rooftop workspace is glass-walled and beautiful, but members report glare and a mismatch between desk and chair heights, so it suits some bodies better than others. And Outpost's Canggu coworking space has closed. If you want to be on the coast, see Tropical Nomad below.
#7 🇮🇩 Tropical Nomad in Canggu in Bali in Indonesia
Canggu is the opposite of Ubud: surf, traffic, coffee shops and a very high density of people working on laptops. Tropical Nomad has been running since 2018 and is now the main community space there, sitting on the shortcut between Berawa and Batu Bolong.
Location: Jl. Subak Canggu No.2, Kuta Utara, Badung. Ten minutes from the beach by scooter. From Ngurah Rai (DPS) it is around an hour depending on traffic, and the traffic is real.
The space: Open 24 hours on weekdays for members, with a mix of air-conditioned rooms and open-air areas, balconies over the rice fields, standing desks, a podcast studio, and private offices on request. Weekends run shorter hours.
Community: Weekly member events, from BBQs to workshops to movie nights, and coliving alongside. The front section doubles as a cafe that anyone can use without a day pass, which makes it easy to test the atmosphere before committing to a membership.
#8 🇰🇭 Workspace 1 in Phnom Penh in Cambodia
Workspace 1 sits inside Factory Phnom Penh, a vast converted industrial complex that also holds art spaces, a skate park, a cinema and several cafes. The coworking is good, but the surroundings are what make it memorable: this is a genuine creative campus rather than an office with a logo. The design uses recycled and eco-friendly materials, and the space runs initiatives supporting local communities and reducing waste.
Location: #1159 National Road 2, Khan Mean Chey, south of the centre. Phnom Penh International (PNH) is about 45 minutes away, at 5 to 10 euros by tuk-tuk or 7 to 12 euros by taxi. Flights to Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City and Vientiane are short and cheap.
Community: Regular events and workshops, mentorship programs for entrepreneurs and startups, and partnerships with local social and environmental organizations. Amenities include meeting rooms, call booths, showers, a games room, a library and a cafe roasting on site.
Prices: From $35 a month, which makes it one of the best value spaces on this list.
#9 🇵🇭 Coco Space in Siargao in the Philippines
Siargao is the best place in the Philippines to work remotely, and Coco Space is where its community gathers. It sits in the quieter northern part of General Luna, ten minutes from the Cloud 9 surf break, in a green setting with a pool overlooking coconut trees.
Location: Barangay Libertad, General Luna, Surigao del Norte. Fly into Sayak Airport (IAO) from Manila or Cebu, then take a van to General Luna. Open daily 07:00 to 01:00.
The practical case: the island has frequent and lengthy power outages. Coco Space runs on solar with Starlink, which is the difference between a workable month and a stressful one. There are focus rooms, call booths, conference rooms, outdoor workspaces, a cafe and a rooftop.
Community: A WhatsApp group, regular community dinners and island activities, and a partnership with a coliving house nearby. Members consistently describe it as feeling like family, which is the bar we set at the top of this article.
Prices: Day pass 500 PHP.
❓ Frequently asked questions
Which is best if I am travelling solo and want to meet people?
Alt in Chiang Mai or Coco Space in Siargao. Both run active event calendars and have coliving attached, which means a built-in social circle rather than a room full of strangers in headphones.
Which is best for getting actual work done?
Punspace in Chiang Mai, or the focus room at Outpost Ubud Nyuh Kuning. Quiet, well-equipped, no pressure to socialize.
Do I need to book ahead?
For Hub Hoi An, yes, it is small and runs a waiting list in peak season. For most others you can walk in, but check seasonal opening first, especially KoHub.
When should I avoid Chiang Mai?
February to April. Agricultural burning season pushes air quality to some of the worst readings in the world, and no air purifier makes that a pleasant month.
Sarah Kuhlemann
Sarah Kuhlemann
Sarah Kuhlemann
