AARP Hearing Center
We Test-Drove Retirement in Southeast Asia for 75 Days
From Vietnam to Indonesia, here’s what it cost and what surprised us
AARP (Courtesy Lynnette Khalfani-Cox, 3)
Key takeaways
- A retirement test run abroad works best when you live like a local instead of traveling like a tourist.
- Day-to-day living costs are considerably lower in Southeast Asia than in the U.S., and affordable, high-quality health care is widely accessible in urban areas.
- The time difference can make relocating to Asia difficult if you plan to continue working and do business with U.S.-based clients.
Plenty of people dream about retiring abroad. Far fewer take that dream out for a test-drive before they commit.
My husband, Earl, and I did. Earlier this year, we spent 75 days living — not vacationing — in Southeast Asia, moving through Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia.
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We weren’t checking off tourist sites. We were running an experiment: Could we really live here? We shopped at local markets, cooked our own meals, did our laundry, negotiated with landlords, made doctor’s appointments and tried to keep our U.S.-based business running from 12 time zones away.
If you’re 50 or older and seriously considering a life abroad in retirement, a test run like ours is the smartest thing you can do before you sell the house and ship the dog. Here’s what we learned, including the one thing that caught us completely off guard.
Rent residences, not hotel rooms
The first rule of a real test run: Stop booking hotels. Hotels keep you in tourist mode. To know whether you could live somewhere, you must live like a local.
For most of our trip, we stayed in furnished villas and apartments booked through apps like Agoda and Airbnb — places with kitchens, washing machines and neighbors. In Ubud, Bali, we rented a beautiful villa tucked into the rice paddies for about $78 a night. In Siem Reap, Cambodia, a spacious two-bedroom villa with a pool ran about $97 a night for a two-week stay. In Hanoi, Vietnam, a serviced apartment cost us $80 a night, or $480 for six nights.
A tip that saved us real money: Book longer and negotiate directly. Owners would rather fill a villa for three weeks at a discount than chase a string of three-night bookings. When you commit to a longer stay, ask for a better weekly rate. We always got one, usually 10 to 15 percent off the nightly price. And if you’re staying at least 20 days, don’t hesitate to request a monthly rate, which can knock off 30 percent or more.
The real monthly math
Here’s the number that matters. Across Southeast Asia, our all-in monthly cost of living for the two of us — housing, food, local transportation and health care — ran roughly $2,500 to $3,500. Back home in suburban Houston, our monthly expenses are nearly triple that.
The day-to-day savings were just as striking.
Food: Restaurant meals for two rarely topped $20. Shopping for food at local markets costs a fraction of a U.S. grocery run.
Transportation: We didn’t need a car. Short tuk-tuk rides across town were $1 to $3. Longer, 10 to 30-minute rides using Grab (Southeast Asia’s version of Uber) were typically $2 to $5. Even a private driver for a full day ran just $40 to $60.
Internet: Fast Wi-Fi was standard and included in our rentals. Local SIM cards for our cell phones were only $3 to $5.
Happy with health care
Low-cost medical care is among the biggest reasons older Americans look to move abroad, and now I understand why.
In Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Earl and I went to a dental clinic catering to international patients and had, hands down, the best cleanings of our lives. It was a modern facility, unhurried, spotless and we were charged $30 apiece. A routine teeth cleaning in America starts at $104 without insurance, according to the American Dental Association.
At Bangkok Hospital in Phuket, Thailand, Earl got a comprehensive hearing exam plus a professional ear cleaning. This was something he’d put off for years; he worried about hearing loss from his DJ days in college. (The good news: His hearing is fine.) A hearing exam without insurance in the U.S. typically costs $100 to $300, depending on the provider and location, plus up to $250 more for ear cleaning. Earl’s total for both in Phuket was $188.
When I developed an ear infection and then sinusitis after one too many afternoons in the pool in Cambodia, I got a same-day appointment at Royal Angkor International Hospital in Siem Reap. A doctor visit, sinus X-rays and a bag of prescription medicines came to $276, total. A comparable same-day urgent-care visit in the U.S., with imaging and meds, can easily run several times that.
