Retire or Live in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia!

okay Amelia we've been here over two months here in koala lur so I think it's time to do our exploratory trip analysis video we're going to look at 10 factors that matter most to us and probably to you if you're looking for a place to move to abroad so we're going to give each factor a thumbs up or a thumbs down and then let you know at the end if we think kalala Lampur is a good place to move to abroad all right so we're going to start with the language barrier and I have to say it has been a lot easier to communicate here than I was anticipating noticed that there's three different types of countries the first type is if you move there you're going to have to learn the local language because most people do not speak English like if you go to an emergency room there's a good chance the doctor and the nurse are not going to speak English countries in Latin America mostly fall into that there are pockets of English-speaking cities mainly where you can go and speak English pretty easily but for the most part you're going to have to learn Spanish in Latin America the next type is where everybody speaks English but they expect you to learn their local language France and Spain fall into that category and a lot of the other European countries it's understandable then there's the third type of country like Malaysia where almost everyone speaks English and they do not expect you to learn melee we found the same thing to be true in Albania they don't expect you to learn Albanian and that makes it really easy for us Oldtimer English speakers and not have to try to master a new language in our 50s yeah I really appreciate that I was so surprised by the amount of English that we've been hearing on the radio just reading on the signs and like J said almost everybody here koort speaks English so I got to give the language barrier here a huge thumbs up because there really isn't one at all the next Factor we always like to look at is safety and stability and I it's so safe here we walk around at night by ourselves we've had locals tell us we don't have to worry about our safety we've seen a couple of signs to watch out for pig pockets in tourist areas but for the most part it's extremely safe here yes and I have felt safe going out by myself nobody has bothered me and I see a lot of other people out walking by themselves all the time I mean of course you always need to be aware of your surroundings and when you're in a crowded area but I just don't feel nervous when I'm out and about also the Global Peace Index ranked Malaysia as number 10 which is to me a really good sign yeah it is Amilia went out and filmed her own solo vlog the very first and only solo Vlog she's done on our channel so if you miss that you should check it out next it's awesome I'm so so impressed with the work she did on that but she did that all by herself out filming on the street and the shops and stuff and she didn't have you wasn't worried about anything no not at all I'm giving koala po a thumbs up as well because we both feel very safe here yep we do all right next up our weather and natural disasters I'm G to let ailia talk about this she's struggling with the weather I'm struggling with the Heat and the humidity I have been very hot and pretty sweaty here quite a bit and it's not my favorite feeling and I also get I like to be outdoors and it's hard to enjoy the outdoors because sometimes the heat has just been draining and I mentioned this in our last video that we were out recording and after two hours we were just drenched drenched and the life was just kind of sucked out of us we had to come home and recover but then I also am not a huge fan of air conditioning so I'm f for the air conditioning don't get me wrong but sometimes it bugs my sinuses so it's a bit of a rough adjustment for me here the day we went out and filmed it was only 87 degrees which is pretty warm but it was really humid but yesterday it was 95 degrees Fahrenheit and humid and it was just too hot to go outside we didn't actually go out until after the sunset because it was too hot so that is big bummer they also have a lot of rain here monsoon season and it rains a lot most most afternoons and occasionally they get a typhoon there was one that just went north of here and hit Vietnam and Thailand and so there I would say that the weather and natural disasters aren't great I'm gonna give this a thumbs down I got to give it a thumbs down too sorry qualm po we love this city but it is there is definitely a strong adjustment period if you are not used to heat and humidity I actually don't mind the rain that much but the heat is rough health insurance and Health Care are next and that's the main reason we came here actually was to get Healthcare well one of the main reasons we did our health screening here we talked about that in a different video and I got to say I'm really really impressed with the healthare here it's a similar cost as it was in Ecuador so it's a lot less in the United States it's it's all the doctors and nurses everybody speaks English in the hospital that we went to Prince Court we had such a positive experience I can't speak highly enough about the healthc care here well and I like too that just as in many other countries were're able to go and get prescriptions filled without a prescription you just go up and ask for it in the pharmacy so the ease of getting your medication is really nice here the pharmacist speak English as well which makes a makes it a huge plus yeah it does and you can WhatsApp them like I have I can WhatsApp the hospital to make an appointment or cancel an appointment I can WhatsApp the doctor it's amazing it's so easy to communicate with them you can get appointments the same day so I had or milia had an appointment in the morning and they told her she needed to see