Retired Early on Just $1125 in Da Nang Vietnam: This American Veteran Didn't Wait for Social Security!

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This week on the cost of living a broad pod,
we talked with Eddie Colbeth. He retired early in Dnang, Vietnam,
and this American veteran didn't wait.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
For Social Security.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Eddie told us how he'd managed to retire it on
just eleven hundred and twenty five dollars a month, and
why he chose Vietnam over Thailand, Mexico and even his
original home in the United States, San Francisco. On the
cost of Living a broad pod, we compare the best
affordable places to live and retire early in Southeast Asia

(00:31):
and include full monthly budget breakdowns and discuss the pros
and cons of living in different countries and retiring early
in Southeast Asia. I'm Evan A and you're listening to
the Cost of Living a broad Pod.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
I'm Mandy Colbeth. I'm a writer. I spent thirty years
doing it leadership, some consulting around operations and leadership, and
been to Bernie Man thirteen times. I worked there for
a decade. I spent six years in the National Guard.
I worked for state government, federal government, nonprofits, fortune fifty,

(01:05):
mom and pop startups, you name it, I've probably done it.
I grew up in Boston, Dad there told about thirty
five and then spent twelve years in the West Coast,
and then it was just time to get out of
the United States. In twenty thirteen is when I just
decided I was living in San Francisco, and I just
knew like if San Francisco stopped working for me, that
was my last stop in the United States, I would

(01:27):
have to get out.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
I spent not long, about five months in twenty eleven
working at a hostel in San Francisco. I've been teaching
in Mexico at the time, and then I came up
because I made so little teaching that I needed to
make some cash. And it was right when the occupy
movement was happening, which I guess it played out differently

(01:48):
in different cities, but it was intense.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
It was a strong occupy game in Tanfrcisco.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
Yeah, it was very intense, and I was like working
on a hostel right downtown at Taylor and Post. I'd
never been to the city before and I've ever been again.
It felt like a flashpoint. I'm a Canadian non in America,
but being there.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Felt like relative to that was not the best time
to be in the city. San Francisco, from my perspective,
was the greatest city in the world. There was a
mixture of art, culture, education that just transgressed everything. It
was just an amazing place to live. But now it's
just full of rich tech bros. All the artists are gone.

(02:24):
You know, it's fifteen dollars for a light breakfast.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
It felt like there was an old guard and the
sort of new arrivals and are really obvious, you know,
like a tear or rift between them, and that it
was wealth related, right, there was a wealth and equality huge.
It was too intense to be ignored. Let's see that
as a segue and to jump into your what your

(02:47):
budget's like here and viennam as an ex pat, what
your daily costs are, So just let's start right at
the top. When you wake up in the morning, start
with a coffee breakfast. What he usually spending? What's here?

Speaker 2 (02:58):
I eat breakfast at home probably percent of the time.
So I'll make a protein shake, a protein smoothie with
a banana, so that's maybe two dollars for breakfast. Coffee
costs me nothing. There's a there's a market where I
buy my coffee from and it cost me like six

(03:23):
dollars a pound, right, and it's amazing. Copy. I make
the young coffee every morning.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
Traditional fin here is like a very slow drip process
that ends up being really intensely cappinated.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Right. Yeah, but I only drink coffee because I like
the taste. I'm I'm actually immune to caffeine. Really, yeah,
I tried to id. I did an experiment to prove
this when I live in San Francisco. I bought a
super automatic expresso machine and I drank four triple espressos
a day for three months and then I stopped and
no simp, no, no, no, nothing. It's a genetic thing.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
What about lunch, Yeah, A you're cooking, you're going out.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
I go out for lunch left every day and I
have and I always eat local food. Well, once again,
ninety percent of the time when I go out, I
eat local food. Twelve or so local places, most of
them on the other side of the river. So I
just jump on my motorbike and go over and get
lunch and come back.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
Okay, So that's super aforable. Then what's your average span
on the lunch? Two dollars? Two dollars. What's a noodle
soup kind of guy. I'm one of the.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Things that happened to me since I've been here is
I've become an athlete. I've never something I'd never thought
I would ever do. So I met the gym four
days a week. I try to run four days a week.
I'm going to do my first running a marathon in
two weeks. With marathon just five k. But it's something
I haven't done since I was seventeen. And so I

(04:48):
have protein goals I have to eat every day and
right now I'm cutting wanting to get down a fifteen
percent body pat So the thing I pay attention to
is how much protein I eating every day. I always get,
you know, the the fat and carbs. I always got
enough of those, and I ate paleo for a decade,
so I lived. But I'm not doing that anymore. I
can have whatever I want as long as I meet
my protein goals. So that's the main thing I think about.

(05:10):
So I fish like fishcake, soup, yea duck salad, chicken salad,
a beef of bat the yeah, you know.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
And that's interesting too, having a specialized die like that.
Protein is extremely affordable here right, extremely affordable for whether
it's yeah, pig, duck, yeah, fish and chicken and.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Fish I have. I have an optimization problem. It's because
of partially because of my profession, and so I optimize
everything in my life, including my health. And I started
I had some health problems. That's one of the reasons
I moved here last August, and my gut was screwed up.
I couldn't sleep, my energy was off. It was just

(05:55):
a mess. And so I fixed that by eating a
straight up big and diet six months. I intended to
keep doing that, but I couldn't do that and meet
my protein goals because it turns out I have a
sensitivity to I eat too much tofu.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
It's bad. My parents are vegan now and I grew
up in a vegetarian household. Totally, at the end of
the day is being.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Tofu is a complete protein that house all the essential
media assets. And doing my research on having really good
health and longevity, there are three things that I came
across that are essential. One is eating well and that
I'm not going to give into what that means because
it means something different for everyone. Right, there are some

(06:37):
overall things like almost everyone is better off eating a
mostly plant based diet, so I eat plenty of plants.
That's important. But the other two things is doing resistance training.
Especially if you're fifty year over and you're not doing
restance training. What that means is that you are going
to live shorter, have a less healthy life, and be frail.

(06:57):
I have the best health of my life right now,
and the best is a condition of my life right now.
And the other thing is having a VO two max
and a top three percentile for my age group. So
that's my goal to get there in the next two years.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
Yeah, I mean the weight training thing, the resistance like really,
anyone over at thirty, Like I.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Knew high with my leg press today I did three
reps at two hundred and forty kilograms. Nice, and I've
only been working out for six months and three times
my body age.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
So what about dinner? Are you eating out for dinners
as well?

Speaker 2 (07:24):
I actually make dinner at home. Yeah, some chicken and
something else, because chicken is four dollars a pound here
for chicken breasts. You know, season it, make it tasty,
could put it in the air fire. Then I have
protein for two days.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
Are you going like one of the bigger grocery stores
to buying bolt.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
Actually it doesn't matter where you buy it. It's at home,
coffee out.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
You're going out for a bowl of noodles or a
local Vietnamese lunch, dinner primarily being cooked at home.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
And that Friday night, I splurge and I go have
something upscale, usually Western food, might be pizza, could be
a burger and a beer, sushi, ramen.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
R usual sort of. And see what's the price point
for that meal?

