Best Places for Expats: Latin America vs. Southeast Asia

👉 Book a Mexico Relocation Consult: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/consult 

👉 Need to start creating a location independent business so you can go anywhere in the world? Get started with our Get Your First High Paying Client Online Bootcamp: https://entrepreneurexpat.com/firstclient-yt

👉 Want to learn how to move to Mexico in the next 12 months? If so, click here https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/mexico

V I D E O S    T O    W A T C H    N E X T :

Online Business Tips to Working and Traveling In Mexico: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zGH0voCyOc&list=PLh3xKhkMgH_IA6s3KvB_g9Cc9Ze1eji8j&index=2

Moving to Mexico: 10 Reasons Why We Chose to Live in Guadalajara https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK23vD8_xjc&list=PLh3xKhkMgH_LAY7UV78YMgms-f2e1UcwN&index=23

Tips for Moving Overseas: Top 5 Remote Work Skills That Make Money: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFzjCrlNAL8&list=PLh3xKhkMgH_IA6s3KvB_g9Cc9Ze1eji8j

 --------------------------------------------

Inquiries: community@entrepreneurexpat.com

--------------------------------------------

#livinginmexico #movingtomexico #digitalnomad #makemoneyonline #expatsinmexico #digitalmarketingtraning #geoarbitrage #moveoverseasfromus #digitalmarketingcourse #guadalajara #costoflivingmexico #digitalnomadvisa #digitalnomadnews #workandtravel #locationindependentlifestyle #locationindependentbusiness #locationindependententrepreneur #locationindependentbusinesses #locationindependentbusinessideas #secretsoflocationindendentbusiness #howtobecomeadigitalnomad

