I’m sitting in a comfortable, overstuffed leather chair this morning typing away at this letter while a team of local women give me a traditional Thai foot massage. 30 minutes in the chair will set me back about $4, and I can’t think of a better way to part with my money.
It is with great hesitation that I’m even sitting in this chair– not because I don’t like massage, but because this particular chair happens to be at the airport. You see, I’m waiting for my departure to Europe, and if it weren’t for an important meeting in Spain that I’m looking forward to, I would be staying right here in Asia.
It’s not that I don’t like Europe– I love it, actually… the scenery, the people, the history, the architecture. It’s hard to not feel alive on a summer day in Krakow, racing down a ski slope in the Italian Alps, or driving a Porsche down the Croatian coastline.
In terms of value for the money, however, Asia has Europe beat hands down.
Take this simple, $4 massage; it would be difficult, and entirely cost prohibitive, to find a team of European professionals who would be willing to provide this level of attention; Europeans feel that ’serving’ another human being is elitist, which is part of their egalitarian socialist dogma. The session would be courteous, at best.
Many cultures in Southeast Asia, on the other hand, are happy to go the extra mile, especially when there is a gratuity attached. The ladies who staff this airport location, for example, wouldn’t even let me remove my own shoes and socks– they did it for me.
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Tagged as:
Chile,
China,
Colombia,
Malaysia,
panama,
Philippines
I’m flipping through channels at 1am here in Seoul, and do you know what I see? Math problems– nutty professors, Korean-style, working out complex partial differential equations and geometric progressions with the intensity and flair of a concert pianist.
In fact, it’s not just one channel… it’s five, roughly 20% of the entire late night channel line-up.
When you think about it, this makes perfect sense. South Korea, once dismissed as an Asian backwater where American GIs defended the frontiers of freedom, has developed itself into a formidable economy on the back of an incredibly hard-working, educated, entrepreneurial culture.
GDP per-capita is now about $28,000 per person, making South Korea’s economy roughly equivalent to Italy, Israel, and New Zealand.
It shows. The landscape is well-developed with wide, clean highways, soaring skyscrapers (at very high occupancy), extensive port facilities, and a highly advanced digital infrastructure.
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China,
Hong Kong,
investing,
Philippines,
Singapore,
South Korea
Remember the 7 expat categories from last week?
Well I have to say that Manila is paradise for a few of them…
I come through here from time to time on business and it definitely ranks as one of my favorite places in Asia– cheap, modern, relatively clean, but still with a hint of seedy underbelly to it.
I discussed the financial infrastructure yesterday; until recently, the Philippines had one of the most secretive banking systems in the world patterned after what Hong Kong used to be. In fact, a lot of things here are patterned after Hong Kong, or at least try to be.
Perhaps it’s the influence of having been a Spanish colony for so long, but most things in the Philippines fall just short of the mark– there are soaring skyscrapers in Ortigas and Makati City… with slightly unlevel floors. There are broad, clean motorways… yet still mind-numbing traffic.
Perhaps this is why our local friend remarked to us months ago that “Manila is what Hong Kong would look like if it were turned over to the Mexicans.” He’s right.
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Tagged as:
expatriation,
Philippines
With tax rates ranging from 5% to 35%, the Philippines can hardly be called a tax haven.
And yet, in a very public “guilty until proven innocent” attack several months ago, the OECD black listed the Philippines along with Uruguay, Malaysia, and Costa Rica.
The OECD is an aged, irrelevant organization comprised of mostly insolvent western nations; the organization has a penchant for bullying smaller countries into changing both their laws and local culture in order to assimilate.
Frankly, these coercive tactics constitute modern day imperialism and demonstrate an overwhelmingly ignorant worldview.
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Tagged as:
bank accounts,
Philippines