Speaker 2 (08:01):
Less than twenty dollars, usually thro around ten.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
So monthly, totally, you're looking at.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
Three hundred dollars for all my food and restaurant expenses
and I'm eating well, it's much better than I so.
I spent the six years prior to this in Mexico,
and on the budget I'm living on here, I could
only go out to eat once or twice a week
and not, you know, not for any kind of expensive meal.
The cost of food here is much cheaper, and it's
and the cost of eating out is it's almost free.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
A ten dollars a day or a three hundred dollars
a month budget for a high protein budget that's focused
and really specific too. Right, Yeah, in some ways you're
asking quite a lot, right, Like, you're not just sandle.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
In all high quality you know, GSE's and flax meal
in my protein shake, thin full of nuts and things
like that, right, Like I'm eating.

Speaker 3 (08:47):
Well, that's great to hear. Pat, Where are you in Mexico?

Speaker 2 (08:50):
I spent a year in Portabayarta, two here's in Mexico City,
three years in San Miguel, day en day.

Speaker 3 (08:57):
What would you say if you're ten dollars a day
roughly for food costs here in Mexico you thinking double
that It would.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
Be the same cost if I didn't eat out, Okay,
but once you start eating out and it depends. Like so,
here's the thing. Whether I'm going to eat a high
protein meal or a vegan meal, I can get it
for the same price here in Mexico. You can get
a protein meal for a pretty low price, similar to
the prices here, maybe two or three dollars. But if

(09:26):
you want a vegan meal, you're going to pay ten
dollars or fifteen dollars because there's no like local vegan
food really here. You're spoiled for choice, Like you can't
you can't throw a dead you can't swing a dead
cat without finding a vegans, newer.

Speaker 3 (09:40):
Health food style of restaurants, and then also traditional Buddhist food.
Vietnamese food is also at least ninety five percent of
it is vegan. This is what I'm really about, right,
trying to share the literal day to day costs of
people's lives, but also show people the example of how
well you can live here, and really giving show people
there's other options, right that they don't don't have to

(10:00):
be trapped or stuck and then overpriced an affordable cost
of living at home wherever home may be. Are you
going out after dinner?

Speaker 1 (10:08):
Is there?

Speaker 3 (10:08):
What's your night life?

Speaker 1 (10:09):
Like?

Speaker 2 (10:09):
What I do in today is kind of governed by
my energy levels, what I'm how much I'm supposed to
expend that day. I'm pushing myself really hard, especially to
somebody who's freaking sixty years gold. Right, So if i
haven't met my goals for the day, then I'll go
out and take an eight kilometer walk after dinner, going
on the beach, you know, like take my shoes off,

(10:32):
walk up the beach, and then maybe walk back on
the sidewalk.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
Living in a city like this on the beach where
a lot of people their primary nightlife activity. You're going
to go for a stroll on the beach, maybe you
stop for a drink, whether it's alcoholic or not alcala,
or maybe you just enjoy the beauty of it.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
I think this is the best beach city in Asia,
if not the world. This city has the best walking
of almost any other city I've been in. I love
living in San Miguel, so beautiful, and the walking there
was nice, but you had to be like anytime you
were walking you were pricing agility because the streets aren't
even right here, like you could be you could be
disabled and go on a long walk and be okay,

(11:12):
there's nothing to hurple o. Everything's flat.

Speaker 3 (11:14):
It makes me imagine just like people leaving La Cucaracha
like zig zagging up the very yeah, very different. It's
very flat here. It's a temperate climate too, so it's
not especially after dinner. It's not too a good mix
of locals and expats.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
And you can walk along on the on the ocean,
or you can go to the river and walk along
the river too, and that's just as beautiful.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
What about gym memberships. Obviously you're working out, you're doing
a lot of athletics. Staff I spend twenty five bucks
a month on a gym membership. But for the first
six months I was here, I had a personal trainer.
I was spending considerably more with the trainer. Costs like
how many sessions a week?

Speaker 2 (11:47):
Full breakdown for twenty sessions at once eight dollars a session,
ten dollars a session. Which gym do I go to
a place called Lucia Private Fitness.

Speaker 3 (11:56):
Is it here? And then tone?

Speaker 2 (11:58):
Yeah, yeah, it's like I'm minute walk that way.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
Nice.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
It's a small gym, but it's super clean, it's not crowded,
and it's air conditioned.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
Oh beautiful. I mean the air conditioning, especially in the
May to August window, I think is necessary, if not
just a bonus.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
I had a good trainer.

Speaker 3 (12:15):
What kind of sessions go to do?

Speaker 2 (12:17):
Just? I was just wait, so I have the genetics
for weightlifting? I had no idea. I put on sixteen
pounds of muscle nice in six months, which is insane. Yeah. No,
I tell people about it, and I just say, no,
that's not possible.

Speaker 3 (12:31):
One hundred and fifty dollars US or one hundred and
sixty dollars US for twenty sessions eight dollars a session
all in for three sessions a week with a trainer,
a gym membership twenty five maybe one hundred and twenty five.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Well, the gym membership was included when I was just training.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
Great that you're talking about one hundred dollars a month.
I get full personal training, three sessions a week, a gym,
small gym, the facilities with air conditioning.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
Not overcrowded, the equipment isn't you know, old, it's not sneaky.
What about health insurance? Do you go with health care
self insurance? So I was paying for insurance in Mexico
when I was working. Premiums kept going up. Once you
start getting older, they start trying to screw you with
insurance premiums. And they were trying to phase out the

(13:17):
plan I was on, so they kept pumping it up
and it got up almost four hundred dollars a month.
And I started doing the math. I'm like, I didn't
spend you know, a thousand dollars last year on insurance.
There's no way I'm going to pay for that again.
So I figure, including medication, exams, everything, I'm paying maybe
one hundred dollars a month for medical expels here maybe
seventy dollars of that a month is medication.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
I've had full surgery here and then also twice we
paid for birth. Private hospital stings can get into thousands
of dollars, but my experience has been that when if
you're paying that kind of money here and not tens
of thousands of dollars, just thousands of dollars, you're getting
premium and like incredible top of the line service with

(13:59):
like usually foreign educated Vietnamese or VITQ so Vietnamese nationals
who come back from America, Canada or Europe and are
having some sort of private practice here.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
So give you an example. I had some dermatology issues
I wanted some help with and I went to Finmeck,
I went to Family Hospital and was misdiagnosed in both places.
And then I went to a guy into private practice
at ABC Medical who works full time at the public
dermatology hospital. Both None of those other two doctors didn't
speak English, they had to have translators. This guy spoke

(14:32):
English and was spot on with his diagnosis and took
care of everything I needed, like on the spot. It's
kind of hit or miss. One of the problems with
healthcare and Vietnam or challenges, especially for foreigners, is there's
no there's no website, there's no place where you can
go to get ratings or where you can rate all
word them out. And if you don't have connections and
you have a problem, you're kind of screwed, especially if

(14:56):
you're not good with medical terminology, if you don't not
to speak to doctor.

Speaker 3 (15:00):
So many good points toeing on there. One is that
Denying probably has the cleanest air of any city in Vietnam,
but in general, air pollution is a serious issue in
Southeast Asia and in Vietnam, and the combination of air
pollution and extreme heat causes a lot of foreigners to
have serious skin and derminological issues. I had times in

(15:22):
Hochiman City when it was you know, it cut to
forty degrees and I was running and working out unbearable,
like a whole flaking, itching, bright red, and yeah, same
thing is doctor after doctor. That is one of the downsides, definitely,
I think, especially if you're coming from somewhere like Canada
or one of the coasts of the US, where you

(15:43):
know essentially the air quality is perfect. Yep, your body
can react.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
I'm writing a book right now called Solo Ager's guide
to getting the hell out of America, and it's basically
a step by step process you can follow it to
relocate to Southeast Asia, aimed at people who retirement age
attached to the US just doesn't working for anymore like me.
And one of the things I recommend people to do is,
there are five countries in Southeast Asia that are come here,

(16:09):
figure out, you know, pick at least three places, do
a scouting trip before you come here. And one of
the things on the list of things you have to
do is bring them list of medications, go to a pharmacy.
Are they available? If they aren't, are there substitutionsgure and
so you can figure that into your budget. And that
alone can take a week to find the right pharmacists
to get the right answer.

