The Real Cost of Living in Da Nang Vietnam as a Digital Nomad with Youtuber Will Travelz

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This week on the Cost of Living a broad Pod
sat down with Will Travels to talk to him about
how he lives on seven hundred dollars a month in
Vietnam and why he chose Denong Vietnam over Thailand and
the Philippines, two more popular destinations for tourists and early
retirement in Southeast Asia. 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.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
That is where you're either going to make or break
your budget. In my opinion, the way I break down
the Philippines is very upfront, blunt.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
To get English everywhere. You're going to be able to
meet women. That's not a problem.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
The other pro of the Philippines budget in Bangkok, I
would say we were spending right around eleven hundred dollars.
Budget was broken this month if you want to count that.
Usually the budget is seven fifty. It technically lived in
three countries. I really enjoyed Thailand, I really enjoy Bangkok specifically,
cost of living Philippines is my most expensive country out

(01:00):
of the three. Out of Vietnam, Thailand and Philippines. I
want to have a beach city in international airport, enough
Western amenities.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
I'm going to get to it very simply.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
My two worst cons that I think you guys are
going to relate to.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
Your second con is going to be the ninety day visa.
That's it. You have to leave the country. I'll never
be able to learn it.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
But the one thing that forces you to learn while
you're in Asia is patience. And people just response is
that's Vietnam. Whatever is supposed to make sense, does it
make sense. Don't make a long term decision before you
get out to wherever, no matter how much you feel
about it. My thing, I just got so tired of

(01:42):
living in the USA. I was tired of living the
rat race. So what I did, the reason why I'm
out here now, I left the United States.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
I saved up one year of cost.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Of living in Vietnam, a little over ten thousand dollars,
and I said, as soon as I have this, I'm
getting the hell out of the USA.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
Yeah. Will from Will.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Travels, I do a YouTube channel focus on travel budget.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Nice man, Great to have you. Where you from?

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Originally I am from California, the United States, and I'm
from the Bay Area, so about thirty minutes away from
San Francisco.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
And whatoy budget monthly for breakfast? And how do you
start your day?

Speaker 3 (02:17):
Okay, very simple.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Breakfast is very easy for I live with my girlfriends,
so we're both here. To be honest, we don't get
up in time for breakfast. So breakfast. Even back when
I was in the USA, I never was a breakfast guy.
So breakfast usually we don't eat. The first meal of
the day that we'll eat is maybe about eleven or twelve,
So maybe you guys call that a late breakfast breakfast,

(02:39):
but it's usually I'll just have some rice.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
Frida egg bread.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
If we go out, it'll be something simple like a
bond meat, so maybe just grab a quick bond me
and that's about it, which all bond me is twenty
thousand that we get, so not even a dollar.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
You're talking under a dollar day budget for breakfast? Nice
and lunch? Are you? Are you grocery and cooking at home?
Are you almost all meals out?

Speaker 3 (03:04):
No? So I've done both.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
I've definitely done almost the ninety percent cooking and I've
done almost like the ninety percent going out. Currently right
now we're kind of testing out just budget wise, and
just time wise doing out eating out, so very simple
to kind of summarize it. If you guys come to
Vietnam or most of Asia, eating out.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
Is usually going to be as.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Cheap, if not cheaper, than cooking Asian food, whatever home
country you're in. If you go get burgers and steak,
it's obviously probably going to be more expensive to eat out,
But if you go eat local food here, it's going
to be as cheap, sometimes cheaper to go.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
Out and eat.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Did you meet your girlfriend here and you come with you?

Speaker 2 (03:46):
No, I met her back in the Philippines, oh two
years ago. So I've been to twenty countries, ten in Asia,
nine in Europe and Mexico. So my whole international travel
started back in twenty nineteen, so I traveled a ton
back then. Wish I would have started the YouTube channel
back at that time because that would have documented another

(04:08):
fifteen countries that I went to just back in twenty
nineteen itself. But I met my girlfriend in the Philippines
and then she's been traveling with me for the past
two years.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
And dinner's out too, And are you doing primarily because
this makes a big difference budget wise. Are you eating Vietnamese.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah, so it's very simple. So we're eating out dinner.
Almost every single day is eating out. We have a rotation.
We have about five six seven restaurants that we rotate,
and it basically works like this. We go local about
five nights a week, and then we'll go what we
call western.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Twice a week.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
We'll go to a Bikini bottom for the locals out here.
It's like a burger spot, and we'll go to like
a even though it's not technically Western, it's not Vietnamese.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
We go to the Thai Kin Kin restaurant.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
We'll do that twice a week, and then the rest
of the time we will go to local. So usually
four or five nights a week local and two or
three nights a week maybe at most it will be
Western food.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
And so what's the overalls fan like, what's your number?
You have shatter the day, because I know on your
channel you have those awesome spreadsheets, So what's the daily number,
what's the monthly average?

Speaker 2 (05:13):
So we average or at least I set my budget
for two hundred and fifty thousand max. Usually we're coming
in one hundred and eighty to two hundred thousand, which
is about eight US dollars a day, and if you
want to break that cost down per month, I think
the lowest month for food and going out and eating

(05:35):
was about one ninety for both of us, and at
times we can get up to about two forty. At
the most, I like to say, right around two hundred
dollars if we go out and kind of blow the
budget a little bit, go out to pizza or go
out for extra maybe two twenty a month.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
Under two hundred dollars US for two adults to eat
out three meals a day for an entire month, you
gotta sort of bust some of those myths. But when
you hear those numbers, I mean I had to back home.
I'm Canadian, but anywhere in North America to try and
eat for ten dollars a day for two people.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
I do want to We usually don't eat three times.
We'll usually skip the breakfast. But if you want to
be fair, if we did, even if you want to
calculate for that, we would probably be at about two
hundred and fifty dollars. So if you guys want to
pencil in kind of what I spend, it would be
about two fifty if we did eat breakfast, but like
I said, I usually skip breakfast. Even when I was
in the USA, I just never was a breakfast guy.