And the pharmacies! In Penang, Malaysia, what I expected to be a quick stop for a supplement turned into a revelation. Pharmacies there function more like a first stop for care than a place to grab toothpaste. The pharmacist will actually advise you and can dispense a wide range of medicines over the counter, including many that in the States would require a doctor’s appointment and prescription. It’s basic care without the wait or the bill, with meds at a fraction of U.S. prices.
A word of caution: This isn’t a reason to wing your medical care. Bring enough of your prescription medications to bridge the trip, carry your records and research accredited hospitals before you need one. But the affordability and quality of health care in Asia completely reset our expectations.
The biggest (and worst) surprise
Now for the thing that caught me off guard.
If you plan to be fully retired abroad, skip ahead. But if you’re like a lot of folks in our generation who intend to consult, freelance or work part-time with U.S. clients in retirement, pay close attention: The time difference is brutal.
The places we visited were 11 to 12 hours ahead of the U.S. East Coast (most of our trip was during daylight saving time; add an hour during standard time). That means a 10 a.m. call with a client in New York lands at around 9 or 10 p.m. for you. A West Coast client who wants to connect at noon via Zoom? That’s 2 or 3 a.m. in most of Southeast Asia.
For weeks, my workdays got pushed into the late evening and even overnight. My sleep suffered. Coordinating calls became a constant negotiation between someone’s morning and someone’s midnight. I simply didn’t anticipate how much the clock would tax me.
If your plan to retire abroad includes any U.S.-facing work, your test run needs to account for time zones. Schedule business calls during your trial period and see how it really feels to live on a flipped clock. It may change where you go (a smaller time gap can make a big difference) or how you structure your work.
Is Southeast Asia right for you?
Based on our experience, I’d say a move like this requires you to be flexible, curious rather than rigid and comfortable with the inevitable snafus. The savings are real, the health care is excellent and the daily pace can be a gift.
Think twice if you need to be a short flight from aging parents or grandchildren, if you don’t do well in heat and humidity or if you’ll be doing significant U.S.-based work and can’t stomach the hours that would entail. Language barriers are a factor, too, especially when you step outside tourist zones. Negotiating a lease or reading a medical bill can take patience, and a translation app working overtime.
Here’s my honest bottom line: “Could I really live there?” isn’t something you can answer with a travel brochure or a cost-of-living spreadsheet. You answer it by living there for a few weeks or months, with a kitchen and a routine and real problems to solve. Take a test-drive first. It’s the best insurance you’ll ever buy on one of the biggest decisions of your life.
Southeast Asia test drive: practicalities
How to find long-term stays
A few resources we used and recommend:
- Airbnb, Agoda and Booking.com. All these services let you filter for monthly stays and apply long-stay discounts automatically if available. They’re the easiest way to book a first week or two before you find local contacts.
- City-specific Facebook groups. This is where the real deals live. Search terms like “Bali long-term rentals,” “Chiang Mai houses for rent” or “expats in [your city].” Owners post directly, you skip the platform fees and you can negotiate one-on-one.
- Local property portals. Each country we visited has its own: Bali Home Immo and Ubud Villa Rental in Indonesia; DDProperty and FazWaz in Thailand; Batdongsan and Cho Tot in Vietnam; PropertyGuru and iProperty in Malaysia; Realestate.com.kh and Khmer24 in Cambodia.
- Your host and your driver. Some of our best leads came from people we’d already met. A warm, well-connected host or driver often knows a neighbor or friend with a place to rent, and word-of-mouth rates typically beat anything online.
Logistics you might overlook
A few practical things our test run forced us to figure out:
- Visas and passports. Sort out visas before you fly. Learn how long each country allows you to stay, and make sure you always have at least one empty page in your passport. I learned that the hard way in Cambodia: With no more space in my passport for stamps, I had to make a six-hour trek from Siem Reap to the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh to get an emergency passport and continue my travels.
- Prescriptions and banking. Know how you’ll refill medications and access cash. Notify your bank and credit card providers that you’re traveling, carry a backup card and check foreign-transaction fees.
- Staying connected. That means more than just making sure you have Wi-Fi. Plan how you’ll keep up with family. Factor in the time gap — what complicates work also complicates calling the grandkids.
The key takeaways were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.
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