Speaker 3 (16:28):
For one of my members' only videos on YouTube, I
literally walk into a pharmacy and go through medication by medication,
the sort of fifteen or twenty most common or popular
medications and price them out. But pharmacies here are great.
Pharmacists have the power to prescribe you anything over the
counter because it's because there's a lack of doctors in

(16:49):
rural areas. But Essentially, it's legal for indiannam for pharmacists
to prescribe any medication they have. I didn't know that
you should still see a doctor, but it does mean
that you can go into the pharmacy and you literally
just have the name of your actual medicine. For example,
I have a hypothyroid and I just walk into a
pharmacy and say, Hi, I need level thyrox one hundred.
Don't have to bring them a script, especially if you're

(17:10):
going non generic drugs extremely affordable. So here there's a
non generic Japanese version of the drug I take, and
then the piser version. The piser version is cheap, about
a third of the cost at a home, but I've
asked for the non generic it's less than ten percent
of the pest. So we're talking three hundred dollars a
month for food eating out specialized high protein diet, one

(17:34):
hundred dollars a month for gym membership and training with
a personal trainer, about one hundred dollars a month for healthcare.
So far we're at about five hundred dollars a month.
Let's get into some of the real like basic monthly
fees FIMI, your water, you electricity, your phone bill, data packages,
internet in rent.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yeah, I pay less than twenty bucks a month for electricity,
like four dollars a month for water, and then data
on my phone, I pay what twenty dollars a quarter
or I think it's five gigabits a day of data,
which is insane. I could never use it.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yeah, there tend to be really immense data plan. So
I did an interview with the guy who does YouTube
live streaming. He had the most insane data package I'd
ever heard of. His name's Will Travels with a z
or Ze, essentially unlimited data, and he was paying hundred
twenty dollars a month.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
So yeah, and a plan like the one I have
would cost seventy dollars a month in the.

Speaker 3 (18:31):
US seventy dollars a month, and here's a.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
Quarter dollars, so it's like seven dollars a month.

Speaker 3 (18:37):
So about yeah, ten percent of the cost is pretty realistic.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
I think that's true anyplace in Asia. Most of Asia
is very little wired way.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
If you are doing scouting trips are coming first. Just
as a traveler. You can do an ESEM package now too,
which is great. I even get those before you even
arrive here.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
The only thing is you really have to before you
get here. You kind of have to know what you
want because you can't just add more money to them.
That's downside. You have to get a new or just
going locally. Once you're here, landing with data on their
phone is I do? And everything is almost priceless until
them things started. I would be like literally I had
like a taped sheet with like the Taiwan SAM, the

(19:15):
Japan SAM, the Thailand sim those days. Yeah, not great, wow,
better than paying US prices.

Speaker 3 (19:21):
Transportation? Are you renting a motorcycle? Are you taking car hires?
Are you biking? Are you walking?

Speaker 2 (19:27):
I bought a new motorbike like a month after I
got here. Tell me about it, twenty twenty four, Yamaha
Grande Flat dark blue. It's the third motorbike I boned
in Asia. Free maintenance for the first three years. You
don't want to lose a bunch of money every month
to hear a long term you can buy a bike
and they handle everything, and like all I had to
do is walk around the corner and pick up my

(19:47):
bike just.

Speaker 3 (19:48):
Like a flat one time.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
Yeah you could. So they have a program where you
can for whatever reason, you don't have fifteen hundred dollars
to buy any more. That's what a new motorbike costs.
They have a buy to own program. They'll give you
a brand new motorbike and you and you pay it
off monthly. Very reasonable. All the money you're paying, most
of that money you're paying goes towards the bike, not
to the rest. And they also have a buyback program,
so if I had to leave suddenly, there's already an

(20:12):
agreed upon price that goes down every month I'm here,
and they'll just buy it back. So it's super super easy,
low risk, and we'll with them. By Mackee, I think
I lose eight percent a month.

Speaker 3 (20:22):
If you're staying for a year, it's about one hundred
dollars a month ish ish, yeah, eighty, So we'll say
eighty dollars a month, and that's including service everything.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
I fill my tank every other week and it costs
me like eighty thousand. It's a little over three dollars.
I walk run most places, but like I, if I'm
going over the bridge, if I'm going more than a
few kilometers, then I got on the bike, or if
I've already expended all the energy I should have for

(20:53):
the day, I don't want to burn out, right, So
then I get on the bike for the rest of
the day, go everywhere.

Speaker 3 (20:57):
Eighty five dollars a month is well less than three
dollars day for transportation.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
My sont costs is nothing per month, right by, Let's
go three years so far, five hundred dollars a year,
let's say, and I could sell that bike for one
thousand dollars in three years, you know, so I would
have paid five hundred dollars and one hundred fifty dollars
a year.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
Not a great bike, but my first like semi automatic
in Hojiman City, I bought from a coworker mine who
was leaving. They bought it for whatever, three hundred dollars.
I bought it for them for two hundred and fifty dollars,
and he'd been driving it for years, right, tol In.
But I didn't know I been sold. I would have
done the same thing, right, I would have just sold
it for essentially eighty percent of what I paid for

(21:38):
it after driving it around for three years.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, things have changed, you know. When I was here
in two thousand and thirteen, I bought a duel sport
Yamaha and Hanoi, and I wrote it four thousand kilometers
across Vietnam, two thousand those kilometers up by the frontier,
so I've seen most of Vietnam by motorcycle. I paid
maybe fifteen hundred dollars for it, sold it for twelve hundred.
But back then, all you had to do was exchange
the green card. There was no paperwork, there was nothing,

(22:02):
and then you just own it. If you had the
green card, you own the motorbikes. But now are you licensed?
I am, But well, so here's the deal. To drive
here legally as a tourist, you have to have an
international driver's permit from a country that's signed the nineteen
sixty eight treaty. The US is not one of those countries.
Canada is, Mexico is. I'm a permanent resident of Mexico.

(22:23):
I have Mexican driver's license and I got my IDP
there before I came here, so I can drive legally
drive here. Ninety nine per seven Americans cannot legally drive here,
and they change the law January first. It's the fines
are getting very expensive. You're doing illegal things on a motorbike.
I have heard this, and I could have bought that
motorcycle in my own name. But if you do that,

(22:44):
then you get MM plates, to get special plates that
are foreign or only. And for whatever reason, Vietnamese people
don't want to buy bikes with MM plates because now
you're not supposed to just change cards anytime you change ownership,
you're supposed to register the bike in your own name
and get you know, it's a whole thing. My goal
is to be as legal as I can, right, so
that if I do something stupid, it's you know, lower cost.

Speaker 3 (23:09):
Another alternative, especially at first, is if you want the
bike but you can't drive leaguely, to go with a
fifty cc right like this, one of the smaller electric
or the Venus scooters, because yeah, fifty cc or lower.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
Still still legal. Yeah, but electric motorbikes are no longer
legal without a license you can drive it, it has
to be a pedal motorbike, a pedaled electric, and it
can only go to a cretain speed.

