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We believe there are six main elements to a good co-working / co-living space.
Having reliable fast internet is obviously your base need – and that need and Egypt do not mix right? The big plus for coming to stay with us is we have 10 – 13mb download most of the time and 3G, sometimes 4G back up. Plus a really nice hassle free place to work from with like minded Digital Nomads. Normal travellers are not allowed to stay Somewhere Different, so no interaction from any one in work hours.
The main work areas is a quiet zone from 9.00 am to 6.00 pm at night. That’s “ get stuff done” time. There are several areas in the Siwa Villa where you can take a break and talk with fellow nomads during the day and the Skype room is planned and being built very soon.
We are based in a villa made of mud in a very quiet part of town behind the old Shali fort – yet only 5 minutes from the souk and restaurants and as much siwan cultural experiences as you want. The blacksmith is still here across the street, he is always around with who ever is sitting outside his forge for a chat – if you speak Siwan 🙂
Somewhere Different co working co living space is based in a house called the Siwa Villa. It is a luxury villa that was built for families wanting high end desert tours and was very successful. That was before the revolution. Now it has been transformed into a coworking coliving space with all the required facilities. There are 4 rooms, one single, one double, one twin and one dorm with 4 beds in it. The rooms surround the main work area so you can work with others or switch back and forth to your room for calls or private work any time.
On the roof we have a fire pit where we gather after work in the evenings to try and not talk about work and plan our weekend trips out into the desert or to a new hot spring we have not visited yet. It has a spit for roasting lambs, goats, chickens… aubergines – whatever you fancy.
I have a jeep, I know my way around the desert and I like to go out there. So when we are all up for it, we can go out for day trips at the weekends when we are not working and even sleep out there. We do full moon walks – it’s pretty amazing to walk for hours with just the moon to guide you.
There are then the hot springs – we can visit them too at the weekends or even during the week. The jeep has enough room to take us all and even the odd backpacker we find in town who wants to hang out. If you booked a local safari car to take you to the hot springs and the desert it work out more than your Somewhere Different Egypt membership. If you see our standard coworking coliving offering you will see that this is all included and desk/accommodation starting from €196 so… a pretty good deal all round.
You are a digital nomad, or about to become one. You will have heard Chiang Mai is the place for digital nomads due to the balance of wow factor, costs and good internet. Don’t take my word for it, see here on the travellers bible for cost comparison Numbeo Alexandria in Egypt is our nearest big city, it’s over 100% more expensive to live in Chiang Mai than Alex. I asked Ahmed,our manager here, as he is from Alex ” Is Siwa cheaper to live in than Alexandria? ” he smiled and replied ” Much cheaper”.
We are one of the most cost effective places to work from and have fun in compared to anywhere travellers like to normally go to.
Unless you are a rock star travel blogger or killed it on bitcoins – you want to keep your costs as low as possible. The less you need to have a nice standard of living, the more competitive you are when it comes to pitching for work. If you are just starting out it makes all the difference.
Don’t forget when you finally decided to hit the road for a life or work and travel – the idea is to be in a place 5x more interesting than home and 5x cheaper to live. Siwa ticks the cost of living box and the wow box too as you will see.
We have fast reliable internet with speeds between 13mbs and 10mbs – so it’s fast enough for Skype video calls and hassle free browsing etc. We have a generator for when the power goes to keep the connection live. If the internet goes down, we have Vodafone 3G as back up, sometimes 4G now. It’s fast enough to Skype from and is rarely needed but it does happen – maybe once a month for a few hours.
It has taken us around six months to get cables laid to the houses to get a much faster speed. The cable is now installed and I will update here when we have 4x speed than shown above which is the current download when creating this web page. As you can see it is 616% faster than the average speed in Egypt and we will be 4x faster very soon 🙂 Why? Because a coworking / coliving space is first and foremost about about having fast reliable internet.
I have lived here many years and am still blown away by the desert here. The full moon walks out to the dunes, the hot springs, the madness of the souk and the old ways of Berber life in the gardens that have not changed since WWW 11. To see what wow there is here – have a look at some of our old blog posts. If you want to get your work done during the week and experience the desert and oasis life at the weekends – see what membership option suits you best and get yourself booked in –