(06:27):
So we kind of realized washing dishes, preparing the food,
cooking the food, we were like, hey, like let's try
it out this way, And then when we balanced it out,
it was almost the same, like maybe slightly lower, maybe
slightly higher, but it was almost no difference. So the
only time I really cook now is when I want

(06:48):
to make something that I either can't find here or
some kind of Western food. All make burgers and fries,
or cook a steak, or I think for Christmas, I
made a a roast.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
So those things like that all cook.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
But I almost kind of have the rule that if
it's Vietnamese food or Asian food, I pass and I
go out to eat it.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
That's kind of how I break it down.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
One hundred percent, the majority of people here, even if
they're cooking when they first get here, after a few
months or a year, they find themselves eating out three
times a day because it's just it's probably just straight
up cheaper. But even if it's not cheaper cost wise,
if you're factoring in how much time it takes to
cook clean all those things will mentioned.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
It's easier and simpler.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
Yeah, nightlife, and I mean that can be pretty easier
into whether you're paying out by the beach, you're going
to movies, you're Netflix, or you're like the bar and
party type. Like what do you do for nightlife? Which
your sort of daily versus monthly budget.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
So that is where you're either going to make or
break your budget in my opinion, outside of rent, that's
gonna be where you make your break. So I do
not drink. I stopped drinking years ago, so I don't
drink alcohol. I don't go to clubs, I don't get massages,
I don't party. So a lot of you guys are
gonna be like, oh, this guy is so boring our
entertainment kind of what our nightlife is. We go to

(08:10):
the beach, we hang out at the beach. We will
go to street markets every once in a while, we
go to the Dragon Bridge, We'll go do simple things.
We might go to the mall to go bowling, watch
a movie every once in a while. So the majority
of our nightlife, if you even want to call it,
that is cheap or free. So we don't really have

(08:31):
a nightlife in that aspect. We hang out with some
Westerners that we know out here. We hang out, maybe
we'll get I'll grab a coke or something of coconut juice.
So our night life is very cheap. Now I do
have friends that that gets pretty expensive. They'll go get
a massage every day, They'll have a few drinks, and

(08:52):
their stuff can go up. But that's a huge category
where I save a lot of money.

Speaker 3 (08:57):
That's why my budget is so low.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
I have the same thing for different reasons. I didn't
quit drinking, but I met my wife and then we
ended up with two young kids, so we also I
mean night life most days after dinner, it's home time.
Maybe a beach, yeah, maybe if there's like fireworks, go
to a dragon bridge, an occasional movie, or like a
date night out when we have a babysitter. But if

(09:20):
let's put a number that would have been fifty bucks, maybe.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
Oh one hundred less than that, I would say maybe
maybe twenty five dollars maybe.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
I've seen some of the videos showing up now and
people were saying, oh, the five hundred dollars a month
and is a myth. But I mean the reality for
me is we're a family of four, and we're doing
under two thousand dollars a month. Two thousand divided by
four is five hundred bucks. Right, Gym, sports, recreation, any
kind of membership.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
Okay, so obviously you guys see them built like Arnoldaum.
So I don't have a gym membership. I do try
to get my ten thousand steps in a day. I
walk almost everywhere here, so that's kind of where I
guess you would say my ex size goes a little
bit more, but we walk everywhere. That's why I really
like to base myself in Anthlong Grab.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
Well, we take in drive.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
I don't know how many people know about that, but
it's the equivalent to GRAB and we maybe take that
three or four times a month. So all of our
exercise or our sports, whatever you want to call it,
is basically just walking. So we do know that there
are gyms here, and they are kind of pricey in
my opinion, especially when you compare them back to the

(10:30):
USA price place called the pig Gym that's right near us.
We're only a couple blocks away, and it's like thirty
bucks I heard minimum. And if you go to the USA,
you guys can go to like a planet fitness or
something like that.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
It's like ten bucks a month.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
If you guys notice all the locals are down at
the beach at five o'clock, six o'clock in the morning,
they're doing their stretching and jogging. So locals really, generally,
I hear, don't go to the gym and don't go
pay memberships.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
So I'm kind of a local in that sense. I guess.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
Then, so what do you do? What are you and
your party to do for health insurance, to have travel insurance,
to save for it, to you just budget for it
in case of.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah, so a lot of people kind of beat me
down on that. I don't have travel insurance. I do
kind of have some money put away just in case.
In the USA, I never really had health insurance anyways.
I'm kind of a rogue like that. I don't take aspirin,
I don't take medicine, I don't do any of that,
and I kind of just wing it in that sense

(11:29):
that I do have some money put away if something happened.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
As a Canadian, I grew up with social services and
health insurance. When I first came here with a work
permanent working for a company, I had health insurance through
my job, but based on my experiences with Vietnamese healthcare,
it was so affordable that I now just have the
same thing. We have a budget amount for healthcare that

(11:53):
rolls over every month if we don't use it because
it's so affordable. The flip side of that is I've
had my parents visit and they're both elderly, and they
both happened to have have or had cancer. So for them,
travel insurance is the biggest cost outside of their airfare
and plights over here. For example, last time they're here,

(12:14):
it was forty five hundred for two flights return and
two thousand dollars for two of them, so one thousand
dollars each to ensure for fifty five days. If you're
an elderly person in their case, you know, or if
you're older, you might not want to, you know, wing
it like a younger person.

Speaker 3 (12:31):
Yeah, I do.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
I do admit that's probably one thing that I should
probably look at, but maybe stupidly, I just don't have
it right now.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
I mean, I'm in the same boat. It's everyone's own decision.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
Ryeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
But your electricity, your water, your phone plan, your internet,
any of those, you know, if you want to include
things like you have a Netflix or you're using a
VPN or you know, and that monthly subscription.

Speaker 3 (12:57):
Hits very simple.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
So when I came here, I negotiated directly with the landlord.
So I was lucky enough that I pay one fee
for my rent, which includes everything. So my rent includes electricity,
includes water, it includes internet, Wi Fi everything.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
So I pay her on the twelfth every month.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
That's my rent date and that covers everything, so I
don't have to look and see how much electricity has
spent or water. It's all factored in. So it's kind
of like a Netflix type of thing. It's if I
use no electricity, I still get charged the same amount,
and if I use three AC's the whole time, it's
the same thing. So my rent in American dollars is

(13:40):
five hundred and fifty dollars fourteen million.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
It's a two bedroom, two bathroom.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
We are directly on the beach of the my Key Beach,
so we pay five point fifty for every single thing
that's tied to your rent.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
Is it in a walk up building, Is it in
like a condo or is it is it in like
a kind of hotel that has serviced apartment type rooms
or what sort of style of places.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
That we're in a condo. It's one of the largest
condos here. It's called Long Tan. It's like a forty
two story condo and we're up at the top. And
the downside, which some people say, is if you go
about dinner time or breakfast time, you might take three.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
Or four minutes to get up the elevator. So it
is a tall building.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
But that is our whole expense with our rent budget,
and for myself, I know, it's another thing that I'm
gonna say is probably a little not normal or kind
of stupid, is that seventy percent of our budget is
our rent.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
Interesting thing is at home someone might say, you know,
keep it under thirty percent of your budget. When you're
budgeting as strict as you are, and you're you know,
living at that kind of cost to live in, it
kind of changes things, right. And I will say I've
started in an airbnb and maying tang about excuse my pronunciation,
maybe three or four years ago. It is twenty feet

(14:53):
from the too biggest and most popular beach Pricy. You
cannot be closer to the heart of it.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
It's a minute and a half once we're down on
the elevator, literally a minute and a half to get
to the beach.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
And does that building, So it's five to fifty months.
Did I have a pool or no?