another doctor she got in a couple hours later the same day I was able to get appointments for the next day a couple of times it's so nice here they do have a public system which we have not used but we have been very pleased with the private system and what I find very interesting is that there are multiple private hospitals that cater to the locals and to tourists because medical tourism is a big thing here and they are competing for business and that helps to keep the prices really competitive yeah we heard on the radio there was an advertisement for one of the hospitals that said if the ambulance right is less than 20 minutes I think it was 20 something like that it was free so you get a free ambulance right to go to these hospitals that's what happens when you have a nice competitive system where they're all working for your business it keeps those prices down and the service quality up so I think we need to give healthc care a big thumbs up I wish I give them two thumbs up for healthcare well you can't thumbs up it is pretty awesome all right let's talk about housing next and we're not going to go into a ton of detail in this video about housing because we're organizing a real estate tour right now so be sure to hit the Subscribe button if you want to see that video when we publish it we do need to talk a little bit about housing this is a condo lifestyle there are some single family homes but really you're looking at condo living so if you like that you're going to be happy here in koore and we've really enjoyed it because so many of the buildings have everything you need either in the same building or just within a like a couple block radius so they're designed where you can get to everything within 15 minutes and that's walking so you do not need a car which is really important to us we did hear from someone in our comments of a previous video that they are renting here longterm for $500 a month in a nice Condo building and we've seen some other videos on YouTube for anywhere from the five to 1 th500 to ,000 dollar per month that you can get a really nice place for that and it's really affordable so I think we're going to give housing a big thumbs up for koala lap if assuming you're a condo type person EX exactly okay what's up next next up are food and restaurants and a lot of people love kual onour for the food mostly the street food that is what's so popular here and fortunately it's not really the type of food that we eat but I can see why people would like it yeah it is extremely popular here and you do get a wide variety of food that is pretty cheap and it's not just melee you can get Indian Chinese all sorts of stuff but there's also so there's a wide variety of restaurants here International Cuisine we've had Mexican food we've had good me good Mexican Japanese American food if you're into Burgers you you can find it all here and it's well priced lots of different grocery stores too we found one called GA I think in the La La Port Mall it's kind of like a Whole Foods version of an Asian market it's like a highend you can find anything you want and there all kinds of specialty Asian Foods which we really like and there's several grocery stores around there's also little shops in each of the neighborhoods so you can really just stay right local if you want to and get almost everything that you need including restaurants yes I've been extremely happy because I've been able to find the Asian spices and Indian spices that I love so we've actually been cooking a lot they have really affordable produce here I got to give food and restaurants a thumbs up yeah definitely it's super easy to eat too much here next up is walkability and public transportation and I got to say I don't think it's very walkable I know ailia is going to disagree with me on this I do disagree because sometimes you have to walk like 10 or 15 minutes just across the street and if you want to do it at a crosswalk so then you see people crossing without a crosswalk and like playing Frogger between cars coming and going in different directions and sometimes you'll be walking down a sidewalk it'll turn into a construction zone with a busy road and you're like hugging up against the barricades for the construction zone trying to like walk by without getting hit and I I don't know I'm not a big fan of walking here okay so I do agree with that there is some issues with walking it is not the most walkable Place we've been to especially comp compared to like France for example however I would argue and I have argued that we have been here for two months and we have walked all over the place the key to walking here is you have to learn your way around so you have to kind of get out and explore and then you find the best ways to go because we've found shortcuts and we been able to avoid some of those tricky walking areas so that's why we're having a debate on this topic because I think that if it is walkable compared to some places in the US for example that you have to have a car you do not have to have a car here no you don't and they also have a lot of public transportation options so they have the monor rail they have a train system they have a bus system they have taxis and then we use grab a lot the grab app it's like uber only it's here they do food delivery too and grocery shopping and all that stuff but the grab it takes it C only costs us like two or three dollars to drive from like here to the other side of the the downtown area it's extremely affordable so we use that almost every day yeah when we're not walking yeah so I think I'm going to give walking and public transportation for me it's a thumbs down for me it's a thumbs up so I guess that means it's a thumbs side okay and also the heavy traffic sometimes it's really hard because of all the traffic so I don't know I'm sticking with my thumbs down I'm sticking with my thumbs up we don't