Speaker 3 (23:36):
Now, coming back in the comments, I've made various past
videos about you know you can and can't do this,
and then's when I first got here in twenty nineteen,
you could essentially get as drunk as you want and
drive wherever you want without a license, and it's it's
you know, no one was wearing helmets, which is we're
not talking about that long ago, right.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
Well, when I was here in twenty thirteen, there was
a helmet.

Speaker 3 (23:56):
Law, a gradual change, right like things seem to get
instituted for in Hochimen City, like the original the big
crackdowns the police and prackuns happened there. Whereas you'll go
to annoy any people still are wearing helmets right now
today in twenty twenty five, and that's what I've heard
is that they're starting to do the sidewalk clear off
passengers without helmets, kids without helmets.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
Whole issue. Well, the thing is is that because there
are no standards for helmets, it really doesn't matter if
you're wearing a helmet or not. Unless you're wearing a helmet,
it's certified, you know, safety made it, and I'm wearing one.
But ninety five percent of people out there are wearing
essentially plastic bowls on their heads with straps.

Speaker 3 (24:33):
That's a very good point, is that regardless of in
what way you're getting on a motorcycle, if you are
getting on a motorcycle, it is one hundred percent worth
investing minimum twenty to forty US dollars to buy a
full back helmet that's going to cover your head. I've
seen traffic fatalities where people had, you know, like we're
talking about the bowltop lasted helmets, where people are wearing

(24:55):
those of it.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
They're wearing bicycle helmets. Yeah, anything that looks like a helmet.

Speaker 3 (24:59):
A couple or budget lines with the month travel or
recreation costs, either within the country or within Southeast Asia.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
I have a small retirement. I have some savings, but
it's about seventeen months until I can actually start collecting
Social Security and once I do so, I don't have
plenty of money. But now I'm erring on the side
of caution in case something goes wrong, if I get sick,
if I get hurt. I want to have money in
the bank. They care stuff, right, And I'm not wealthy.

(25:29):
I'm okay by Vietnamese standards. I might be wealthy, but
not by my standards, So I'm a little cautious on
the money I spend. Every other visa, I try to
leave the country for at least a couple of days
just because I want to stay on the good side
of Vietnamese immigration. I don't want to see them just
see me do a border hop every time. And I
don't really know if it makes a difference. But if
I was a border guarden, I saw that, I'd be Okay,

(25:51):
this guy, you know, he's not just here all the time.
So I've done the visa thing on the bus YEP,
which is it's okay.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
What is a what are your costs? Like there's Linn
the lind visa visa.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
It's a couple hundred bucks.

Speaker 3 (26:05):
Yeah, one hundred and sixty or two hundred bucks every
three months.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
It all depends on what you need from them, and
if if you need them to expedite your visa because
you haven't applied for one outside the country. They used
to be able to get it ahead of time about
seventy percent of the time, so they say, But when
I did it, that stopped and I had to get
your visa day. Oh, and that's like an extra fifty
dollar cost. So what I do now is when I'm

(26:28):
outside the country, I apply for my next two visas.
You can apply for multiple visas at once, right, So
my next two visas are ready and they start in
the same day. And so for my next visa, I
already have a trip book to Bangkok, and I got
it through a Goda, just the airline website itself, and
they both had packages for overnights days. I was actually
to get able to get a flight and a hotel

(26:49):
for cheaper than the flight cost alone. So I can
stay a night Bangkok for free.

Speaker 3 (26:53):
And a go to Expedia or if you want to
support my affiliate, you can use the link to trip
dot com. But yeah, those packages often are cheaper. Go
to ninety day visa. Yep, what's the cost of that
package plus twenty five for visa?

Speaker 2 (27:05):
I fIF twenty five if you want a single entry yet,
but fifty it's all. I think it's always better to
have a double entry, so I always apply for one,
even though I don't use it very often. So fifty
dollars for the visa, and then one hundred bucks for
around trip plane ticket becau's one hundred and because one
hundred and sixty four one hundred and fifty six hundred
fifty six, I think we're are on trip including a

(27:26):
night in.

Speaker 3 (27:27):
Hotel two hundred maybe at your food cost two hundred
and twenty dollars or two hundred and fifty dollars every
three months. Very affordable. Maybe another seventy five dollars a month.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Retiring here is risky, it's not for everyone. You go
to Cambodia, you go to the Philippines, you can go
to Thailand. They all have retirement visas. Cambodia is the
easiest to get. All you have to do is show
up and apply and they give it to you. You don't
need to make any financial reforments. You do it once
a year, super easy. It's cheap. What does it cost.
You could take one hundred hundred dollars, Yeah, someplace around there,

(27:57):
some place seventy and twenty annual visa or something that.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
And the Philippines almost no one gets a visa. You
get a retirement visa if you want for years from America,
but almost no one.

Speaker 4 (28:10):
Gets one because you can just show up and extend
your visa forever. They think you had six months on arrival,
and you can just keep renewing it. There's been some
noise that they're going to crack down on it, but
they haven't.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
Yet, and there's no In Thailand, there's the retirement. There's
also the for sacro d ETV the sort of digital
nomad that Viva And there are a lot of ways
followed by that.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
Where do you live? What's your rent? What's that place is?

Speaker 2 (28:35):
Say, I live a five minute walk from the beach
here in Antong, and I pay three sixty a month
for rent right now, but my lease is up in
about thirty five days, and I'm going to look for
a place in the six to eight million range?

Speaker 3 (28:51):
And how long was the original lease?

Speaker 2 (28:54):
So the building I'm in they only will only sign
six month leases. So I signed a six month lease
and two months in another room opened up that was
neck to a construction, but I had a much nicer
view and I don't mind a little noise for a
better view. So I got my rent cut by a
million by moving in a room next door. They would
only extend it six months from when I was in there, right,

(29:16):
which is annoying. I want to you release.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
What's your payment structure? Are you paying a down posit?
Did they want the six first month, last month, first month,
last line? Yeah, that's pretty standard. The only time I
see longer months is if you're unning a house. Yeah,
so we ran to the three months. Yeah, we're doing
three month increments, and if.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
You want to pay six months, maybe you can get
a better monthly price in the rent.

Speaker 3 (29:37):
Let's put it all together. We're talking three hundred for
your food costs for the gym, including personal trainer and interconditioning.
That's four hundred, Roughly one hundred for medical pharmaceutical et cetera.
Five hundred a month electricity, water full. We're talking about
roughly twenty five dollars a month, five twenty five a
month transportation another seventy five, six hundred throwing the visa

(30:02):
six seventy five. I'm gotcha what eleven twenty five ish about?

Speaker 2 (30:06):
I usually spend under twelve hundred a month for recurring costs. Yeah,
you know, if i'd go crazy buying something on Zadi. Well,
you know, like there was my budget. I spend about
a million a month on some place preen five, between
twenty and forty dollars a month on massages as well.

Speaker 3 (30:24):
Even with that boss, right that did you ever a
twelve hundred a month five this you're giving yourself quite
a bit of leniency to roll it over for a
little additional here or there.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
Yeah, And I mean I have a luxury studio on
the tenth floor with panoramic view with the city, nice
pool on the roof. Room gets twice clean twice a month.
I've never paid maybe when I was when I was
living with roommates. When I was nineteen, I was paying
this much rent. But since then no.

