About the project
Expat Roadmap SEA started from a simple problem: the information expats actually need — visa rules, real costs, grey-area schemes, honest neighborhood breakdowns — is scattered across five-year-old Reddit threads and Facebook groups full of conflicting advice.
A platform for people who have already decided to move to Southeast Asia — or are seriously considering it. Not a travel blog. Not a sponsored guide. The goal is practical information that holds up when you actually arrive: what the visa costs, how long it takes, what the immigration officer actually asks for, which neighborhoods have reliable internet, and what happens when things go wrong.
The platform has three parts: a library of guides updated for 2026, a community where expats share firsthand experience, and an AI assistant — the Expat Roadmap SEA bot on Telegram — that answers specific questions in plain language, around the clock.
I am Jasur Akhmadaliev, a product manager currently based between Russia and Southeast Asia. I have spent the last two years navigating visas, apartments, coworking spaces, and expat bureaucracy across Thailand, Bali, and Vietnam — and building this as I go.
The project is also an experiment in building a product with AI as the main tool: the guides are written and structured with Claude, the Telegram bot runs on Groq's Llama 3.3, and the whole stack was assembled without a dedicated engineering team. I write about the process — the decisions, the mistakes, the things that actually worked — on my Telegram channel.
The Telegram bot is trained on the same knowledge base that powers this site. Ask it anything about life in Southeast Asia — it answers like a friend who has been living there for years, not like a customer service script.
Five questions per day are free. Pro access (300 Telegram Stars, one-time) removes the limit and includes a private channel with insider tips on deposits, grey-area schemes, and local hacks that do not belong in a public guide.
Legal or tax advice. Everything here is practical information shared in good faith, not professional counsel. For anything that involves significant money or legal status, talk to a qualified local advisor.
A finished product. The platform is being built actively. Some sections are thin, some guides are missing, and the community is early. If you find something wrong or outdated, the community section is the fastest way to flag it.