Why Remote Island Living Is Becoming a Real Option
When I first moved to a small island in Indonesia, people thought I’d lost my mind.
“How will you get internet?”
“What if you run out of water?”
“What about hospitals?”
They weren’t wrong to ask. Back then, everything was hard. Power cuts. Boats that didn’t show up. Weeks of waiting for spare parts that never came.
But something happened in the last few years: technology quietly caught up with the dream.
Today, you can live and work from a remote island—and not in some romanticized, coconut-and-wifi cliché way. I mean actually operate a business, manage a team, build something meaningful, all while being surrounded by ocean instead of traffic.
It's not a theory.
I've been living on remote Buka Buka Island with my wife for the past 6 years. Our daughter will turn 3 in a few weeks, and she's the happiest kid I've seen.
The shift
Cities have reached peak convenience, peak noise and peak meaningless-ness. Everyone’s connected, but no one’s really free. A lot of people now want out, but until recently, “out” meant too much disconnection, boredom, and impossible logistics.
"Out" used to mean going up a montain and live under a tree.
That’s changing.
Starlink made high-speed internet a global right. Solar panels and lithium batteries made energy independence possible. Desalination turned salty sea water into drinkable water.
The essentials—power, water, internet, are now modular.
You can plug them into almost any piece of land and make it livable.
That changes everything.
Because the moment survival gets solved, the question shifts from “Can I live here?” to “Why the hell am I still living there?”
My experiment
I didn’t move to an island because I wanted to “escape the system.”
I moved because I wanted to build my own smaller, simpler, saner version.
That experiment became Reconnect—a resort, yes, but also a working prototype of what a post-urban lifestyle could look like.
We generate our own power from the sun.
Not just for a few light bulbs in a hippie out-of-system-but-zero-comfort type of way. We even produce our own fresh water with and run AC units with solar panels.
We use Starlink to run all our operations.
The speed is better and connection si more reliable than in some big cities (like in Makassar, where I am now, and internet sucks).
Guests come here thinking they’re escaping the world, and they end up realizing they could live like this.
They come here on holiday.
But they can still work. Still create. Still connect.
They do it from a place that makes sense, to them.
Why this matters
This isn’t about everyone moving to islands. It’s about having options.
For decades, “freedom” was something you chased on weekends or vacations.
Now, with a laptop and the right setup, you can design your entire life around freedom, without sacrificing too much productivity or comfort.
Remote island living is no longer a fantasy for hippies or dropout dreamers.
It’s an upgrade path for builders, thinkers, and founders who understand that environment shapes everything: your clarity, your energy, your output.
The reality
Of course, it’s not perfect. Logistics are still slow. Weather still decides your schedule sometimes.
But that’s the tradeoff: you exchange constant friction for intentional challenges.
And in return, you get time, space, and quiet... the most undervalued resources of our generation.
If you strip away the noise of the modern world, you start to see what actually matters.
And from here, under the sun, surrounded by sea, it becomes clear:
The future doesn't have to be built in mega-cities.
Some of it will be built on small islands, by people who decided not to wait for permission.
That’s what we’re doing at Reconnect, on Buka Buka Island (Central Sulawesi, Indonesia).
Building an alternative for people who want to experience life differently, and make it duplicable to other islands.
Not someday.
Now.
PS: This is definitely not for everybody. But if you resonate with it, consider visiting, or simply staying in touch by subscribing to this publication.