Speaker 3 (30:52):
Nobody believed by pasta live in when I lived in
a hoche Been city and are COSTI living here is
probably half? Oh yeah, we're an expensive disc because I
was living close to my work. We're paying sixty percent
to live in de day what we paid in ho
Chi min City. But if we're paying sixty percent, it's
because we're bending on some extra things now with the
money being saved.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
Till ho Chi Minh gets public transportation, I would even
think of living there once it has it though. It'll
be a great city. The first legs of the subway
line went in a few months ago. It's an experience
I would never trade having had. It.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
Highly unlikely that I'm going to spend more time living there,
unless my laws end up back there. They're not there now,
but they do have property there. I would suggest that
if you get a job there, specifically a ho Chi Minh,
and it's a really good job, which happened to men
because it's sort of the hub of the economy in
this country is in that city. Fine, go there, but
ho Chiman City is not comparable to Bangkok, bollenpoor. It

(31:46):
has some of the amenities of a modern city, but
it's really not a deult city.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
It's just becomes so congesting.

Speaker 3 (31:52):
It's very polluted. How do you make money? Are you retired?
Do you have savings?

Speaker 2 (31:57):
So I am technically retired working I'm just writing and well,
I'm going to start a YouTube channel to start building
an audience to promote my books. I hadn't point gotten
around it that yet. I just spent the last week
rebuilding my website. What were you working on? So you
were working in Mexico before. The last good, full time
hourly job I had was for a cloud services start

(32:19):
out a college roommate a friend of mine needed help
with and I had just finished a gig in Thailand,
so I went back to Boston for two years to
help him run that, but it kind of crashed and burned.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
What didn't feel like living in Boston after coming back
from Thailand.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
It's the first time in my life where I understood
why the US had such strict traffic laws. I lost
my scleen.

Speaker 3 (32:43):
In Thailand on a motorway.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
Yeah, I shattered it and I had to do an
emergency foreectomy. But amazing hospital experience. It's like going to
resort the hospital. I was there at a private room, a
pull up couch from my girlfriend, good food, everyone spoke English.
The care was amazing.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
How long we're in Thailand for two years? What are
the pros of Thailand? And obviously there must be some
cons if you've moved on.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
Well, the pros are that Thailand is more developed, It's
easier to get things done. Bangkok, where I live for
a year, has amazing public transportation to twenty four hour city,
the mega city. You can do anything anytime anywhere. Food's amazing.
But since I left, the street food scene in Bangkok
has deteriorated greatly because the city changed the rules about

(33:31):
street food and ninety percent of the street food stands
an so that means eating there's a lot more expensive now.
And they call Thailand the Land of a thousand smiles,
and that's because the Ties have a smile for every feeling,
and that feeling does not necessarily mean I like you.
The Viet people are much more genuine than the Thai people.
Thailand is a very into a country in the way

(33:52):
japan is, and the Ties think of themselves the way
the Japanese do as the master race, and they're better
than other nationalities. So as a foreigner in Thailand, you're
just you're never going to fit in. You're never going
to They're always you know, if you're in, if it's
between a tie and you, the tires are always going
to pick themselves. So that's kind of a big downside

(34:12):
for me. I feel like the Vietnamese are a lot
more straightforward, a lot more honest. You're going to know
where you stand with someone, You're not gonna have to guess.
But it's a little harder to get things done here
because it's not as developed. The healthcare isn't as good,
shopping is a little more difficult.

Speaker 3 (34:25):
And what about the Mexico comparison, how long we're in Mexico,
what were those mass aspects of living there for you,
and what were the downsides?

Speaker 2 (34:32):
There's very little difference in living in cities in Mexico
and living in cities in the United States. You can
buy all the same things. There are costcos all over Mexico,
you can Amazon delivers for nearly the same price. Of course,
it's thirty percent cheaper to live there. People are very friendly,
very warm, very open. I feel more comfortable here in

(34:53):
six months than I did there in six years.

Speaker 3 (34:55):
How do you feel at the locals and the Ennamese
three tow here?

Speaker 2 (34:58):
It's really crazy. You go on you go on Reddit
and you see always people complaining about getting scammed in Vietnam,
and you know, I've been scammed a few times in
the forty countries I've traveled through. But you might get
overcharged for something now and again. That's about it.

Speaker 3 (35:13):
I mean, I do think there's a regional variance, a
strong regional variance to that aspect of Vietnam, whether especially
if you're living at Hochiu Min City or Hanois versus
a place like one of the beef cities like the
Nang Naitrange or Queen On, which are generally more welcoming
of foreign expats because their economies are dependent upon foreign expats,

(35:34):
whereas there are parts of Hanoi or Hochemon City that
are a lot more local, a lot less interested in
having sort of outsiders.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
I haven't been to either of those cities since twenty thirteen.
Back then I didn't really run into any problem. But
I'm also a season traveler.

Speaker 3 (35:51):
This is a broader question, not specifically when you came
here in August, Why did you leave America?

Speaker 2 (35:58):
You know you're still living walking to me, if I
go to the United States, I feel a low level
of anxiety the entire time I there. I'm there, and
it's not it's not it's coming from like the atmosphere
from other people. People are so stressed out in the
United States.

Speaker 5 (36:13):
You're born, you go to school, you get a job,
and you work that job for forty years, and if
you're lucky and you still have health at that point
and you have some kind of investment, maybe you can retire.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
But for many people that they can't just retire. They
have to get some shitty job bagging groceries because they
can't get it, you know, because they're older. They can't
get a good job anymore, because the agism is real. Right, So,
just like, who wants to live like that? I never, like,
I always took time off to travel, you know, I

(36:48):
took time off for education in the middle of my life.
I didn't just do all you know, I didn't do that,
get on the hamster wheel thing, work fifty weeks a year.
Screw that. You know, that's bullshit. But ninety percent of
my friends did that are still doing it, certainly all
my family has. Before you came to Denying or to Vietnam,
what kind of research were you doing?

Speaker 3 (37:09):
Why day? What brought you here?

Speaker 2 (37:11):
I mean, I've I've traveled extensively through self East Asian.
When I was here in twenty thirteen, my goal was
to travel through Southeast Asia to find the country I
wanted to live in and start teaching English, and ended
up in Thailand. I really wanted to like the Philippines,
but the food sucks. It's planned. I mean, you know,
I'm sure there's some food in the Philippines it's good.

(37:32):
But deal breaker for me is I have to like
the local food. Love the local food, because I'm going
to eat it every day. If you move to a
new country and you don't love the local food, then
you're then you better be you know, you better have
a very healthy budget. And it's just culturally weird to
not eat the local food. Philippines was out same thing.
You know, Cambodian food is like Thai food, but without
the spices, so you can get by with it. But

(37:53):
it's like Colombian food. I lived in Mediane for six months.
Colombian food is like Mexican food spices, but it's dead boring.
But here the food is great. I prefer Vietnamese food
over type food. I think it's healthier, it's less fat east.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
How long were in the Philippines? What were the positives?

Speaker 2 (38:09):
I was there for six weeks. I started Manila, went
up north to Segata to the rice terraces. Spent a
week or so up there, and I mean, that's the
most beautiful place in the Philippines by bar that I've
been to, and there are more shades of green than
you can possibly imagine. But traveling through the rest of
the country by bus back then, at least as you're
driving down the highway, all you see is white concrete,

(38:30):
bill dance, no color, not just white concrete everywhere, even
in Manila, in the old town Crepid. But they're like,
I didn't go to Baggyo, I didn't go to some
of the other big cities. And I know there's one
city that's kind of at a higher elevation that has
a lot of expats. That's really pretty. But I didn't
make it there. I think it was called But I
went down to the islands, I went scuba diving, I

(38:52):
got my Advanced open Water Certificate. I wouldn't recommend that.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
What's the cost of living comparison for you Philippines Highland Vietna.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
If you were to eat local food, then the Philippines
would be in the middle, and Thailand would be, you know,
on the higher end, not by a discernible amount. But
if I was living in the in the Philippines, I
would be cooking almost all my meals at home, so
like it would be a little higher. Because the Philippines
imports most of its food. You don't grow anything really,
so even just eating, you know, the local food, it's

(39:20):
all coming from out of the country. So your food
by just going to be higher.

