After we made the huge decision to become digital nomads, the next decision was about where we would live. We are still undecided as every option has its pros and cons although we are getting closer to a decision every day. We would love your input!

Why Asia?

Asia is the natural choice for us as it is relatively close and easy to get to from Australia. It is also cheap to live in Asia and cheap for us to get there. We also considered Latin America or Eastern Europe, but the flight costs would take a huge chunk of our savings. We coincidentally already had flights booked to Kuala Lumpur and Bali for the end of the year, so it will not cost anything for us to get there.

We also know that we can have a fabulous life style in Asia. I don’t think there will be any big shocks or surprises, so it is an easy first step to make.

Our requirements

• We need an excellent internet connection
• We need somewhere where our money will go far. We want to live on AUD$2500 a month comfortably.
• We want a good lifestyle which for us means good food, good weather, comfortable homes, affordable house cleaners and fun family things to do. It also means we would prefer not to live somewhere where it is difficult to get around. I don’t want every journey to be in grid locked traffic.
• We need a good preschool for our kids that is going to align with our personal philosophies. We want to avoid one where children are physically punished and where two year olds get homework (seriously, it happens!). They would both be in kindergarten in Melbourne next year, and they both love the interaction of child care currently. A bilingual preschool would be a plus, although they will go to a bilingual primary school, so this is less of a concern for now.
• We have to pick a country where we will be able to stay without visa issues.
• J and I are big city people. We don’t necessarily need a big city (although that is preferable), but we are not interested in living in a small village.
• Preferably easily accessible to other countries in Asia.

The finalists

For us, there are three countries that stand out straight away – Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. We thought about some other countries but crossed them off pretty quickly. In each of these three countries we know we can have a great lifestyle for cheap and there are a lot of other families doing similar things that have blogged about the experience so it gives us a great starting point to plan all of the logistics.

We briefly thought about other countries in Asia, but there was a lack of information, they seemed too expensive, too hard to travel easily to other places or had visa requirements that would make it more difficult.

Bali

Bali is the first place we thought of when we decided to move to Asia. We love Bali, and I have seen so many photos of the awesome houses many travelling families have lived in around Ubud surrounded by rice paddies. I have especially wanted to move there since I read about the low cost of having a personal chef on Bali. I find it easy to picture an excellent lifestyle there.

However, the big problem is the internet speeds. I have read many people complaining about the internet speeds in Bali. The downside of working online is that we can only live somewhere with great internet speeds. I asked some families who live in Bali and with 2mbps speeds, J has ruled out Bali.

Thailand

We love Thailand and we would love to move there. It is cheap, the people are friendly and in many ways we know we would enjoy living here. There are some problems which have caused us to hesitate though.

Firstly, I am not sure where we would go.  I loooooove Bangkok, but we struggled a bit when we went there last year with kids. The city traffic meant that it took a long time to get anywhere. The Skytrain did not work very well with little kids as there were just so many stairs. I worry that if we moved there, we would be stuck in a small little area.

Chiang Mai is a popular choice for expats as it is very affordable. However, I have been there twice and although I stayed in some of the best hostels in Chiang Mai, I didn’t particularly liked it. I was bored. I recently researched it further as an option, but I was disturbed to find that all of the preschools that people were talking about online gave homework from the age of 2! Z is 2 and I really can not imagine what he could possibly do for homework, we don’t need this stress.

I also thought about the Southern islands but I am worried about the costs involved in living on these and whether we would get bored.

The second problem is visas. We are entitled to 30 days on arrival by air and 15 days arriving by land border. It is also possible to apply for a 60 day visa beforehand.  This means that we will have to leave regularly and when we leave, we will need to go by air. If we end up needing to fly somewhere every 30 days this will become very annoying and costly, especially as Chiang Mai would probably be where we would move and it is not that accessible to other places. This requirement also makes me think we would be better off sticking to Bangkok if we choose Thailand since there will be more cheap flight destinations from here.

Malaysia

We keep coming back to Malaysia when we try to work out where to move. It is a well developed country with reasonable infrastructure, good hospitals and many people speak English. We can enter the country for 90 days on arrival, so that removes any issues with worrying about visas. There is a lot of information online about moving to Malaysia. It is not as cheap as Bali or Thailand (so we would probably have to cope with less home help), but it is still well within our budget.

The other pluses are the languages spoken here. We would love our kids to go to a Chinese bilingual preschool. The range of food is awesome. It is also the hub of Air Asia so it is a very convenient base to explore the rest of Asia or to return home should we need to.

The only downside really is that I just don’t like it as much as Thailand or Bali.

We are undecided about where we would live if we pick Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur jumps out at us as we love big cities and just think of all the travel opportunities we would have thanks to Air Asia! Of course, that is also a downside. It’s like a drunk moving next to a pub – probably not a good idea if I want to get some work done!

What worries me about Kuala Lumpur is that from the information I have been able to find online, we would probably not be able to afford to live centrally.  Expat areas also seem to not be central. We feel we need to live in an expat area to have access to the quality of preschool that we would want, but if we end up out in the suburbs, will we really enjoy living in Kuala Lumpur? Much like Bangkok, I worry we may end up stuck in a small section of the city.

The other option we have been considering strongly is Penang. The family that first introduced me to the idea of being digital nomads at Our Travel Lifestyle created a home base in Penang and it sounded great. There are also many other people who have blogged about finding an apartment, car, preschool etc, and it seems like the easiest option of everywhere for us to settle. However, I have been to Penang twice and I have found it boring. I worry we wouldn’t actually like living there.

 

I had hoped that writing this all down would help give me some clarity, but it actually has me more confused! What do you think? Where should we move?

Updated 6/10/2014 – We’ve decided! Check out our new blog post to find out where.

Tags:  Indonesia Travel Blog Living in Asia Malaysia Travel Blog Thailand Travel Blog