Speaker 3 (15:06):
No, GM, no, no, those are the two things that
it's missing.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
My phone planned I get a seven gigabyte per day
or two hundred and ten gigabyte per month. I do
actually need that. Most of you guys will not need that,
But like I mentioned before, I do do a lot
of live stream on YouTube. There's only been twice that
I've ever ran out of data, So seven gigabytes is
a lot, a lot of data. I had to do
like a seven or six hours worth of live stream

(15:33):
to run out. But that plan is five US dollars
a month. It's one hundred and twenty five thousand V
and D, which is exactly five US dollars for seven
gigabytes per day. And if I didn't do live streams,
it'd be impossible to run out of that data.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
What are your costs for transportation? Do you have any?

Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yep?

Speaker 2 (15:50):
So, like I said, I mostly walk everywhere. I would
say at least ninety percent is walking, maybe ninety five percent.

Speaker 3 (15:58):
Sometimes the only time we ever.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
Take transportation would be if it's raining, so it's been
raining the past couple months. If we were out at
a restaurant or something, we would just kind of just
take an in drive. Or if I have to go
renew my visa and go do a visa run and
I had to go across town, or we had to
go across the river, that's when I will take the

(16:21):
in drive slash grab And I would say when I
off the top of my head on my Google spreadsheet,
it's always always been under ten dollars, but usually a
normal month will be about five US dollars for our transportation.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
It's pretty realistic to take a taxi or a grab
car here and to have a cost a dollar to
go across town. So tell me a little bit about
the difference between an in drive grab. I've never even
heard of in drive, so I'm excited to learn something new.

Speaker 3 (16:50):
In drive is awesome, man.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
I wish that it sounds like I know when people
watch my livestream, they say like, oh, you must be sponsored.

Speaker 3 (16:57):
I am not sponsored by in drive.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
I would love to be because I actually love their stuff,
But basically it's exactly the same. The only difference is
it's roughly twenty to forty percent cheaper. If you go
from the beach to the airport, it's about forty percent cheaper.
I know, I'm a budget guy, so I know exactly
how much. If I go from the airport to the beach,

(17:19):
it's ninety thousand. On grab usually be eighty nine thousand
if you guys want to be specific, so we just
call it ninety thousand. When I do the same thing
on end drive, it's usually about fifty or fifty five thousand,
so it's the same thing.

Speaker 3 (17:31):
I guess technically.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
The only downside for some people is it's all cash,
so you can't pay in card. But besides that, same
nice quality cars, same driving.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
No issues.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
So I've been using it for about six months one
hundred percent now.

Speaker 3 (17:47):
But it's not also in every city too.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
We went to Hway, we went to a city called
Donghi and it wasn't there, so.

Speaker 3 (17:56):
I guess those will be the two downsides.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
Not in every city. And you do have to pay cash,
which is not a problem for me.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
And are they doing cars, motorbikes and food delivery or
is it just a private car hire.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
Service everything besides food delivery, So there is no food delivery,
but it's kind of the same structure as grab, so grab,
we'll have the car and if you take this scooter
grab or scooter in drive, it's half priced, so it's
kind of the same price structure.

Speaker 3 (18:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
Last one would be travel recreation. Obviously, even though people
are coming here from America, from Europe, from Australia, mostly
you're still going to want to do weekend trips. You're gonna,
you know, and want to take a week and explore
a little bit get around. So what are you budgeting
monthly to go to Howay like you were talking about,
or maybe to go back to Philippines.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
We just did our first kind of trip, a little
travel vacation this past month February. We don't really travel
as much as we should. That is going to be
start a thing that I'm going to start doing. But
so we went out for seven days. We split up
that trip to Way and to Dong Hoi. Most people
are not going to know where Dong Hoi is. We

(19:02):
did it very simple and we took Vietnamese Railway, which
is a great train. It takes you by the coast,
you go by the coast, you pass the beach, from
Denong to Huay and we stayed in Way for three days.
That train ticket was three dollars a piece, so extremely cheap.
Nice trains, they're not bad trains at all, reclining seats,

(19:23):
ac everything. That trip costs me about one hundred and
seventy five dollars, a little bit under two hundred for
everything that included the food, the transportation, the buses or
the trains, the hotels, everything. This month, actually, you guys
are the first to kind of hear that my budget
was broken this month. If you want to count that.

(19:44):
Usually the budget is seven to fifty. It's always seven
to fifty. It comes down maybe every once in a while,
a seven twenty seven thirty. So my budget ends in
five days and it's probably going to be a little
over nine hundred bucks this month, still going to be
under a thousand, but it's probably going to be a
little over nine hundred bucks.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
For those of you who aren't, you know, thinking in
terms of your yearlier annual budget, or if you're on
social security, if you're on some kind of pension, what
Will just told you is that you can retire in
Vietnam for under ten thousand dollars a year, and he's
talking about the cost of him and his partner and
his girlfriend under ten thousand dollars a year with that

(20:22):
thousand dollars sort of leniency in there for a medical
cost or travel costs or something. I think it's realistic,
and I think it's absolutely awesome that you're doing that
will like people do. And you got it in the
comments all the time. You hear back and the feedback
people think you're you're full of it. You know, not
only is it really realistic to do what is essentially
five hundred dollars a person or and you're just last

(20:43):
you're talking about three seventy five a person.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
And I want to be fair, so I spend a
lot on rent. So we have been trying to get
down to a one bedroom. So if I get down
to a one bedroom, I could realistically knock our seven
to fifty budget down to about six hundred dollars realistically,
no problem, down to a one bedroom and cut our
rent and it wouldn't be in half, but it would
probably be sixty to sixty five percent. We could do

(21:06):
me and my girlfriend out here to do six hundred
dollars realistically.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
And we're not going to get into the logistics too
much of like different areas of denaying which focus on
the sort of cost of Vietnam in general, or beach
city Vietnam, but you're in the absolute heart of the
tourist district for that five or six hundred dollars a month.
If you get somewhere a little more residential, or say
a couple kilometers away from the beach, a mile from
the beach, we're talking about whole house to that price,

(21:32):
or an apartment for yeah, for four to five hundred dollars,
a nice apartment. Thanks so much for doing the budget
line by line breakdown. We're going to jump into now
hearing a little bit more about Will's personal experiences, his
travel experiences, and I think ultimately we'll get into a
real pros and cons comparison with him about the differences
between the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand, because he's a well

(21:57):
seasoned traveler and has really experienced all three of those.