Transcript

0:36

We have a debate going on right now in the YouTube comments about whether people looking to leave the us, Canada, and Western Europe should go to Latin America or Southeast Asia. We've looked extensively into both regions and for now we've picked Latin America, but we're super excited to check out Southeast Asia in some point. In the near future. In this video, we are going to be sharing our analysis of both regions with pros and cons lists for each. Now, please note that we're talking about 40 plus different countries here, so we're going to have to do some generalizing. There's also quite a lot of nuance, so for example, in both regions you will find countries that are more safe than others. Speaking of nuance. Uh, finding the right place to relocate to is actually a very nuanced topic. There is no one size fits all when you're looking to relocate to another country, and we can help you decide which region makes the most sense for you. All you need to do is book a consultation call. Go to entrepreneur expat.com/consult, and we can help you start making sense of all of this based on what your particular needs are. So let's get into it. Here are some of the pros of Latin America. Now one of my favorite pros being an aficionado of getting second residencies and second citizenships. I'm actually looking at another two as well right now outside of Mexico, but. In Latin America, it is much easier and a less expensive process, and by expensive we we mean both in fees and also in terms of the financial requirements compared to Southeast Asia. One of the main reasons for that is because Latin America, Mexico in particular, tends to look at more of your income instead of your assets. So while in Southeast Asia, you might be required to show a significant amount of money in the bank or in your investments. In Mexico. As long as you're showing the government that you have enough money to support yourself and to contribute, you're pretty much okay. Along those same lines, another pro of Latin America is that you can actually become a naturalized citizen in Latin America and collect a passport. Now in Asia, unless you're going to Cambodia, which it does have a citizenship program in Cambodia, it's nearly impossible to become a citizen of an Asian country. So Asia might be better for as a place to live, or maybe a long-term residency, although even the long-term residencies. Are a little iffy, right? In terms of how they work and how much money is needed, and the renewals and all that kind of stuff. In comparison to Latin America, typically you'll get a temporary residency, then you'll get your permanent, then you become a naturalized citizen in Mexico. There are ways to speed up that process. We can do another video on that, on how you can qualify for citizenship in two years in Mexico instead of five. If you would like that, let us know in the comments below, but the point here being that in Latin America. You can collect a passport, uh, and some pretty decent passports too. Mexico is a pretty decent passport. So is Argentina. You can go to Russia on a Mexican passport. Yeah. Without a visa you can. Right. And I think Japan as well. Japan without a visa. Um, I'm not sure about China. I. But, uh, at least Russia and Japan you can go with without a visa or license, like visa on entry or something like that. Um, so Mexico's actually a pretty good and decent passport in a lot of ways. Some people in this expat space actually say it's probably one of the top passports, uh, in the world based on their qualifications and it's growing. Yeah, a lot of the Latin American passports, whether that's Mexico, El Salvador, or other countries. If they're not already, they're going to start to to get much higher up in the rankings in terms of Columbia's gone higher up in the rankings. Yeah, things like that. So if you're interested in a second citizenship, that's obviously a lot easier to do in Latin America. It's damn near or impossible in Southeast Asia. Another pro of Latin America is that Spanish is a lot easier to learn. Some of you may have even already learned it in high school or from your parents. If, if you've got, uh, Latin origins or perhaps. Uh, you've studied it later on in life or you've traveled to Latin America, you probably know that Spanish is not super difficult of a language to learn. I became pretty fluent in about two to three years while living in Columbia. And if you're just trying to learn conversational Spanish, you can realistically do that in about six or seven months from my experience, especially when you're immersing yourself. In another country, uh, versus if you're in Southeast Asia and you're trying to learn Thai or Vietnamese, you're typically dealing with accent characters or perhaps an entirely different alphabet that you would need to learn in addition to this, the, uh, spoken language. So with Spanish, you don't have to struggle as much. And the other cool thing about Spanish is that it's so widely spoken across. The region, uh, other than a few countries in South America, Spanish is pretty much the defacto language. So you learn that once and you can live anywhere in Latin America. And even if you go to Brazil where they speak Portuguese, you can get by with Spanish pretty easily, uh, in Brazil. So it does open you up to a lot of countries. To learn Spanish and it's much easier to learn. Okay, next one. This is super important for those of you who run businesses. This comes up all the time, and this is probably one of our deciding factors, same time zones in Latin America as the US and not super crazy