Speaker 3 (39:23):
Vietnam one of the world's biggest rice producers and coffee producers,
so had not to mention the incredible fruit.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
Eating out, eat and cooking homes about the same tailand
tegment is here, but it's probably what ten more expensive.

Speaker 3 (39:36):
How about the language bearer? Obviously that's another big difference
between the Philippines versus Thailand. Or Vietnam.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
So I'm dyslexic. I flunked out of my first language class,
French when I was in the seventh grade, and subsequently
a float flunked out of multiple Spanish classes, an Italian
class when I was in Italy, and a German class.
So learning languages for me is really really hard and
it's never been a problem. I've traveled through forty countries.

(40:02):
I used to have this fold up card. I bought
this laminated card that had pictograms on it and and
words in different languages, and you could I could just
pick that up, you know, and show anyone. Okay, I
want a hotel room, I want a doctor. I won't
never once I traveled that. I carry that thing for
ten years, then use it once?

Speaker 3 (40:17):
Are you using trans like? I Google trans like?

Speaker 2 (40:20):
So started traveling when there wasn't an Internet, right, Sometimes
you just pointed things, you gesture, You find somebody in town.
They speaks English. You try to speak the language, you
start butchering it and people start talking English to you.
But yeah, now, of course I use a translator app
and it worked. You know, they weren't great.

Speaker 3 (40:34):
How is that Indian novel?

Speaker 2 (40:35):
Like?

Speaker 3 (40:35):
If you ever Brad struggled with it at all, or.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
Just yeah, because the problem with with the language apps
is for Ti and Vietnamese, there's not a direct, oneder
one translation between them. So if you want to have
a serious conversation with somebody you don't want to be
mis understood, then you have to use something like open
Ai to do the translation, because the translator apps just
aren't smart enough to pick up nuances.

Speaker 3 (40:57):
What about some of the misconceptions, the stereotypes of Vietnam
that you had, or maybe that people told you or
that you got from YouTube or whatever before you arrived.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
So first time I was here was in two thousand
and nine, and you know, I'm a veteran. I knew
a lot of a lot of Vietnam veterans, you know,
I served with some. And when I got here, I
was a little nervous that the Vietnamese people were gonna
be like, I don't know, angry towards me or unwelcoming,
because you know, because I served in the military. Staying
at a hotel in Hanoi, and I had a conversation

(41:31):
with an old guy that lived there, his family ran
the place, and he's like, no, we don't you don't
have any animosity towards towards America. The past is the past.
That was really my only head of hesitation of coming
here is you know, going and back then. The museum
in Ho Chi Minh, I mean in the Hanoi is
called the American War Crime Museum. They don't call it
that anymore. And that was interesting seeing all the propaganda
in there and get but seeing in Vietnam War. Most

(41:53):
people in the West, all they know about Vietnam is
Vietnam War. Absolutely, but I don't know, like I'm not
aware of any other stereotypes. Asia is super safe. The
only places I've felt less safe or less endanger. Places
I've felt less safe than the US are sketchy border towns,
Eastern European border towns, and Central American border towns.

Speaker 3 (42:15):
Do you feel that Thailand, Philippine, and Vietnam, regardless, all
safe options not a problem.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
If you're an idiot and you go up and get
ship faced at a bar and then smoke a couple
of joints and you're walking around stumbling around, expect something
bad to happen, like you would in any city in
the world. Right, But if you're not an idiot, no,
I mean, like, the worst thing will happen is pettit
that it's very subjective what I mean by that, or selective. Rather,

(42:43):
if you're a white old guy like me, you're safe
almost anywhere in the world because criminal organizations don't want
to get in trouble with the United States government comison.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
There is Mexico. When something happens to a tourist, it
does occasionally happens. It's a shit.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
Yeah. Somebody made a post on a Facebook group when
I was moving in for to my arta, Oh it's
so dangerous here. So I'm like, that's bullshit. So I
went on the FBI Crime Statistic site and I looked
up murders in the city I was living in, and
on average, one American per year was murdered. Finding me
a city in the US that has one murder a year, right, exactly.

(43:22):
So yeah, it depends what your demographic. But Vietnam is
an exception to that in that it's one of the
safest countries in the world to single for solo female travelers. Yes,
super safe. Violence against women here is almost non existent.
I mean domestic violence sure, but random violence no, It's
not like Mexico where femicide is an epidemic and young

(43:42):
women being a young woman in Mexico. Mexico is the
most dangerous demographic aside from traffic. It is extremely safe
to be here and the traffic thing. If you're coming
from a western or developed country. It's about your own
responsibility for me a little and saying and I am

(44:02):
a little when it comes to writing, like I I
write like a Vietnamese. I did before I came here.
I mean when I was a kid, I spent ten
years off the point scale. I couldn't get any more point.
I couldn't get a higher fine per year for my insurance. Yeah,
because I was always driving like an idiot. Well here
I fit right in. Yeah, they go at the fish school, right. Well,

(44:24):
you have to be aggressive absolutely. If you're timid and
you hesitate, then don't get on the bike.

Speaker 3 (44:29):
What's something you've learned or you think foreigners can learn
from Vietnamese culture?

Speaker 2 (44:34):
The Buddhist perspective of kind of going with the flow,
trying not to have expectations about things, just being accepting
of other people.

Speaker 3 (44:42):
And what's the inverse. What's something that you feel like
the Vietnamese culture could learn from your culture? From American culture.

Speaker 2 (44:50):
Well, a lot of people come here and they they
think Vietnam people are rude or disrespectful, and they just
don't understand the history of the being of these people.
They don't understand what it was like after the Vietnam
War and how hard it was for people to live
and if you weren't aggressive in a food line, your

(45:11):
family would not get fit. And that just became part
of the culture. And it doesn't mean that people are
inconsiderate or rude. It's just this thing that it takes
generations to fix. But since the US reinstitute of diplomat
relations with Vietnam, things have improved immensely here. The standard
of life has gone up immensely. But you still, you know,

(45:33):
you have grandmothers and grandfathers that had a horrible life,
and yeah, some of them aren't the happiest people in
the world the way they grew up in the lives
they had, but that's not their fault. You know, learn
a little bit about the culture before you judge it.
Have a little compassion.

Speaker 3 (45:47):
Yeah, I have a member's only video where I go
through the history of it, essentially to turn around from
extreme poverty after the all psychone in seventy five and
the war with China all the way through to the
end of sanctions and the economic renovations. The level of
competitiveness or what can come off as like me first
attitude comes is a direct result of food scar city

(46:11):
and poverty.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
Unlike Parisians who have no excuse. I spent eight weeks
on a motorcycle rally, the Paris to Panama motorcycle Rally
with eighty Parisians. At the end of the day, I'd
have all my luggage, I'd be going to my elevator,
and people carry nothing to just cut in front of me.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
I wanted to tick them. How do you mean people here?
Social life, whether it's friends, dating. One of the biggest
struggles obviously living as an expat as a retire is isolation, loneliness.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
The first thing is I positive psychology optimized my life,
and one of the things I've developed is resilience, right,
and resilience is what the US Army uses to train
people to not have to prevent PTSP right, So I'm
super resilient. I can deal with being lonely. It doesn't
really impact me, but I've trained myself for that. I've

(47:00):
lived in when I lived in Menagine. The level of
English was non existent and my interaction with people was
very low, but it wasn't a problem. It didn't get
me to press my bomb ways to stay busy and
I would you know, and people were super nice when
you could actually communicate with them. So that's the first
thing is I have a really good coping strategy. I
have a very good mental health toolbox that keeps me saying.