have to agree at everything I'm not used to that though we almost always agree all right so next up is quality of life that's the next Factor this is like things to do cultural and social activities like the local friendliness just everything that makes your life we living in a place and K's got a lot going for it yes it does first of all there are a lot of different xat groups so you are not going to feel lonely here because it's really easy to plug in with other like-minded people from all over the world because this is a really big hug for other people to come and work and there's retirees here too so you're going to find people from all different age groups also because so many people basically everybody speaks English it makes it a lot easier to communicate and make friends yeah so we've been to some internations events and PE literally people from all over the world are there we met people from Barbados Ghana in Africa Indonesia China Thailand and Vietnam I mean all over the place Brazil the Philippines and the one thing we all have in common is English so everybody is there talking to each other in English here in Malaysia they're not talking in melee it it makes it super easy to really connect with other people not just other expats from the US but expats from all over the world and countries from all over the place and you're also going to find there are a lot of things to do like arts and crafts and you can find different types of gyms and like exercise stuff yoga martial arts we went to a cat cafe which was super fun I loved it and ailia was attacked by a cat when as soon as we walked through the door a cat just climbed right up the yeah that was unexpected she was so worried she was gonna get cat scratch fever got a cat in your throat I guess I have a have a hair ball there's also lots of cultural activities museums there's the Batu Caves we haven't even been there yet we're going to go do that tomorrow I know I'm so excited to go to that so yeah there's a lot of temples and festivals there it's going to be the Diwali Festival here this well next week there's going to be that going on so much to do we have the bird park where we went and Amelia held a bird and well it climbed on her and we saw all kinds of beautiful birds there there's the Botanical Garden that has an orchid garden in it which was beautiful there all kinds of walk there's the Echo Park there's the KLCC Park which you could just go and enjoy walking around I love those massive mly big banion trees and it's nice that that's right in the city and then you have the mall culture which I find fascinating but the more we've been here the more it makes sense so now we're going to the mall during the day if we need to get some exercise and walking around so we're not driping dripping in sweat but they're they're designed to keep you in them all day long because they've got shopping they have various forms of entertainment like that time square one has that massive amusement park the laap port has the roller ring there's all the cafe cafe you go hang out there for all day if you want to yeah Pavilions has a whole area of different things to do and it's nice because you can just walk and walk and walk and the TRX mall they have an entire park the whole roof of the mall is a park it's like a city park with a walking trail that goes through a tropical forest it's unbelievable that's actually my favorite mall but I think the the mall culture here is fascinating it's a lot like Starbucks in the US if you look out the door of One Mall you're gonna see another mall on the other side of the street they're everywhere here yeah it is really interesting and there's also an evening culture and that's been a little bit of an adjustment for us but I get it because it's hot during the day so people go out at night so they can avoid the strength of the sun because we're pretty close to the equator here yeah it it's really nice out in the evenings usually there's a little bit more of a breeze and so people kind of head out around 7 when the sun sets and they go out and have dinner and walk around and socialize and I don't know we find the quality of life I think would be really high here ours has been for the two months that we've been here so we're gonna give this a big thumbs up agreed thumbs up next up if we're going to talk about quality of life then you know it's really important to a lot of you and unfortunately it's suffering for a lot of you in the world right now especially if you can't afford your cost of living so that's why we created our move abroad Express ecourse because it's going to help you live a higher quality of life for a lower cost of living by helping you move abroad yes it is so important to take control of your life yeah the course has over 50 videos tons of written content walks you through every step of the process for moving abroad so that it takes out all that mystery and gives you a peace of mind and it's going to save you a lot of money too because we have a lot of money saving tips in there and you also become members of our private and supportive community and of course you have lifetime access which includes all the updates we do periodically yes so we decided to extend the discount for another week so you guys can lock in that discount now you just check out this QR code here wherever it is on the screen go to Amilia jp.com Mae to enroll today okay what's next time zone distance from the US okay well this is rough yeah it's 12 hours difference from East Coast time here so that's what 13 14 15 hours from Pacific but then next week it's going to be worse after daylight savings time in the US it goes to 13 hours from east coast and 16 to Pacific so really we're asleep pretty much during the work day we go to bed when people in the US start to work and then we wake up when they're leaving work so it makes it really rough if you want to