time zones for Europe. So for those of you. Who have businesses and most of your clients are American or Canadian or European, or you need to be like on those hours-ish, then Latin America is a lot easier. Uh, one of the issues we have with Southeast Asia is like, okay, well if we're doing calls for a business, we're doing calls at like one in the morning. Nobody wants to do that. Now that being said, uh, we do have a business plan for entrepreneur expat. Where, for example, we, and YouTube is a big part of that, where we can build in more passive income. So we wouldn't have to be doing calls at one o'clock in the morning when we decide to go to Southeast Asia. But, you know, that's a part of the plan and, and we're in process for that. But that's definitely a pro of Latin America is same time zones. If you need those four business purposes. Another thing that expats love about Latin America is that they're super easy flights back home for business or family reasons. Now, if you're traveling back, let's say from Thailand, you might be on a plane for 12 hours or even. Almost an entire day. If you've got connecting flights, depending on where in the US it is you're trying to come back to versus from Mexico, from here to Miami or here to la it's only about a two to three hour flight, either way. Um, pretty accessible. There's also a ton of direct flights. I. You can fly to those places as well as Dallas, Chicago, New York, uh, and probably about another five or six different cities from Guadalajara nonstop most days of the week. Versus if you're in Asia, you're almost always gonna have to connect unless maybe you're going from a major hub, uh, perhaps Bangkok to la you could fly direct. There's, there's other routes to different countries depending on how big the country is and, uh, where. In the US you're going, if you're on the West coast, you're more likely, if you're trying to fly to the West coast, you're more likely to get a nonstop flight from Asia, but it's still gonna be expensive, and it's still gonna be a really long. Flight Next is food quality in Latin America is excellent. Now we have heard that food quality in Southeast Asia can is better than the United States. But that's not saying saying much. Yeah, that's not saying a whole lot. And we have heard that the food quality in Latin America tends to be better than in Asia. However, there is an area of food where Asia, uh, far surpasses Latin America, but you'll have to keep watching this video to find out what that is. And another thing that's cool about Latin America, if you really like to have nice weather, um, especially if you're coming from one of the colder places in North America, is that you can pretty much always find good weather and different climates to suit your preference. So when people think of Mexico, traditionally, you might think that it's a desert and there's. There's, uh, those tumbleweeds on the ground or beaches or jungle or just beaches or jungle. But the reality is there are places in Mexico that actually have snow. I don't know if they're really known for their ski resorts, but you can definitely find snow colder climates, uh, warmer cli climates depending on the city you're in, depending on the elevation and things like that. So you can find things all the way from, let's say the east, uh, Caribbean coast, where it can get as high as a hundred degrees or more in the summer and super humid. To, you know, when you're, when you're near the beach to mountain climates where it's a lot more temperate, like many places in the US and even all the way up to snowing in, in the mountains, depending on how high up you get and the season. So there's, there definitely can be seasons here depending on where you are. Here in Guadalajara, it's pretty much temperate, nice weather all year round. A little on the warmer, sunny side, but we like that. Next, and this is a big one that a lot of you are concerned about in Latin America. Foreigners can own property depending on where it is, but foreigners can own property in Latin America. So if you're looking into real estate investments and things like that, it's gonna be a little easier for you in Latin America. And there's also excellent private healthcare here in Latin America. And it's a lot cheaper than it is in the us. Uh, doctors tend to be more accessible, spend a lot of time. With you. It's not just you're rushed in and out in 15 minutes. There's really good quality private healthcare in all the major cities and pretty solid healthcare even in the, even in the towns as well. Yeah, Mexico alone makes up about 40% of the world's health and dental tourism. I'm willing to bet Thailand makes up the other portion of it, or Malaysia or something like that. So in fairness, both regions are known for having excellent private healthcare. And in Latin America, there are large communities of foreigners, uh, especially expats from your country, like from the US or Canada, just about wherever you go, whether that's Mexico City, Guadalajara, uh, lake Chapala, and some of the, the towns around there like Ahah. There's tons of expat communities pretty much all over. That can be a pro or a con, I guess, depending on how you look at it. Um, but you're, you're definitely not gonna find any shortage of Americans here. Now, the cons of Latin America, because it's not all flowers and rainbows and glitter. Anywhere in the world. So the cons of Latin America, total lack of efficiency for anything administrative, particularly if it's personal, administrative things, things getting your passport, a driver's license. Uh, a bank