Where do you live and what do you love/hate?

[Bubble90]

Firstly, new on here so hi! I am currently pregnant with my third (due december) and have 2 boys ages 1 and 3. Me my husband and our boys currently live in Northern Ireland but hopefully not for long.

I'm doing a lot of reaearch. To keep a long story short we were meant to move to Canada in April and the whole plan crumbled. Since then our lives here just feel like theyre going nowhere. Our family are scattered all over the world and more and more of our family are moving abroad (the ones we're close with anyway).

We've now had to accept the harsh reality that Canada is never going to happen and we are now looking else where. It's hard to research a place having not been there and we can't go everywhere so id love to hear people's pros and cons of where they live, especially those who may not live in English speaking countries. We're a very outdoorsy family and we like to be as self sufficient as possible. So big cities aren't really our thing lol

We are planning to move back to the UK next year! But a large part is because my parents are elderly and far away, plus as a single parent extended family will be a huge help. But a large part of our hearts will stay behind (not to mention DD's birth family and culture of origin). Financially and practically it makes sense now to live in the UK and visit SA rather than the other way round. Who knows in the future?

I hope you have as amazing (and life changing in the best way possible!) time there as well

We're in Hong Kong
So if you're looking for no heat and a good work life balance, forget it!

You also need to be sponsored so that's tricky and getting trickier. HK calls itself Asia's world city, but hell no. Fewer expats arriving and much harder to get a job here. Teachers always in demand tho.

Good points...
Lovely winter weather.
Fabulous hiking and walking
Wonderful food.
Easy access to Asia.
Low taxation
Great job progression once here
City/ beach life
Pretty good schooling
Domestic help is plentiful.

Bad points
Hot hot summers
Far away from UK
Expat packages not as good now
Humidity
Busy busy work life
Small living quarters
Very transient.
Lose your visa and you're on the next plane home...
Nosy neighbours
Little privacy
Rent is horrendous
Cliquey
You probably won't save any money

I could go on...

HTH. Good luck!

Taytotots - You put "definitely wouldn't apply to other provinces/areas especially BC" and then went on to uncannily describe exactly my existence of 12 years in BC, in both your pros and cons paragraphs, with the lone exception of us having 3 GP's in a village with a population of under 1000 for some reason?

BC's a huge place. We're ~700km from Vancouver!

girlgoneglobal you must be in Thailand!