work from here yeah it's been a challenge for me I miss my afternoon chats with my mom because I can't call her in the middle of the night and vice versa sorry Mom I don't want to talk to you at 1:00 a.m. and I know you don't want to talk to me at 1:00 a.m. yeah my mom got confusing calls in the middle of the night one time and of course I was freaking out that something was wrong and and I when I answered she said nothing's wrong I just forgot what time it was so it's it's a challenge being so far away if you're working this could definitely be a challenge for you you're going to have to adjust your schedule luckily it is a late night culture and there are places that are open 24 hours here so it is doable and we're making it work but it's an adjustment as well so I got to give it a thumbs down yeah for the the time bear distance from the US or anywhere in the western well the in the Americas well and that actually we didn't even mention that but it's not an easy trip to get back to the US either so if something happens and we need to high tail it back it's not it's a slow travel yeah we're looking at at least 30 hours maybe it could be even up to 40 hours to go from here back to see our family in the US so that's brutal it is brutal all right next up is cost of living and again we're going to do an entire video sharing all of our cost since we've been here in koala lur you guys are going to be shocked at how affordable it is you this is a fully developed country or a city the the whole country maybe not but the city is fully developed they have an Ikea Starbucks all over the coffee shops on every corner pretty much they have Cartier and dolci and gabana I mean they have all everything that a developed City should have they have it here all the public transportation I think you could comfortably we could comfortably live here full-time for less than 2,000 month oh I completely agree yeah and that I mean that would be living in a really nice place too I me our cost of living here has been shocking it's it's way less in even Albania which is the cheapest that we had during our time in Europe and it's less in Ecuador it is less than e even though the healthcare is similar the cost of other things is a lot less yeah so yeah big thumbs up for cost of living and remember hit the Subscribe button so that you see our cost of living video when we get ready so before we share our final verdict on koal on PO we want to just briefly talk about the residency Visa options because if you want to live here you got to have some sort of a Visa they have a few options for visas the mm2 which is for Malaysia is their second home version of a Visa it's not quite as straightforward as some of the other ones out there but it you definitely can make that work they also have a digital Nomad Visa a medical tourism visa and we actually talked to the hospital about that or doctor and the hospitals will help you get that so if you need if you come here for health stuff like we have and you need to extend your stay with a medical Visa the hospital will help you do that so that's nice and there's a work visa if you want to come here and get a job tourism and you can do a 90-day tourist visa yeah we were told that they do allow One Visa Run so after 90 days you can go to the next country and come back but after more than one they kind of frown upon that they may not let you back in but if you leave for 90 days and come back it's probably not going to be an issue it's what we've been told yeah but don't because you never know personally I don't I'm not a fan of taking risk like that but if you're a risk taker maybe you're okay with that I don't know I just go for us I do the digital Nomad yeah so if you want all of the specifics about the Visas we have that in our move abroad toolkit it's a free download it has a Visa Matrix and a Visa report that includes all of the top countries that we recommend if you want to move abroad so check below for that link and you can download that right now all right so what's the final verdict here Amilia well yes no or maybe I think it's a big yes big thumbs up give we gave it seven thumbs up two thumbs down and one sideways one sideways because we were not in a cord yeah so it's definitely still on our short list it's right up there with Dijon and Toronto for me agreed I really like it the main issue is it's so far away from our families that's that's the main issue why we wouldn't want to spend like full time here yeah the heat I know that I will adapt and I already have you just learn to live with it just like you do you know summers in Texas right or wherever it's hot Chicago yeah Chicago or Winters in Chicago yeah oh thank you yeah let us know in the comments what do you think is koala Lampur is it on your list now or is it off your list was it ever on your list just let us know in the comments what you think about KL and they call it KL here the locals do so I like that as you know as someone who uses initials for his name it's really common here when I say JP they're like oh JP in Ecuador they're like what JP what is that but here they totally understand what my initials mean they do that's a really good point because you're right and lots of Latin countries they do not understand that JP is actually his name yeah I I would say hotap and they're like hotap they just would not could not understand that I went by initial so then I just started saying Juan Pablo Juan Pablo it's a lot easier yeah it is we went to 10 countries during our first year of exploratory trip so check out this video next if you want to see the places that we like most and least and click this link right here to check out the move abroad Express ecourse and to lock in your discount all right guys that's all we have for this video before you go leave us a like as always we appreciate that and we will see you all in our next video ciao ciao hi