Speaker 2 (21:59):
Places, technically lived in three countries. I really enjoy Thailand.
I really enjoy Bangkok specifically. Now, I know that's kind
of a shock to some people because they're gonna say, hey,
you don't party, you don't drink, why would you be
in Bangkok?

Speaker 3 (22:12):
So I really enjoy Bangkok.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
I love the bts, I love the food, the street food.
I love living in Sukumbit, which you guys are probably
blown away as because that's the party area, but it's everything.
I love the vibe of Bangkok and I love everything
about it. Budget in Bangkok, I would say, but back
then we were spending right around eleven hundred dollars, so

(22:35):
it's definitely more expensive than a Denong, but.

Speaker 3 (22:41):
I love everything about the city.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
We could probably do it for about a thousand ish,
but I probably didn't tightly budget it as I did here,
so I could probably get around between a thousand to
eleven hundred dollars realistically in Bangkok. In Thailand, I did
travel a little bit in chang Rai and Changmi, but
I didn't live there for long.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
Prosa Bangkok the energy, to vibe, the nightlife. It definitely
has a more urban, cosmopolitan feel. Con talking about thirty
to forty more expensive than Denong and Vietnam, and.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
The other con that I would mention is for myself,
I'm an American. I only get a sixty day visa,
so in Vietnam, I get a three month visa.

Speaker 3 (23:23):
There, I get a two month visa. Now people are
gonna say.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
Oh no, no, no, you get three months, but it
isn't a visa extension in Thailand, and it costs like
sixty bucks. So for twenty five dollars, I get a
three month visa here. There you get free two months
visa in Thailand. Then you do have to pay sixty
bucks if you wanted to stay.

Speaker 3 (23:42):
The third month.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
And then also Thailand's immigration is a lot more strict
than Vietnam. If you go do multiple visa runs in Thailand,
you could maybe.

Speaker 3 (23:54):
Not show up. Maybe they're not going to give you
that stamp. Vietnam, no problem.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
So the two big things I would say is at
least twenty plus percent more expensive in Bangkok, and then
the other issue is the visa length or the visa
strict policy.

Speaker 3 (24:09):
So those would be my two cons of Thailand.

Speaker 1 (24:12):
Where you're eating better.

Speaker 3 (24:14):
Better, that's really hard. I would have to think about it.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
I would say in Bangkok it's definitely a little bit
more costly. The cheapest place that kind of I would
compare to here would be to like the Terminal twenty
one food court, so that's probably gonna be as cheap
as you're gonna get.

Speaker 3 (24:31):
Food's good.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
We do kind of miss the seven elevens because the
seven elevens have some good snacks or good lunch items,
but we would get a lot of stuff, like we
would go down go eat street food down at the
street carts. We had a couple of real nice, friendly
street cars we would go to, or the sit down restaurants.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
That's kind of what I call.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
Them, like the equivalent to like the little green chairs
that they set out here. Now this similar thing in Thailand.
If I was forced to pick, I would say, factoring
all the things, the food courts, the Seven elevens, the
street food, the food, I would slightly give the nod
to the better food to Bangkok fifty one percent to

(25:11):
forty nine percent, probably just because of the variety of places,
whereas here it's kind of either local or Western food.
They do have street food, which is kind of just
bond me for my style. They don't have the seven elevens,
and they don't really have the food courts that they
do in Thailand. So I would slightly give the edge
on food quality and food choices to Thailand slightly.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
Are you a seven eleven toasties guy?

Speaker 2 (25:37):
No, so, I have had them a few times, but
my go to item at seven eleven, I don't know.
No one ever talks about these, but I see all
over they always talk about the salwiches. I have had them,
but my go to there is if you go to
like the little refrigerated section, they'll have like the fried
rice with the chicken, and they pop them in the
microwave and they cook them. Supposedly they at least they

(25:57):
told us that they get them delivered local, like they're
fresh and everything. That's my go to out there. I'll
get that for lunch every once in a while. But
they're like those little variety lunches. Sometimes they'll be fried
chicken with rice. Sometimes they'll be grilled pork with fried rice.
That's my go too. I have had the sandwiches, but
I'm trying to turn everybody onto the microwave whatever meals

(26:18):
they would be. They're not gourmet, but they do work
when you.

Speaker 3 (26:21):
Need them to get a quick meal in, And.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
I mean for the viewers and listeners back home, Like
at risk of scaring you off and sending you down
a serious rabbit hole if you aren't familiar with seven
eleven in Asia and Japan and Korea and Thailand yet.
I mean, this is a whole cottage industry and like
basically its own niche on YouTube. I'm a solid like
seven eleven toasties guy. If I'm going in through Don

(26:47):
wuin the cheaper sort of local airport in Bangkok, my
first stop before I hit the taxi cab line, hit
that seven eleven and get a toasty in a microwave
and get it in my belly.

Speaker 2 (26:57):
I to tell people so they'll say, like, oh, what
do you miss Bangkok and stuff?

Speaker 3 (27:01):
And I will at times.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
It's not the deal breaker, but I do miss the
seven eleven from here, like we have the q mar
and that they don't They don't add up.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
They do get your fix in if you need to.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
Go somewhere at twelve or one o'clock in the morning,
but it's no seven eleven.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
There's seven eleven in Ho Chi Minh City, but they're inferior,
far inferior to any of the other seven elevens in
Southeast Asia or East Asia. Let's hear about your pros
of the Philippines. Maybe a couple of cons. I mean
there must be some otherwise presumably you'd still be there.
But let's say talking about how you met your girlfriends
and some of the social stuff for a bit later,

(27:36):
and just to be awesome.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
Philippines is very very simple. So the way I break
down the Philippines is I'm going to be very upfront blunt.
The very two biggest pros to the Philippines, in my opinion,
You're gonna get English, so English. You are not going
to find a better Asian country that speaks English better

(27:57):
than the Philippines one hundred percent, no doubt.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
Win. For people that are looking for women, You're.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
Not gonna find a better English speaking country than the Philippines.

Speaker 3 (28:07):
To find women, you can go down to a.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
Cafe like this if you just want to have a
regular conversation, you're gonna find everyone speaks English. Ninety five
percent of people can speak English. Here in Vietnam, it
might be a little harder to find, but in the Philippines,
you get English everywhere, you're gonna be able to meet women.
That's not a problem. The other pro of the Philippines
long term visa, so you get a three year visa
without ever leaving the country. Those things are unbeatable. In

(28:33):
my opinion, no other Asian country can beat the visa length.
The English slash meeting people, chatting women friends in English
cannot be beat in the Philippines. But after that point,
the Philippines pros drop down very quickly.