account open, trying to get your tax ID from the tax authorities going to immigration, you're spending hours or days completing those kinds of things. Unfortunately, you don't necessarily have to do those sorts of things all the time, but it is something to, you also don't have to do them alone, particularly in Mexico. You can have, uh, not even attorneys, you could also have facilitators who don't have to be attorneys in Mexico. We can connect you with many of those, so if you're interested in that, make sure to book that consultation below. Another thing is some countries like Costa Rica, Panama, and Ecuador are actually quite expensive. In some cases, even as expensive, depending on where you are as some cities in the us Um, Mexico and Columbia are a little less expensive, but more expensive than Southeast Asia by about double or more. If you're comparing it to countries like Vietnam. So while you can save a little bit of money in Latin America, it might not be as much as you think and not as much as you'd save in many places in Southeast Asia. Next one is maybe a deal breaker for some of you, which is Latin America is not as tax friendly. As Southeast Asia. In fact, it can be a tax hell in Latin America if you don't know what you're doing. Again, we have vetted accountants, uh, in multiple countries as well as in the United States who work with expats that we can connect you to. So book that console if you are looking for them. Absolutely. And one thing that we hear a lot as well is safety. So safety is not nearly as bad in our opinion in Mexico or or many other countries in Latin America as it is. Uh, in the US media as, as far as how they portray it here, um, it's actually a lot safer than the media in the US makes it out to be because they're focusing on hotspots that do have a lot of gang violence or crimes, and that's not representative of all of Mexico or all of Latin America. And most expats are not gonna go to the areas that they talk about in the US News. It's not as safe as Southeast Asia for sure, even though it's much safer than a lot of places we've been to in the us. And that's one of the things, uh, that we like about it is, is there is good safety here in Mexico. Um, and we, you don't have to deal with things like random violence as much as you would in the United States, but it's not quite as safe as Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia tends to be very, very safe. Okay. So speaking of which, now let's go into the pros of Southeast Asia. We already talked about one of them, which is safety, but here are some others, uh, that we are adding to the list that we haven't really talked about yet. So, as we mentioned in the, the previous list about the cons of Latin America, this is a pro of Southeast Asia, which is there's a much lower cost of living compared to Latin America. So in countries like Vietnam, you can rent. An apartment in a nice touristy area, not that far from the beach for three or$400 per month. Maybe by the time that you watch this video, that's not gonna be true anymore because a lot of those countries are growing so rapidly and increasing tourism and offering, uh, plans for foreign investment that weren't available in those countries before. But as of today, you're gonna save a lot of money living in Vietnam, living in even Thailand, Cambodia, uh, so many other places versus, or may, maybe Bali, Indonesia, uh, versus living in Latin America. Because Latin America is so close in proximity to the US and Canada, they have been getting more and more tourism over the years as well as more and more expats because of their proximity and also because of the expat friendly immigration regulations that they've had. Next is safety Southeast Asia and Asia in general is known for pretty being pretty safe, definitely in comparison to Latin America. Although as always, there are some countries that are safer than others. Okay. Now, one pro, and I'm a big fan of this, of Southeast Asia, is the Asian food. Now, you don't necessarily go to Bangkok to order pad Thai. That's really a dish that was created to appeal to the, to the slightly less, um, spicy loving American palate. But you talk about curries, you talk about a lot of the other traditional dishes, the FA in in, in Vietnam, and so many of the other things that they have that. I mean, I, I love Asian food. I got a pretty good taste of it in the Bay Area and in la, in California. But there's nothing like being in Asia, and that's why we're looking forward to visiting in the next year or two because we're big foodies. We love the food in Latin America. I. But you really cannot find good Asian food here. Unfortunately, that might be changing a little bit in Mexico because there are a lot of people from Asia moving to Mexico, but it hasn't quite hit yet. So we still haven't found really good Asian food, uh, anywhere in Latin America. So definitely a con. We do miss the Asian food. Another pro of Southeast Asia is the better banking here in Mexico. It's difficult to open a bank account, especially for foreigners. You don't have very good customer service. You don't have very good protection of your money in a lot of cases either. Like they don't have the same type of debit card protection, let's say, as you would in the US versus Southeast Asia tends to have a lot more consumer protections in the banking. Space, they make it easier to bank, they're more friendly. And Asia, Singapore specifically has like the best banks in the whole world. They're known for being the safest banks, uh, in the whole world. So generally speaking, that region does