I thought I knew what to expect. I thought I had things figured out. I knew where the best places in the world were for fun, retirement, and adventure…the lowest-cost havens, the coolest beach towns…the best food…
But when I first scouted Southeast Asia for International Living, I discovered a whole new world. It’s the safest place I have ever traveled. The best meals of my life cost less than $2 and I got them at stalls in Penang and Chiang Mai. (I still dream of the curries and pad thai.)
I also found the most outstanding bang-for-buck destinations of my travels to date. Just read our feature story to discover a few of them for yourself. Malaysia’s best retirement havens offer world-class everything…from healthcare to shopping…the luxuries you can afford include maids, country club memberships, and plenty of fun travel. Best of all, you can get by in English easily thanks to the country’s British colonial past.
We’re meeting more readers in Southeast Asia all the time, and investing more resources there to find those opportunities. Take the Thai island of Phuket, where you can rent a brand-new townhouse for $575 a month and find everything a tropical island paradise is supposed to offer, but with every First-World service you could want…think 25 beaches, five hospitals, first-rate shopping, and costs of $2,200 a month for a couple.
It seems like every country in the region is on a development tear. A new private hospital in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, is big news, and a shiny new international airport is set for that country’s most popular beach town, Sihanoukville. Mick Anderson explains how he seized opportunity to run a beach bar there.
Hanoi is home to IL Vietnam correspondent, Wendy Justice. The Vietnamese capital earns its exotic reputation—and yes, you’ll find chaos with the color. But as Wendy explains, it’s a city that begs to be discovered.
It comes down to this: Southeast Asia is now a big player on the global retirement stage where many of the best-value opportunities are today. And so, it makes good sense to consider it…
—Eoin Basset, International Executive Editor
"Mountains! Unbelievable mountains! Some of the best in the world,” says Ted Alexander of what drew him to Huaraz, a city of some 130,000 people high in the Andes Mountains of northern Peru. “I love seeing the mountains from almost everywhere.”
My wife Nancy and I are enjoying the sun in one of South America’s most beautiful town squares. A tiered fountain, surrounded by palm trees, lies at its center. Red, pink, and purple roses are everywhere you look.
"I live a six-figure lifestyle on $1,500 a month,” says Andrea from her beach- town getaway overseas. “I can live here for much less, have a better quality of life, and I have full-time help for $200 a month that would have cost $2,000 [back home].”
You know spring is in the air when the scent of wild flowers is on the breeze and multi-colored hues of budding blossoms carpet the countryside. But there are places where you don’t have to endure winter first to enjoy the pleasant respite of spring.
As a 22-year-old Russian translator for the U.S. Air Force Security Service, I spent many days and nights in an uncomfortable chair on an island midway between Nome, Alaska, and Siberia, listening to the Russians. What I heard changed my life. In those days, when radio equipment wasn’t quite as sophisticated, they used a lot of women operators because the pitch of their voices penetrated the static better than deeper male voices.
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