Speaker 3 (28:51):
So we'll get into the cons the cons.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
Maybe this is why I don't have a lot of
Philippines subscribers, because I just have to tell it the
way it is.

Speaker 3 (28:59):
You're gonna have con like cost of living.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Philippines is my most expensive country out of the three,
out of Vietnam, Thailand, and Philippines. And it's shocking because
everyone thinks Philippines is cheap. Everyone always hears it, and
it's not like it's not so.

Speaker 3 (29:15):
Cost of living is a con. Infrastructure is a con.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
You go there, We've had two blackouts they call them
brown outs there where the electricity just goes out.

Speaker 3 (29:25):
It's just normal.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
The Internet is nowhere near the quality of a Thailand
or of a Vietnam.

Speaker 3 (29:33):
Things are always out of stock.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
So you'll go to a mall and they'll say, sorry, sir,
we're out of stock.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
You'll go to a restaurant. Perfect example.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
I was in Sabu and I went to a place
I never tried it before, and everyone said, oh, go
try this place.

Speaker 3 (29:46):
Not sure if they were trolling me whatever, they told
me try Angels Burgers. We go there. All they serve
burgers and hot dogs, two items. That's it.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
We go there for a week, no joke, out of burgers,
and I'm like, all you guys have is burgers and
hot dogs. Many times I went in places and can
I get a peachd Sorry, Sarah, we're out of peach.

Speaker 3 (30:05):
We don't serve it, so you'll run into that.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Transportation is a lot harder too, So transportation is more expensive.
Getting around places is a little bit harder to navigate.
All the people that I hear living cheap in the Philippines,
I'll quickly ask them where do you live, and they'll
live in the province. A province is like out in
the countryside wherever your country would be. Imagine going out

(30:29):
to like the farmland or out in these places, and yes,
you could live there cheap, but you give.

Speaker 3 (30:34):
Up all the amenities. The internet's worse.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
You might have one stop sign or stop light in
that city. There's no malls, so you can live there cheap.
But when you compare it apples to apples. You're losing
a lot. So we live here in Donong, Donong. It's
fifteen minutes at most from the airport to the beach.
If you want to go to a nice, cheap, comfortable

(30:58):
living beach city in the Philippines, you got to get
on a bus, you got to fly in, you got
to take a camel and jump over this magical rainbow.
It's not easy to get to these cities where it
is in Denong.

Speaker 3 (31:10):
So you lose a lot of stuff in the Philippines.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
Can't deny it English meeting people, having conversations in English,
long term visa.

Speaker 3 (31:19):
I love that part about the Philippines. But after that
it drops down a lot.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
And for a budget guy, kind of the cost of
living kind of really really jacks it up for where
I want to live.

Speaker 1 (31:32):
I mean, that comes to surprise me. I've spent a
ton of time in Thailand over the last fifteen years.
I have not spent any time in the Philippines. I've
never been, so I've only had second hand account stuff.
And one of the things you hear a lot about
the Philippines is the poverty and crimes here. Also here
that there's a higher cost of living there possibly a
lower quality of living. So obviously then the cost of

(31:53):
living is a huge pro for why it seems like
you've settled in Vietnam in the long list, why don't
you tell us some of the other pros, the things
you love about Vietnam, and then maybe some of the
cons of the drawbacks of being here.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
So Vietnam specifically denom because Denong I've lived in ninety
nine percent of the time that I've been here in Vietnam,
So what I love about it is extremely safe. I
never worry about my safety outside of the fact of
the crazy traffic, so I don't ride a scooter.

Speaker 3 (32:20):
I refuse.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
All my viewers know I refuse to ride a scooter,
and I even shockingly I might might have stabbed myself
in the back of this, but I told him if
we ever reached ten thousand subscribers, I will ride a
scooter for a day.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
So I know a lot of my people want me.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
To get there, and I'm dreading that day even though
it's a milestone.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
I'm gonna interject everyone watching go to at Will Travels
with a Z or a Z If you're an American,
subscribe right now we can get him to ten thousand
in this video, and then i'd get him on the
back of my motor. We'll do a member's only vlog
will driving around the city.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
It's a bittersweet milestone because I would love to hit
that ten thousand, but I'm getting on that scooter and
it's I'm not afraid of the scooter at all. It's
the guys that I see that come off the curb
with no lights.

Speaker 3 (33:08):
It's the guy that has a.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
Passenger in the back holding a six foot piece of
glass driving down. We just went down to Vinifil another
day and there's a guy that's strapped in a full
size washing machine to the back of a scooter, and
there's a bun guy.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
There's a bun guy over here that.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
Has an open ended flame coming out of the back
of a scooter. And people want me to ride behind
these people, and I'm like, man, like I'll just take
I'll take the n drive for a dollar fifty. Like,
I do not want to do this. So that is
kind of the issue with the scooter thing. So I
don't worry about my safety anyway. Though, Like I'll go
to the ATM at one o'clock in the morning. If

(33:46):
my girlfriend, even we have an ATM downstairs, if for
some reason she forgot to get money out or something,
I wouldn't even be worried. If she said, Hey, I'm
gonna go downstairs and go to the ATM, I would
let her go by herself.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
I would not worry about it.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
We walk back down dark our alleys and everything. I
don't worry about my safety at all here. So that's
another pro. It fits every one of my requirements when
I look for a city. I want to have a
beach city, an international airport, enough western amenities, which means
maybe a mall or two, a little bit of a
western nightlife, even though I don't drink, and safe like

(34:23):
Denong checks off all those boxes for me.

Speaker 3 (34:26):
So in the.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
Aspect that that just everything just checks my boxes off.
My current subscribers know I'm on the hunt to find
a copycat version of Denong at maybe ten to twenty
percent cheaper, and I can tell you, guys, I don't
think I'm going to find that. Where we are going
to do a southern Vietnam trip. We have a few
cities that we're going to go to, but I just

(34:49):
don't think we're going to find that. I don't think
we're going to find a copycat version at a discount
in Denong.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
I have some ideas for you, but I'm going to
save them the end.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
Well, let me get to the con.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
What about the language bear? That's kind of it, right,
So tell us about the language bearer, your own experience
with that, because I think for a lot of potential
retirees or expats, less for short term stay travelers. But
if you're planning on wintering here, you're planning I'm moving
here full time, or you're thinking about taking a job here,
the language barrier in Vietnam is real. How's that effect

(35:22):
to do?