(47:20):
And beyond that, people of the gym, there are tons
of meetups. There's there's an improv class, gaming nights, There's
tons of stuff to do if you're if you're interested
in something, there's probably at least thirty forty fifty one
hundred other people around interested in what you're interested in.
You can hang out with them and do stuff.

Speaker 3 (47:37):
And are you finding those primarily through Facebook units, Facebook Reddit,
there's a reddit to nang or read a Vietnam reddit.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
Yeah, but Reddit Vietnam should be avoided.

Speaker 3 (47:48):
Yes, Memes Mostly, what's something that I can do or
anyone else can do to make themselves more resilient, like
day to day.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
Google positive psychologycology resilience and and you know and and
learn what it means and how to do it. There is. Actually,
the US Army has a resilience training program in a PDF.
You can just download it, put a group of friends
together and work on it as a team. The difference
between positive psychology and all the other modalities is that
the goal of positive psychology is to have optimal mental health,

(48:17):
where all the other modalities the goal is to have
absence of disease. And I don't know about you, but
I don't want to just be disease free. I want
to be great. Yeah, right, I want to have optimal
I want to have the best mental health I can
possibly have. To do that, it means understanding humans, right,
and understand humans, you have to study positive psychology, cognitive neuroscience,

(48:38):
and behavioral economics. The intersection of those three things is
human motivation. And if you understand that, the more you
understand about that, the more you understand about yourself. Right.
And then if you live an introspective life, find a
lot together, that's the sweet spot. That's how you get
to be a better person and be more service to
the world, to be healthier.

Speaker 3 (48:57):
Way up on Maslow's hierarchy lightened. Yeah, if you incorporate
the Buddhism of Vietnam reldions.

Speaker 2 (49:04):
I'm making a face because Maslow's hyapee isn't really true.
There's a guy named Victor Frankel. Yeah, if you read
man search for Meeting, well, he proved that you don't
need those first levels of the pyramid in order to
have self fulfillment. So just pointing out a leap frog
in to the top because he found he was able
to have that inner spiritual life and and happiness during

(49:28):
you know, while being a prisoner in three different concentrations, with.

Speaker 3 (49:30):
An AdSense of the roof for the basic needs to
get a light.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
And with dating, I mean you can just like walk
up to people and talk to them and they will
talk to you. People are pretty friendly.

Speaker 3 (49:40):
So I find there's a real language bearer got dependent generationally,
so sort of Vietnamese over thirty five the born before
the nineties, born after the nineties.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
How does that affect I'm having to use Google Translate
most of the time talking to a girl or something.
I'm like, you know, okay, but it's a little weird,
but I done it. But I've done it many times
across many countries.

Speaker 3 (50:03):
And you find that Vietnamese women are like at least
in Denong are cool with talking of oigners, positive friendly.
What's something weird, something weird about Vietnam or something that
you still feel is just strange or hard to wrap
your head around.

Speaker 2 (50:17):
It's hard to say. When I was living in Thailand,
I figured out that I was never going to understand
motivation of Thaigh people, and that was better not to
wonder why they do things and only focus on getting results.
So I knew how to get things done, and when
I saw weird things, I'm like, Okay, that's weird, and
I would just let it go instead of because historically

(50:38):
it would have bugged me. I would have had to
understand this. Right, I've kind of erased that motivation from
my mind.

Speaker 3 (50:43):
I think that's a fantastic answer and a piece of advice,
especially for if you're dealing with certain bureaucratic processes, not
just in Vietnam but anywhere outside of the West or
in your home country, having a different, different sort of
accepting and not ask.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
I saw someone makeup posts every day how long I'm
I gonna have to wait in immigration? Like who gives
a shit? Bring an audiobook, put an ear button your
ear and forget about it. Who cares how long it takes.

Speaker 3 (51:10):
What's something absolutely wonderful about your experience here? Traveler living
in Southeast Asia.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
I mean, I just like the vibe, right, priorities people
have about their lives. It's similar in Mexico. In Mexico,
most people would rather spend time with their family than
make more money. Here it's a little different, and people
work a lot, but they work a lot there. I mean,
most people work ten hours a day and they get
two days off a month, which has insane right. You
tried to do that in the West, and people would

(51:36):
lose their minds. I love that things are like personal
services oriented. That's one of the things I love about
this culture. I can just there's a massage shop every
ten feet, right, and for ten dollars, I can get
an amazing massage. And I can do that every day
if I want to. When I lived in Thailand, I
got a massage every day.

Speaker 3 (51:57):
Your take on Vietnamese traffic, how do you struggle with it,
how people can adapt to it, how they can stay alive?

Speaker 2 (52:03):
It's driving here. You have to be a little insane
Buddhist respective, right, You don't want to be hanging on
too tightly to your life because you're thinking about, oh
my god, I'm going to die the whole time you
run the motorbike, you are going to die. And if
you can just attach from that, be a little aggressive
and go with the flow and never get pissed off
because someone cuts you off or they don't look what
they're doing.

Speaker 3 (52:21):
That's how you drive like a local. I'm putting doing
it together now.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
Good.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
You said you had a serious accident in Highland, but
you're still on the motorbike here. You're resilient.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
I have been sideswiped on motorcycles. I've been t boned.
I ruptured my screen and had to have an emergency
school activity from a miners corner slide out on a
scooter in Thailand three years and a few months ago,
I was going cross country on a rather large BMW
that I owned and a taxi did a in Mexico
and a taxi did a U turn on a highway

(52:51):
right in front of me, and I hit it doing
seventy kilometers an hour, broke off the tip of my
clavical cut of bone in half in my wrist, had
to have three surgeries, but I'm hundred percent recovered. Glad
to hear it like, I'm not ready for a motorcycle yet.
That's why I have a scooter like one hundred and
twenty five cc. Yeah, And for me, a scooter's utilitariot.
It's not a motorcycle. If I'm riding motorcycle, I've bet

(53:13):
safety year head to toe. I'm practicing cornering. I'm improving
every time I get on the bike. I'm improving my skills.
I'm pushing the edge right, no chicken strips. But in
a scooter, I don't think about any of that. I
just got on the scooter. I go to from point
A to point B. I don't go very fast, except
maybe over a bridge or in a tunnel.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
As an experienced motorcyclist, would you recommend or do you
think safety wise, it's okay for someone who's never been
on a two wheel before to drive one of the
sort of automatic scooters they have here.

Speaker 2 (53:42):
If you're my demographic, if you're retiring age and you're
thinking about retiring to Asia, buy a scooter now, make
a safety class, get a license if you don't. If
you don't, if you're not a rider already, and spend
at least a year riding in your home country. The
first year you ride two on two wheels with a
motor is the most dangerous year you're going to have
in your life. And it's not a matter of if

(54:04):
you're going to go down, it's when and how bad
it'll be. Okay, So learn to ride in a place
that's that you know, gets some skill before you come here,
if that's what you want to do. But even then,
it's still going to be dangerous and you have to
be okay with taking that risk. If you're a risk
of earth, don't even think about it.