have to have, does tend to have better banking options, at least. Definitely like the Singapores and the Malaysias and stuff like that. And we also have heard that the infrastructure in Southeast Asia on an average basis is much better than that in Latin America. Now I've lived all throughout Latin America, including in Columbia, and I visited, uh, Panama as well and kind of just been all over the place here, and it's gotten better over the last decade for sure. But especially in small towns, it tends to be a little hit or miss in terms of if you're gonna be able to get really, really solid infrastructure. Now, you can always use things like starlink as a backup, but when we're talking about the average internet, I'll, I'll give you one example, and this doesn't even have to do with the infrastructure per se. It almost has more to do with, with the culture, um, in terms of people working remotely and, and things like that. But when you go to a random cafe, even in Guadalajara, they just don't have their shit together as far as. The wifi, like even though they might have a good ISP, um, they don't think about putting multiple hotspots and things like that. I would say that from what we've heard, especially in tourist. Uh, areas like Bali or like Bangkok, they tend to think more about your experience as far as the infrastructure, making sure you've got a good wifi connection at a cafe and things like that. Southeast Asia does tend to have better infrastructure overall. Another thing Asia is known for is better housing. Now that does not mean that the housing in Latin America is awful. Uh, sometimes people will hear about Asia or Latin America or Africa. Africa. They think people live in mud Huts, uh, which is not true. In Latin America, they think people live, I don't know, with like banana leaves on the roof or something. I have no idea. We will get wild comments. And in Asia, they also think they live in huts. Um, sometimes like that is not true in any of these regions. But what we do mean by better housing is that in Southeast Asia, you're definitely gonna find a lot more modern. You're gonna find a lot more luxury In Southeast Asia. It is changing, at least from what we're seeing here in Mexico. I mean, there's new buildings going up all the time and they are focusing on more modern. And more luxury in a lot of these buildings. But you know, Southeast Asia is famous for being able to have a luxurious lifestyle and housing, and that was all the high rises and nice views of the ocean. Yeah. And, and all that. It's not as common here. Here it's a little bit more traditional infrastructure. The houses are probably older, on average, at least here in Mexico. I think our house is about 50 or 60 years old. Yeah. Next, um, is excellent private healthcare in Southeast Asia. Thailand is famous for it. Malaysia is famous for it. So in that sense, they're kind of, uh, on par in terms of healthcare. There are areas in Southeast Asia that are famous for their healthcare. There's areas in Latin America, like Mexico that are famous for their healthcare. So in that case it's, it's a draw. They both have good healthcare and they both also have large communities of foreigners, digital nomads. Um, you know, uh, international crowd, both regions of the world tend to have that because both regions of the world are, you know, very well known to expats and global citizens. Now let's talk about some of the cons of Southeast Asia. So number one, it tends to be a little bit more difficult to integrate into the culture. Now, of course, here in Mexico, Amanda has a little bit more of a, of an added benefit than I do, and the fact that she is Latina and her family is from Cuba. And so there's a lot more in common in terms of the culture, let's say, than me being American and Ukrainian being in Mexico. But even with that said, I've found it, especially with learning the language and, and talking to people in the local language, it's just been a lot easier to integrate into the local culture, make friends. They tend to also have much similar, uh, much more similar culture cultures in Latin America than they do. In Asia, it's less of a culture shock. It's less of a culture shock, and that's why they say that Latin America might be a little bit more of a soft landing than Southeast Asia might be. So it's more difficult to integrate in Southeast Asia. And it's uh, related to that the languages are a lot harder to learn. Like we mentioned the pros of Latin America, Spanish is a lot easier to learn than many of the languages, and it's also much more widely spoken and universal versus you go to Southeast Asia and you're talking about. So many different languages across Asia. You've got Chinese, you've got Japanese, uh, and then going specifically to Southeast Asia, you've got Thai, you've got Viet and Vietnam, and uh, Indonesian, right? You've got all of these different languages. So unless you're planning on spending a bunch of time in a single country and learning that language, uh, for a number of years, which. Some people might not wanna do if they can't get those, uh, extended residencies right away. Like, why are you gonna go to a country that you may only be able to stay in for 90 days at a time and invest the time in learning the local language? I. To then have to go and move and travel somewhere else. So that's another con is that the language languages are much more difficult to learn. We talked about this one time zones totally opposite in Southeast Asia. So if you have any, if you have to be like on American or European business hours, Southeast Asia is