Update and Summary – Why Thailand? What Is The Move?
A lot of people have been catching one or two of the video blogs and not getting the full picture of what exactly happened. So – let’s recap for those who are trying to patch everything together:
In about April (of this year – 2018) Wendy and I had a meeting. Cross Border Summit went pretty well – our third annual event for Global From Asia – but we realized most people were coming from overseas / international. That they would go to other locations too. We started to realize, we are working online, and the events we do don’t require us to be in China. Especially since we have an amazing partner in South America for next year’s Cross Border Summit.
That combined with the facts of life for new parents – kid’s education. Miles was already in Kindergarten and Maggie is lining up to get into the school system. We weren’t satisfied with the school, and the costs were already at a high end of our willingness to pay. So to add another kid into the system. Plus with only 1 English class a day Miles was not learning English. Sure you can say I’m an American I can teach my kid English but sorry – I am an overworked entrepreneur it isn’t as easy as reading some English books before going to bed – there is a lot to teaching English.
And another factor, our three year lease at our home / home office was coming up and the rent was expected to come up by a decent amount (Wendy asked the landlord). And quality of living / life in Shenzhen was not increasing in our opinion. More traffic, more stress, and other things I don’t want to offend anyone here.
So we decided to take an exploration trip in July to hunt for a new home. Wendy was thinking Buddhist monks could school our kids in Nepal, I was leaning more towards Thailand or Malaysia. We ended up picking Chiang Mai – so many Chinese here – Wendy already felt like she was in a suburb of China. Tons of digital nomads here as well, super fast internet. So many amazing international schools at less than half we were paying in China. As well as the rent – we found houses – two story houses – for less than half of what we were paying in Shenzhen.
This is the story. This is what we did.
Why so fast? Because we found out while visiting in July – that in Thailand the schools start in early/mid August – August 10 was orientation! Sure, we could have had the kids start late -but I knew how stressful it was going to school on my first day as a kid – starting late would be harder.
Ya, we rushed it. We picked a house (from a friend of a friend) that was a bit too far from the school. Had a driver doing it – but didn’t work out and had to lose some rental deposits and move again. But it is the cost of making fast moves, and it is the cost of moving a family to another country.
It has been quite a change, quite a transition. Over ten years in China it has been an adaptation to everything for me. Been working on the right visa, considering opening a company, hiring local staff. Just pushing forward as always.