Speaker 3 (54:21):
I mean, there are some technical ways you can stay insured,
but for the most part, if you are handling the
two wheeled motorcycle year, you're no longer insured.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
If you're legal right if you have if you have
an international driver's permit from the nineteen sixty eight from
a country from the nineteen sixty eight conference, you will
still be covered by your insurance or THECC or if
you have an asy on license. Those are the exceptions
I know about. And you make sure that travel you
have adventure travel insurance that covers motorcycle crashes. That's important too.

Speaker 3 (54:52):
Literally, make sure you check with the insurance provider and
plan you have what the specifics are, because they're all
going to be different.

Speaker 2 (54:59):
And that goes for any kind of adventure sports, scuba diving,
mountain climbing, if you're gonna do anything other than walking
down the street, check your insurance.

Speaker 3 (55:06):
Good segue. What's one piece of advice you have for
someone who's never been who is planning either to winter
here or to retire in Southeast Asia?

Speaker 2 (55:14):
One is I've moved to six different places around the
world sight unseen and just made it work. And on
more than one occasion I had to have had to
find a job. That's an incredibly difficult thing to do,
and most people shouldn't try it. But if you're not
risk averse and you have a little cash, then you
can just move here, do an exploratory trip, and find
a place to settle in. But for most people it's

(55:36):
probably a better idea to do a scouting mission. First.
Do some research. There's some really good internet channels that
they'll talk about affordable places to retire. Check them out,
come up with a list of at least three different
cities to visit in different countries. Come here, do a
scouting mission, figure it all out, then then go home.

(55:59):
Type you lose and then you can come. But I
think that you know that's an important thing to do,
if if you want to be successful. But part of
that transition needs to be assimilating yourself to the local
culture wherever that is. If you have halfway different language skills,
learn the language. Take a couple hours to read about
the history at least, right, that's all you need to do. Really,

(56:19):
you don't need to spend weeks studying the history, right,
but an afternoon it's enough to get to get an
understanding of how things work and why they are the
way they are. Don't bring your own your old country
with you. Leave your baggage behind, leave your habits behind.
Come here and start a new life. Take an inventory
of the things in your life that work and don't work,

(56:40):
and leave that shit that doesn't work at home and
start new, healthy habits here that will serve you better.
You're coming to a new place, You get to reinvent yourself.
Why not make better choices when the ones you had before?
Like I said, eat the local food one. It's affordable too.
You're going to meet and have a lot of local friends,
and those local friends may have no exposure to Western

(57:01):
food and they may not want to go out to
Western restaurants with you. So learn to eat, learn to
love the local food my advice. And then lastly, money right,
if you're going to come here, don't come here with
three months worth of money and hoping you can work
it out. Right, if you're at my age, At my age,
I would move to a foreign country without at least

(57:23):
a year's worth of living expenses, say fifteen thousand dollars
just in case. If you're have insurance health insurance that'll
cover you here, then it's a little less risky. If
you don't, then it's a little more risky. So you know,
figure what your risk ratio is, what you're willing to accept.
When I was teaching English and Bangkok, I was the
only person out of like fifteen teachers foreigners who had

(57:46):
money in the bank. Everyone else is living paycheck to paycheck,
and that's insane.

Speaker 3 (57:51):
Very intense way to live. I mean, I think for
a lot of people one of the reasons why they're
exploring alternative lifestyles is to escape, that is, to not
want to be living check to paycheck, are having that
stress to have.

Speaker 2 (58:02):
It hold well. Admittedly, I was fifteen years older than
most of my co workers, so I a little more
mature and I wasn't going up partying and spending all
my money on drinking and girls. You know. But yeah,
you have to have a little self discipline. And I
mean teaching English is a viable way to live in
Southeast Asia. You can you know, you can have you
can make savings goals. You could save ten grand a
year and teach English.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
I basically fast tracked a semi retirement by working here
for five years and being extremely approval for those five years.
I do a little segment at the end of the
Cost of Living Abroad where I have a question for
the last guest, for the current guests, So Will Provels
left a question for you, and his question is what's

(58:43):
your end game when you're moving here to Southeast Asia
or to Vietnam. What is the long term or sort
of final plan.

Speaker 2 (58:51):
I usually don't plan my life more than a year
in advance, and but when I came here, I made
a commitment to myself to stay in Denom until September
of twenty twenty six. I'll get my first Social Security payment.
That's if there's still a Social Security administration and the
United States, which is doubtful at this point, and then

(59:11):
I'll have the freedom to live really anywhere in the
world I want. I feel more comfortable here in six
months than I did in six years in Mexico. And
it's nothing against Mexico. Mexican people are wonderful. I made
one good friend the entire time I was there. I
just feel super comfortable in Asia in general and Vietnam
in particular, he was pretty wonderful. Yeah, it is.

Speaker 3 (59:28):
I mean, I've had a wonderful experience here, and to
under said, I came here by accident, and now it
seems like I'm going to be here for the rest
of my life. And that's a wonderful thing.

Speaker 2 (59:36):
Man. Man, there's been such a pleasure of talking to you.
What's a question you have for the next person on
the Living a broad pod. What's something that would bring
you great joy that you know you should be doing
or not doing? How can you get more of that
in your life?

Speaker 3 (59:53):
What's something that would bring you great joy that you're
not doing that you know you should be doing. I
can think of a couple there, you know, in the
United States living.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
Walking for me, and then it was just time to
get out of the United States. You're born, you go
to school, you get a job, and you work that
job for forty years, and if you're lucky and you
still have help at that point and you have some
kind of investment, maybe you can retire. I'm not wealthy.
I'm okay by Vietnamese standards. I might be wealthy, but
not by my standards. So I'm a little cautious on money.

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
I spend so monthly totally, You're looking at.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
About three hundred dollars for all my food and restaurant expenses.
And I'm eating well seventeen months until I can actually
start collecting Social Security. And I have a luxury studio
on the tenth floor with panoramic view with the city,
nice pool on the roof. Room gets twice clean, twice
a month. When I was living with roommates when I

(01:00:49):
was nineteen, I was paying this much rent. I knew
a lot of a lot of Vietnam veterans, you know.
I serve withself, and when I got here, I was
a little nervous. We have your baggage behind, with your
habits behind, and come here and start a new life.
Take an inventory of the things in new life that
work and don't work and leave that shit that doesn't
work at home. But for many people that they can't

(01:01:09):
just retire, they have to get some shitty job bagging
groceries because they can't get it, you know, because they're older.
They can't get a good job anymore, because the ageism
is real. Every other visa, I try to leave the
country for at least a couple of days just because
I want to stay on the good side of these
immigration and honestly them just see me to a borderhop
every time. My goal is to be as legal as

(01:01:31):
I can. I have been sideswiped on motorcycles, I've been
t boned, I ruptured my screen and had have an
emergency schoectomy. I'm writing a book right now called Solo
Ager's Guide to Getting the Hell out of America, and
it's basically a step by step process. You can follow
it to relocate Southeast Asia. The aimed at people who
retirement age unattached through the US just doesn't working for anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
I'm Evan A and you're listening to the Cost of
Living a broad pod. For full video interviews, find us
on YouTube at Cost of Living Abroad. Thanks so much
for listening, make sure to leave a five star review
on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back
every single Sunday night at midnight in Bangkok early morning

(01:02:22):
in La

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