Speaker 2 (35:22):
Okay, I'm gonna get to it very simply. My two
worst cons that I think you guys are going to
relate to. It's not a deal breaker for me, but
my two cons for sure. First one's going to be English,
so you're gonna get less English here than a Thailand
and definitely a lot less English than a Philippines. Doesn't
affect me to Cosman will out, but that is gonna
be one. Your second con is gonna be the ninety

(35:45):
day visa.

Speaker 3 (35:46):
That's it.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
You have to leave the country after every ninety days,
so there's no retirement visa. You have to leave the
country after every ninety days. Those are going to be
your two big issues. That's the only two issues that
I see that someone wants to live here long term
is going to run into. For myself, I know how
to use Google Translate stuff like that, and I know

(36:08):
how to do the visa run. So for me it's
not a deal breaker, but for some people it is,
or at least they think it's gonna be. So those
would be the two cons that I see across the
board that really stick out.

Speaker 1 (36:20):
Yeah, so I've done in the members only Q and
A do every month on the Patreon at patreon dot
com backslash evan a eh, I've done the full visa
breakdown before. So if you see now, you know, you
know you're gonna have to be an investor visa. You're
gonna have to open a business here. You're gonna have
to buy a condo here, which can qualify you as
an investor. But the absolute minimum is one hundred and

(36:42):
twenty thousand US dollars and that's still only for to
start for three years, which you're getting for free in
the Philippines. If you're American at least the language barrier,
and that visa thing is a real thing, no doubt.
And what about how the locals treat you so regardless
of language, what's your experience been with Vietnamese people and

(37:03):
just hanging out and meeting.

Speaker 3 (37:04):
Them, one hundred percent perfectly fine.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
When we first came here, mostly the only people that
we knew were like a lot of the restaurant owners
because we would go to the same restaurants and they're great,
like they'll make sure. We have a lady right here
that's just two blocks. We call it our chicken restaurant.
And the lady tells us like, oh, you need to
go to this city, you need to go here. She
helped us look for apartment, she gave references to other stuff,

(37:30):
she showed us all kinds of stuff. So the locals,
I've never had a problem with any locals, to be fair, though,
never had problems with almost anybody in any country, but
in Vietnam, no problem.

Speaker 3 (37:42):
I've never had an issue.

Speaker 2 (37:44):
Maybe I'm just a lucky guy, or maybe I just
kind of outgoing and people just naturally, you know, are
very nice.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
So no issues on that end.

Speaker 1 (37:54):
If you're not out drinking at night. You're not trying
to do illegal drugs. You're not putting yourself in those situations.
It is very low risk and safe to travel and
to live here. What do you think some of the
biggest misconceptions are stereotypes about Vietnamese people and living in Vietnam.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
Are coming from USA, you hear propaganda. My very first
country I ever came to back in twenty nineteen, my
very first Asian country was China. So before I came
here back in the USA, family members people like, oh, man,
you're going to be ending up in a bathtub somewhere
We're missing with the Oregon, or you're going there. So

(38:32):
people always have propaganda. But I noticed it on both ends.
When I went to Europe, they would say, Oh, Man,
isn't Europe, isn't USA. Don't you guys just drive tanks
to work and everyone carries a gun. So I'm telling
you guys, like, no matter what country you come from
or go to, there's always propaganda about it.

Speaker 3 (38:49):
When I came here, I kind.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
Of had maybe the misconception because of other people, but
they would say.

Speaker 3 (38:54):
Like, oh, you're going to Vietnam, man, why are you
going to the jungle.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
Are you going to the jungle, or they say, oh, hey, man,
you know that's a common in this country.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
Man. You can't you can't talk out there, you can't
do that. None of that has been true.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
I talked with many, many people out here, Westerners everyone.
Here's the truth about If you guys are wondering about
their communism thing, or if someone just dropped you here
and didn't tell you that this was a communist country,
nobody would know it.

Speaker 3 (39:17):
Nobody would've been to China.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
And I will tell you guys, China is definitely noticeably
different in the communist aspect, but not in Vietnam. In Vietnam,
if someone just dropped you here and you woke up
here and you didn't know that this was a communist country,
you would have no idea, no idea at all. That
was kind of the two biggest misconceptions. That and that
you're going to be out in this jungle and it's

(39:40):
going to be crazy and you're living in a hut.

Speaker 3 (39:41):
So just those misconceptions. And actually, I'm sorry, let me
say one more thing. The poverty issue.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
So at least in de On, in the cities that
I've been to, I have never seen a homeless person.

Speaker 3 (39:54):
And I've never had anyone come up to me and
ask me for money.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
I have had it in the Philippines. There's even young
kids in the Philippines. You come out of a seven eleven,
they got their hand out, they say, sir, please give
me some money.

Speaker 3 (40:04):
Thailand, I see it when I'm in Bangkok. They'll be
people sleeping on the ground, or they'll ask you for money.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
I have never seen a homeless person. Maybe they exist
somewhere and I just don't see them. But I for sure,
in over a year and a half that I've been here,
never had anyone come up to me and ask me
directly for money.

Speaker 3 (40:23):
Never once. Now I will get the people that sell
the fruit or sell the.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
Glasses, but I consider those guys are working. They're not
just saying, hey, can I get some money. But I've
never seen that here. That's probably another misconception that people
probably think too.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
What's something that you think as an American living abroad
you can learn from the Vietnamese or you can learn
from Vietnamese culture.

Speaker 3 (40:44):
Yeah, I'll never be able to learn it.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
But the one thing that forces you to learn while
you're in Asia is patience.

Speaker 3 (40:52):
Patience.

Speaker 2 (40:52):
I've never been a patient person, but life goes by
a lot slower here back in the USA.

Speaker 3 (40:59):
I love to do. I love to get a lot
of stuff done.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
Like maybe a day I'd wake up and I'd say
I want to get X done, yz Z done. Like here,
you might get your day started and your favorite restaurant
close today, They're like, why is it closed? I don't know,
there's no reason that the shop still says it should
be open.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
That's closed. Let's say you want to go do you
want to go to the mall? Maybe something something's closed there.
So patience is definitely definitely going to be the thing.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
How about we do the flip. What could the Vietnamese
who are here learn from Americans or what could the
Vietnamese person learn if they were living abroad in America?

Speaker 3 (41:39):
Logic?

Speaker 2 (41:40):
So your Western logic here will not not work and
it doesn't make sense and you will not figure it out.
I know it's like a common thing that everybody says that,
but I've been looking.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
So I do apartment videos.

