Hi everyone. I've been looking into Southeast Asia to retire and maybe do some remote work. California has gone completely crazy. I've researched Thailand a ton, but the visa rules make it look really hard to move a whole family there. For example, the DTV visa needs about 70k USD in your account for 3 to 6 months for a family of four. On top of that, you have to keep leaving the country for visa runs. That might work if I were a single young guy, but it's too hard with a family.
Someone told me the visa rules for moving to the Philippines, at least for a few years, are much, much easier. I don't know the Philippines as well as Thailand. I want a safe, modern city, and I heard Malakati? is a good place. Or BGC? Anyway, I'm wondering how realistic it is to move to the Philippines and what the quality of life is like. Any advice would be appreciated
I'm an American living in the Philippines. There's good and bad here; it's a third-world country. I wouldn't move a whole family here, especially with young kids. But you do you
Please read this: go, spend some time, and travel around the islands. It's not what you see in the tourist photos! Depending on the area there are power outages and water problems too. A few years back Luzon got hit by nine typhoons, six of them major if I remember right. That's a lot of rain. I'm not trying to rain on your parade, but there's culture shock, and in some areas the infrastructure and so on is pretty sad. And please take this to heart: carry toilet paper and wet wipes. Drink only bottled water. And be ready for toilets without seats. It's a great country with wonderful people and a really low cost of living in most areas, but if you've never been, please go look around first
You're doing yourself a disservice if you don't look at a few Latin American countries. Start with Uruguay and Paraguay. Both have relaxed rules on foreign land ownership, low prices, stable governments and friendly people. Paraguay in particular has easy second-passport laws too. You'll need Spanish. But it's all doable. Interestingly, if you have a Filipina in your life, Paraguay recently made it much easier for Filipinos to get in... And you can taste mangoes everywhere!
I'm from Trashifornia too, so I get it, but I'm worried the kids won't get a good enough education to pass the ACT/SAT. I don't agree with people who say to live way out in the sticks, at least not at first. Since you want to give the kids a choice of where to go to college, their education should be your priority. If after a while you find a proper English-language school out in the countryside, that's the time to move. At least the Philippines has decent visas, so if the grandparents want to come and spend the winters, it won't be too hard.
Compared to the other Southeast Asian countries I've been to, the Philippines just doesn't give you the same value for money on quality of life, no matter where you live.
I'm from Cali too. Moved to Cavite. The pace of life is much slower. Cali sucks, especially for car guys.
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