Talk to me about moving to Middle East or other "exotic" but well paid location.

[MmeLindor.]

We are thinking about our next move and are very tempted by the tales of expats who have lived somewhere for 3 - 5 years and earned enough to buy a house back home in that time.

I have been an expat all my adult life, but in Germany/Switzerland. DH has been here in CH with me for 3 years.

He may be moved back to Germany (or elsewhere) within the next year and we have been talking about trying something completely different. There are options in his company to do this, or he would consider moving to a different job. He is in finance.

We are both able to cope with being away from family and friends, like travelling and seeing new places. The DC are pretty open to new ideas. They are trilingual English/German/French.

I would be willing to go anywhere that is not dangerous. I am aware that there is no guarantee, but obviously some countries are more stable than others.

Any ideas?

Ok, that sounds doable.

Next question. What about dogs? We have a small dog. Would we have problems bringing her over? Is it more difficult to get apartments? Can you take dogs places?

Living in Switzerland, we are really spoiled as she can go pretty much everywhere with us.

Generally not an issue in Asia since

1. dogs/cats as pets v common
2. apartments have hard floors
3. apartments let unfurnished
4. Apartments let with big deposits

Dh and I lived in Bermuda for a few yrs a long time ago. Loads of charteered accountants and finance types from UK there.

Not sure you'd be able to save much as it's expensive to live there.

Hurrrah, McBride. That is reassuring. Thanks.

Whoops, TheBride, not McBride. Not sure what happened there.

That's ok- I quite liek McBride. Feel a name change coming on

One thing about dogs is that in some Asian cities there arent really many great walks close to residential areas- it's very much walk around the block with your poop scoop. However, it's do-able. Lots of people manage. I'd only be worried if I had a big dog who's used to running for miles behind the farm truck or something.

Fellatio
Answered you before seeing this. Thanks, will get in touch with the guy.

Not sure about banking, DH is thinking of moving in different direction, but certainly worth thinking about.

Sounds good, and am glad that your DH likes it.

We are finding CH incredibly expensive at the moment. The CHF is so strong, it was 1.60 to the ? when we moved here and today reached new low of 1.03.

Since DH is paid in ?, it really makes a difference. We pay an extra ?100 a month on electricity bills. Our bills weren't even that in Germany.

That's another thing - get paid in local currency. In Dubai, a lot of expats were getting paid in £ equivalent (i.e. their salary was agreed in £ and then translated ebvery month at the prevailing fx rate. When the dirham went from £1/7 to £1/5 it was killing them.

We do have a equalising payment - supposed to help balance the cost of living but it doesn't quite cover all of the extra costs. Saying that, we are not paying rent so it works out ok in the end.

What is the story then with local salary? I guess that would be ok, since we don't have costs back home - know people here who had problems with that.

Basically, you want to have your salary in the same currency as the majority of your costs, otherwise you have an exposure if the currency moves against you (if it goes the other way, then yippee-yay-yay but frankly, who needs the stress?)

Tbh, if you go to work for a new company, it would be usual for them to quote the salary in local currency. It's usually only with secondments that they stick with the home country currency.

I'm sorry i always call you MmeLindt instead of Lindor. I just think chocolate.

Some companies will allow a dual currency payment. So we can get paid a proportion of salary in local, enough to cover what we calculated we needed for cost of living here, plus a little extra for rainy days, and then the rest in sterling.

latermater sorry only just seen your post have been off line at a conference for a few days. For our friends, there were issues with contracts (he was employed in KL via a sister company in the ME), they could not open bank accounts so were paid into an NZ account and at the mercy of exchange rates, she was refused a work permit so could not work (whereas had worked in Dubai). These were some of the issues that made it difficult. I think he also struggled with the work 'ethics/culture' and she with being a full time ex-pat wife. I think they also found the expat community rather lacking after Dubai. They thoroughly enjoyed the experience however. They loved Dubai. I guess much of it is a personal feeling. The one thing they preferred in KL was the villa they hired rather than the apartment in Dubai even though they had to keep doors and windows shut to keep the monkeys out and the monkeys also took over the swimming pool as well as the odd snake .

For us I don't know that KL was a place for young children (theirs is older). We witnessed a bag snatch, traveled in cars with no seat belts and very scary driving and I nearly lost ds2 to a middle eastern man who was holding him by the hand taking him into a lift - I intervened just before the lift door shut. Now this could have happened anywhere but I came away thinking - hmmmm not for me!! We have traveled to HK and Singapore quite alot and I'm used to locals touching the ds's especially ds1 who is blind and fair skinned and don't have a problem with it but it is the first time somebody has tried to walk off with one of them. BTW he wasn't alone he was with a female - ? his wife.

To clarify ds1 is blond not blind it is late, I've been working on a PPT presentation for work tomorrow while trying to get together a book character outfit for ds2 who is 6 and wants to go as a lego man!?!?!?. Think I should go to bed and start again early in the morning!

One general point- don't assume with Asia/ME that the bigger the expat community in a country, the friendlier/easier it will be. Often the opposite is true. HK is way friendlier than Dubai, despite expats making up only about 3% of the population vs 80%+ in Dubai. I dont know why. My only thought is that HK isnt big enough for cliques. There arent enough of us. We'd end up in one big clique before the week was out.

Thanks for your reply Sibble! I would have been concerned about the incident in the lift too! I will probably need to tell my very trusting (and young) DCs to be careful around strangers. I worry about being an ex pat spouse too: I've been a lawyer for 20 years although have just had a year off, which is one of the things which has made it possible for us to move abroad. I know I will have to get a company to sponsor me in order to get a work permit but am hoping I can do that. As for the ex pat community, the few people I have met and been put in touch with by my DH seem very nice, I have nothing to compare it with and am taking the view that it is only for 2-3 years. Still feeling a bit nervous though, as you can probably tell from the slightly defensive tone of this post! Good luck deciding what to do!

Also check out environmental factors, eg HK and mainland China extremely polluted, as are other places, especially seasonally. So you need to take that into consideration, particularly if you have kids.

Yeah- that's true. On a good day, HK's pollution is twice the WHO recommended levels. Some bits are worse than others, but, funnily enough, the less polluted bits are the pricier ones to live in (unless you go and live in the New Territories or an outlying island). I'm from London so I dont really notice but I imagine if you were used to living somewhere rural, it might be a bit of a shock.

I'm confused. ML I thought you were in Switzerland. Where is CH? And were is SG everyone keeps talking about. I can't wrack my brains anymore! I take it KL is Kuala Lumpar?

CH is Switzerland

SG is Singapore

Oh.[ Why? [thick emoticon]

Obviously I know why SG is Singapore, I did wonder if it was, but I was looking for something with two words!

Seeing Switzerland abbreviated to CH always makes me think nostalgically about It's a Knockout on 1970s tv.....probably just me though.

'Oh.[ Why? [thick emoticon]'

No idea. The only reason I know that is that the currency is always shown as CHF and the F stands for France so the CH must therefore stand for Switzerland.

Franc. Franc. Not France. Right I give up. Going to bed.