basically outta the question.'cause you're going to be on like this totally reverse. Schedule that's going to make it pretty difficult. We also mentioned qualifying for residency often requires a lot more money. Um, and it's also not usually like a permanent residency like Malaysia, you can get a permanent residency by buying, um, real estate and depositing money in a bank account. But for example, with Thailand, it's almost like a membership program, the way that the residency works. And then you keep. Uh, renewing it every few years. Vietnam doesn't even have a residency program, but they are making some changes to that. We did a video about that recently, whereas in Latin America, it's pretty straightforward. It's like, do you have money? Some countries will ask for a background check, maybe put a little bit of money in a bank and you're done. And you can turn that temporary into a permanent, the permanent into a citizenship. So like Amanda mentioned, it's very difficult to get citizenship. But in addition to that, if you're looking to. By property in Mexico and other countries. In Latin America, it's quite easy. Foreigners generally can own property with some exceptions, but in Southeast Asia, best case scenario, you're talking about a long-term lease. Even if you quote unquote buy the property, you're not generally owning the land under the property and you have a lease that you have to renew subject to certain conditions. Um, they're doing that because they're trying to keep most of the property in the hands of. Locals, which makes sense, but it does make our lives as expats a little bit more difficult. In certain countries like Malaysia, they are giving you long-term residence if you buy property and allowing foreigners to own property outright, but that's really more of the exception rather than the rule. Okay, next con of Southeast Asia. For some of you, again, this is a deal breaker depending on what's going on. Very long haul flights to get to and from. United States, Canada, and Europe. I mean, we're, we're talking, I don't know. I've seen some people traveling for 24 hours straight. Yeah. If you've got connections and layover time, absolutely. It can get tricky. And the final one, which could be a pro or a con, depending on the person, is that Southeast Asia tends to just be hot and humid throughout all of Southeast Asia. There are some places like perhaps maybe C Ang Mai in Thailand, which is a little cooler, or Hanoi in Vietnam is also a little bit cooler. But generally speaking, you're looking at hot and humid. And even in the cooler places you might be looking at more extreme summers and things like that. Uh, that could be a pro or a con depending on the person. I mean, if you like humidity, they say it's really good for your skin and it keeps you looking young. Um, and again, it depends on, it could depend on health issues and, and things like that. Which actually, I forgot to add this as a con to Southeast Asia, which I. Could also be a problem in Latin America. But in Latin America, you have more options. There's a lot more air pollution, especially in the big cities in Southeast Asia. It's Asia really, really bad. Yeah. Like it's kind of bad in, uh, Mexico. Like Mexico City's horrible for air pollution. Guha is not great. Um, but Gua hot is still ranks higher than a lot of cities. In Southeast Asia, and again, in Latin America, you have a lot more options in terms of cities. Um, and some aren't going to be as bad with the air pollution as others. But in Southeast Asia, the air pollution, the burn season, all that stuff tends to be really horrendous. So for those of you who perhaps have asthma or sort some sort of health concern where air pollution is a problem, uh, you can forget the cities in Southeast Asia. Maybe you're looking more at like islands and things like that. But that is a con that I forgot to put. On this list, both regions, as you've heard, have their own pros and cons, and obviously this is not an exhaustive list and I'm sure a lot of you will say, Hey, but this country doesn't fit in the mold of what you've said. And, and absolutely this doesn't apply a hundred percent across the board. We're totally generalizing here. If you've got any, any feedback or maybe any outliers, feel free to share those in the comments. Like, Hey, I think that this country actually, um, doesn't necessarily follow that thing that you said. We'd love to hear about it because we're always looking. To learn more about those different countries in these two regions. So based on the list, which one would you pick? Let us know in the comments which one you like better and why does Mexico and Latin America perhaps win? Or do countries like Vietnam and Thailand and Southeast Asia seem to tickle your fancy a little bit more? Just let us know. And if you haven't already subscribed, what are you waiting for? We post some of the best content out there for expats, specifically entrepreneur, expats like yourself. So make sure you subscribe. Uh, don't miss a video, hit that notification bell and like this video if you enjoyed it, and leave a comment down below and if you're interested, finally. And finally, if you need help in choosing the best place for you, or maybe you're looking for real estate business opportunities in other countries and things like that, make sure to book a moving abroad consult. Just go to entrepreneur expat.com/consult. There's an application there so we can kind of get a gist of what your particular situation is, and then we can start making game plans from there. Thanks for watching. See you next time.