Speaker 2 (41:52):
I do hotel and apartment videos on a budget kind
of travel level. And right now now this is the
highest that we've ever seen rent go up and landlorders
are asking for things, and everyone says, oh, it's a
supply and demand issue, and it's in my opinion, it's not.
I go out at night and I see the lights
half the buildings there's no lights, which means no one's

(42:14):
living there. Now here's the example of an American American
if they don't have someone living there and say they
want ten million V and D for that place, no
one gives them that. In USA, the land will say, okay, fine,
I'll take eight million, get somebody in there.

Speaker 3 (42:27):
We don't want homeless.

Speaker 2 (42:27):
Coming in here, or get some money in this country
that doesn't exist. They will let that place sit for
two months, three months, four months, nobody will rent it
and it'll just sit. And you go like, why won't
you just take nine million, And it's just the logically
those that say no, we're not going to do it,
and it just it's some.

Speaker 3 (42:46):
Stuff just does not make sense.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
And when I ask, maybe I'll post it on Facebook
group or something, and people just responses, that's Vietnam. Whatever
is supposed to make sense doesn't make sense. And I've
got that from a lot of people. So maybe that
would be the other thing besides patients that you just
have to take it the way that it is.

Speaker 1 (43:09):
What about meeting people socializing? How do you meet friends?
How do you make friends? How did you meet your girlfriend?
What was your dating experience? Like, do you want to
maybe compare all three again? Thailand versus Philippines versus Vietnam.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
So meeting people, I would say probably a good chunk
is kind of just naturally because I do a YouTube channel,
so I actually will do some meetups when I hit
milestones and people will come out here and I'll meet
up with them. I do live stream, so people just
kind of like.

Speaker 3 (43:37):
Hey, I'm watching your live stream.

Speaker 2 (43:39):
I'm going to show up, So I kind of bump
into them that way. I've done three bus visa runs,
and when you're on a long bus for ten hours
a day doing that visa run that day, you kind
of just naturally talk to people.

Speaker 3 (43:52):
Or when you're out at a restaurant, you'll run into
a guy and you'll say like, oh.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
Where are you from? From USA? From California. I'm from California.
So you just accidentally run into people here. Like you
might think like, oh, I'm never gonna know anybody, but
it just naturally accidentally happened, So don't worry about meeting friends.
Like unless you guys hide inside, if you just go
to the beach, you're gonna run into someone that you'll

(44:15):
over here talking about football, or you're gonna run into
someone that it says, oh, man.

Speaker 3 (44:20):
Do you guys show UFC at this place? And it's like, Oh,
I watched UFC two or did you watch that?

Speaker 2 (44:24):
So it just accidentally happens, like when you were back
when you were a kid in school, you didn't know
anybody that year, and you go to the first day
of class and you just start talking about stuff and
that's how you run into people.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
Absolutely. And what about dating, So did you date in
Thailand before you met your girlfriend in Philippines? Did you
date here first? Was that your first stop?

Speaker 2 (44:43):
I have not dated at all in Vietnam. I guess
I've kind of dated in the sense that I've listened
to other people's stories that are close to me and
kind of hear their stories, but not in Vietnam. First
trip to Asia was twenty nineteen, so I did meet
some women back then, for mostly from the Philippines. I
know it's going to be a lot different than Vietnam

(45:04):
or Thailand because Philippines women speak English, which is going
to be one of the big barriers, and they live
more of a Western lifestyle, So Thailand is going to
be not a Western lifestyle. Vietnam is even going to
be less of a Western lifestyle. Kind of just different logic.
So my experience practically goes just to the Philippines. Dating

(45:27):
life in the aspect is very, very similar to the
United States because of the English and the Western lifestyle.
So I can only kind of speak on that issue
of it.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
And you're talking like in person dating, meeting people at
events just like at bars, coffee shops on the street,
or online dating services.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
The majority of it was meeting on like an online
free chat site and setting up to meet in person.
So you would go on there, I'd land in the
city and say like hey, send out profile, or I
would go to the mall back early in twenty nineteen,
and I was amazed by malls in Asia because back
in the USA, malls or a thing of the past.

Speaker 3 (46:06):
So you'd go to the malls.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
And maybe you would bump into someone and say hey,
like oh hey, do you want to go to a movie?
So it was mostly online to meet up with somebody
in person and or like at a mall or out
at whatever these cool little hangout spots in Asia and
the Philippines are. Is practically the way a food market
or a street market is kind of like how you've
run in these people.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
For a brief time, trying both tender and bumble, and
Vietnam ended up meeting someone eventually through bumble who's now
my wife. I found it impossible to just meet people
in person in a direct way in Vietnam, but it's
not culturally appropriate. Even even if there wasn't a language bearer,
that just sort of idea of like approaching someone or
talking to someone in a direct way here, even if

(46:49):
they might be interested in you, you'd likely come off
as sort of confrontational or two aggressives. I would not
necessarily recommend that if someone starts talking to you, of
course a different sterio, but yeah, I would definitely recommend
the online what kind of visa are you on? How
much did it cost?

Speaker 3 (47:03):
You?

Speaker 1 (47:03):
Already talked about how the three year visa to the
Philippines is fantastic for America and citizens, and the Thailand
visa is shorter, is only thirty days, so you know,
if the Philippines is the best case scenario for an
American and Thailand is probably the worst case scenario, what's
the situation and being on for you?

Speaker 2 (47:21):
So I am on the tourist ninety day visa. Very
simple visa is practically what almost any tourist gets is
the ninety day visa. It costs twenty five dollars. If
you do it yourself, you go on a simple website
e visa website. You pay twenty five dollars for the
single entry ninety days and basically after ninety days you
can either leave here, go out, go explore into the country.

(47:44):
But what I've been doing is I've been doing the
visa bus runs. Last year, I used to do the flights.
I would fly into Bangkok every thirty days because back
in twenty twenty three, Vietnam did not have the ninety
day visa.

Speaker 3 (47:59):
They had the thirty day visa.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
So every month at nine o'clock in the morning, nine
thirty something like that, I would fly into Bangkok land
there about eleven o'clock in the morning, go upstairs, go
to one of our favorite places we mentioned seven to eleven,
grab some lunch, hang out there for about two or
three hours. My flight from Bangkok back to Denong about
four o'clock and i'd be back at six o'clock. That's
how I used to do it last year. This year

(48:23):
the law kind of changed and they said you're not
eligible to apply and get your new visa while you're
in the country. So technically you're supposed to lead the
country and then apply.

Speaker 3 (48:35):
There's technically a loophole, I guess with the bus visa run.
So the bus visa run I pay.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
It's one hundred and sixty five dollars US and that
includes your Lao visa, your Vietnam visa, and your transportation.
So I get on a bus at six o'clock in
the morning, nice bus, chartered bus ac WI FI reclining seats.
We get to Lao about twelve o'clock in the morning. Roughly,

(49:02):
they hold your hand. There's nothing that you need to do.
They hold your hand, tell you to cross the border.
You walk about ten minutes. You get into a loo.

Speaker 3 (49:08):
They can give you a stamp for the low visa.
You go right back, walk across to the Vietnam side,
get your new ninety day stamp, get back on the bus.
Take about four and a half hours to get back
here and you're done at six o'clock six in the morning,
you start six pm. You're done.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
Now your your new ninety day visas good for another
ninety days. And I've been doing that three times. At
the end of this month will be my fourth consecutive
give plus visa run. So that's the only way, as
I know, as the longest visa I think you did
mention business visas. I don't have the money, obviously, I'm
a budget.

Speaker 3 (49:44):
Traveler and I don't have the knowledge to get in
there and figure out these other visas.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
But the simplest, cheapest way to do it is to
do the ninety day visa and if you guys want
to stay here, do the bus run. But I do
advise if you guys don't want to do the same
day and that's too much, go fly Go go to
Pauola Lumpur, go apply for your new visa, stay out
there for three to five to seven days until you
get your new visa, and come back go to Bangkok.

Speaker 3 (50:08):
For a week. Go do it that way, it's less stressful.
You can go have a.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
Vacation, so you get two options. If you do want
to come back to Vietnam. That's my suggestion.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
What's one piece of advice you have for someone who's
moving to Vietnam or maybe the Philippines or Thailand and
has never left America, Like, they have not taken the
leap of faith, they haven't dipped their toes in the water.
They're a complete newbie to the retiring or traveling in
Southeast Asia experience.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
I actually have two quick pieces of advice.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
One, don't make a long term decision before you get
out to wherever, no matter how much you feel about it,
make sure you go there.

Speaker 3 (50:46):
Make sure you check it out.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
There's been cities I thought I was gonna hate and
I love. There were cities I thought I was gonna
love and I hate. So first of all, go out there,
do a quick trial run stay there for a week,
stay there for two weeks or.

Speaker 3 (50:59):
A month, try to find out.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
Try to actually look and say, like, what would make
me not like this city? So that would be my
first advice of go try it out. Don't just say, hey,
everyone tells me go to Bangkok. I'm going to Bangkok.
I rented a place for six months and I'm there now.
Don't do it that way. I would definitely be against that.
My second biggest advice. I should have took this advice.

Speaker 3 (51:22):
I didn't make sure you guys have a way to
make money.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
That would be my big, big, big thing. That's definitely
my big thing. Because I didn't listen to that. Like
I said, I have been here all the way since
twenty nineteen, on and off, traveling throughout Asia.

Speaker 3 (51:39):
My thing.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
I just got so tired of living in the USA.
I was tired of living the rat race. So what
I did, the reason why I'm out here now, I
left the United States. I saved up one year of
cost of living in Vietnam, a little over ten thousand dollars,
and I said, as soon as I have this, I'm
getting the hell out of the USA and I'm going
out here. So I threw myself in the ocean. Literally,

(52:02):
I sank or swim, throw myself out there. I left
the USA. I think I had three hundred and fifty
subscribers on YouTube. Never thought I was going to be monetized,
never thought about this, never thought about this, And I
just said, I'm just going to figure out what I'm
gonna do. I'm gonna get a job online teaching. Luckily enough,
a year ago when I moved. I'm at almost five
thousand subscribers. Now, I am technically monetized. I got monetized

(52:25):
on my YouTube back in September. I do not break
even on my channel, though I recoup back about seventy
ish percent of what I put out. But my biggest thing,
even what I didn't listen to, is make sure you
have a way to make money.

Speaker 3 (52:40):
That's the biggest thing. If you guys can make.

Speaker 2 (52:42):
Money online, everything else, in my opinion, is so so simple.
So I should have took my own advice and kind
of had a better plan, but I was just so
tired of the USA and I needed to get out,
and I just threw myself out there.

Speaker 3 (52:58):
That would be my biggest.

Speaker 2 (52:59):
Biggest piece of advice is to make sure you have
a way to make money.

Speaker 1 (53:04):
Man, I could not agree more anyone who's interested in
the cost of living abroad, a huge visa, a device.
Even if you're a tiree, even if you have a pension,
you have some steady income, getting even a ten to
twenty hour a week job, you have an income. It's
going to one remove all the stress about bringing in
money from the other country because you're gonna be paid

(53:26):
in the location where you are. Two, it's going to
be a way to incorporate with local people because you're
going to meet local coworkers. Three you're just going to
be immediately forced into a social situation that has some
sort of community in schedule in their life. Yeah, a
huge game changer, eye.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
And a bonus to that, if you do get a
job here, at least in Vietnam, you'll get a TRC,
which is a visa that allows you to live here,
which now gives you a one year visa though that's
just a little extra bonus too.

Speaker 1 (53:53):
Yeah, a TRC you can actually go up to three years,
depending on your employer. But before I met my now wife,
Dad is how I was here. For the first five years.
I was in Vietnam Amazona renewing TRCs through my work. Okay,
so the last question is actually a question for me.
What's the question that I didn't ask you that you
would ask the next expat on the cost of living

(54:16):
a broad pod?

Speaker 2 (54:17):
Okay, I would say, what is your long term plan?
Do you plan on ever going back to the USA?
Do you plan on living here for the rest of
your life? What is the end game? I guess that
would probably.

Speaker 3 (54:31):
Be the question.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
But I just assume when they're here that I just
think they're gonna be here forever, and then I will
help people say like, oh, you know what, when I get.

Speaker 3 (54:38):
Tired, I'll go back.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
So I think no one really answers that question of
I don't know, are you planning on being here for
the rest of your life? Are you gonna reevaluate in
five years, ten years?

Speaker 3 (54:47):
So probably the length of your stay is.

Speaker 1 (54:49):
The last finisher is going to be. What is the
cost of living abroad for you?

Speaker 2 (54:54):
I kind of say it's ten thousand a year, but
roughly it's probably a little over nine thousand. And if
we do downgrade to a one bedroom, I think I
could crack under nine thousand, but I would I always
tell everybody it's ten thousand for me, So ten thousand
is kind of what I consider do ee an annual
budget per year, assuming nothing crazy.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
Happens, amazing under ten thousand dollars for Will and his
girlfriend who's we met in the Philippines to live in
Vietnam for one year under ten k year retiring in
Vietnam is your answer. Thank you so much for being
the first guest.

Speaker 3 (55:33):
On appreciate thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
It's a pleasure to job with you and to meet
you and everything. I hope that everyone watching and listening
gets over and checks will out and at will travels
with a Z on YouTube and any other platform various
streaming and sharing his videos. 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

(55:56):
Living Abroad

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