#247 – The Expat Files: Seminars, Costs, and Cultural Insights

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:00] South of the border down Mexico way That's where I fell in love when the stars above came up to play and now as I wonder My thoughts ever straight Hi everybody I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the expat files Living in Latin America the show that tells you what it's really like to live work play and or retire in Latin America I tell it just like it is so let's get started Well, I'm happy to announce I finally picked the dates for the next expat wisdom seminar down here in Central America and this time it'll be even better So jot this down. It'll be June 23rd through the 28th

[00:46] That'll be a Sunday through Friday Which will give you a Saturday to fly in and the following Saturday or Sunday to fly out unless you plan on sticking around Which a lot of people do so it'll be five solid days in previous seminars We'd have three days of lecture and an optional two days after that for boots on the ground Where we're all over the place visiting hospitals and factories and gigantic food markets and tech centers and coffee Plantations along with real estate and construction sites In fact so much information is so much to do that some attendees said it was like drinking through a fire hose People didn't have time to catch their breath. So this time the boots on the ground part is not optional I'm dragging everyone along but this time we'll space it out with a few more breathers so be prepared for a solid five days and then some in the morning a bit of a lecture and in the afternoon boots on

[01:36] The ground visiting all those places I mentioned and more This is the definitive crash course, you know on how to become a successful Expat off the tourist trail in Latin America and no those aren't my words That's just what expat wisdom seminar attendees are saying so remember the seminars June 23rd through the 28th and On next week's show. I'll give you a lot more detail. So stay tuned Now I just have to mention I was in Roatan a couple of weeks ago and I said on one of my recent shows that the prices have gone way up in Roatan now that that little islands getting something like nine or more big cruise ships A week and because of all the first world gringos that fall in love with the place Most real estate is definitely at first world prices as well as food and day-to-day shopping items, too

[02:24] But since it's a snorkeler and scuba diving paradise and that's basically how it got on the map some 30 years ago and because of that there are still a number of very low priced Accommodations since a lot of people who are into scuba really don't care much about where they sack out at night Since they came there to spend all their time in the water and at the bars So it's not hard at all to find even ten buck a night hostels and backpacker joints and off season You can find a very nice place with my minimum requirement of your own bathroom And one more thing because it's a Caribbean island air conditioning, which is a must unless of course You don't mind sweating yourself to sleep at night Anyway, you can get a place meeting my minimum standard for about 30 to 40 bucks a night But it's not gonna be on the waterfront

[03:09] So if you want an ocean view you're looking at 50 bucks a night and up Now if you want to be right on one of the four-star beaches, that means you'll be only a few hundred steps from the water You know white sand coral reefs and pristine water to die for then you'll pay 75 bucks a night or more But no matter where you stay even if you're in a ten dollar a night backpacker fleabag dump You're really not more than a five or ten minute walk away from the most beautiful beaches you've ever seen in your whole life In fact, they make any beach in the States even the best ones in California and Florida not worth sticking a toe in the water Now the reason why I'm bringing up Roatan Honduras again is because when I was there I met a young German guy and his Japanese wife and their kid They were staying at the little hotel resort that I was staying at which by the way was quite nice and ran about

[03:58] 55 bucks a night and you know when you're sitting around sucking up daiquiris in the Sun you get to talking right and When you meet an American tourist the first thing that happens is they ask you where you're from and what do you do for a living? With gringos that's how it goes down about 99% of the time anywhere in the world you happen to meet one But you know when you meet European and Asian tourists the beginning of a conversation never goes down like that In fact the lead-in is almost always unpredictable, which is cool But gringos being gringos that is a bit too forward sometimes when we meet people from another culture like that We always ask the same two questions where you're from and what do you do for a living now me? Because I've been an expat a long time. I just asked where you're from I don't ever ask what you do for a living I wait for the other guy to bring that up if it even comes up because I've learned that with other cultures

[04:48] That's a bit too personal even prying It's like asking an American that you've just met something like so Joe you're from Cleveland, huh? Nice to meet you by the way, how much money do you make? Though I got to say for some Americans even that questions not too forward believe it or not over the years I've met a lot of American tourists who want you to know how much money they make because in a way Unfortunately, that's how some gringos judge each other. It's part of that ugly American syndrome We've all heard about you know so in a way a lot of gringos are almost as superficial as Latin people North Americans seem to judge each other by what they make and Latin's judge each other by what they drive And if they can't afford a car, it's all about who's the sharpest dresser at the bus stop

[05:36] So anyway sitting around talking to this European and Japanese couple who were staying at the same hotel complex in Roatan They finally got around to telling me a bit of their story and it turns out now get this the guy and his wife run a small Hotel beach resort in Placentia, Belize Which is also a place that has beautiful beaches great snorkeling and diving just like Roatan Honduras Which made me wonder if they're on vacation? What are they doing here when they could have stayed put at their own Belize resort and taken advantage of pretty much the same thing It is on the same stretch of coral reef you know so I had to ask the guy why he even bothered to come down to Roatan and The German guy answered me by saying that there are two big differences between

[06:21] Palencia Belize and Roatan Honduras besides the fact that Roatan's an island and it takes about an hour to get there by boat from the mainland and Palencia is a coastal town on the Belize mainland Anyway, this guy says the two major differences are Placentia has only got about four or five thousand people and Roatan has five times as many but they're spread out all over the island and Number two he says Roatan's about half as expensive in every way Compared to where he lives in Belize and when he said that it kind of shocked me Since I know for a fact that Roatan is the most expensive place in Honduras by far and here He's telling me it's cheap compared to Belize. So as it turns out he his wife and his kid traveled

[07:07] 250 miles south then took an hour-long ferry ride from La Saba, Honduras And that cost 35 bucks a person just to get to Roatan simply because for them Taking a vacation there is so much cheaper than in Belize and that was it for them It was all about the money So imagine that here's a guy who runs a tourist hotel resort in Placentia Belize and he drives 250 miles to take a vacation in the Sun and Fon which he lives in 24-7 in Belize anyway now if that isn't ironic I don't know what is and when I told him that to me Roatan Honduras wasn't cheap Not like it used to be just four years ago. He looked at me like I was a bit cracked like hey, man You don't know how good you've got it And when I asked him why he thought the prices were so high in Belize

[07:54] He said simple they speak English and beliefs and the US dollar is accepted everywhere And when I asked him about the crime there, he said if you're not in a gringoized first-world area, it's out of control In fact, he said he and his wife had been robbed four times in the past two years Then he said even backpackers get robbed because even they are considered infinitely more wealthy than the average guy on the street in Belize Anyway for what it's worth I just thought I'd share that story for all you expat wannabes out there who are dead set on Belize as your destination as for me, it's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there and Here's my short list of reasons one because it's first-world expensive two because it's almost impossible To get first-rate high-tech medical care and three if you're not living or hanging out or doing business in the case

[08:45] You know where all the first-world people build their expensive beachfront condos and stuff and that's in the part of Belize That's strictly confined to the northern coastal areas So if you're any place in Belize where there's not a good amount of gringo or first-world development Which pretty much excludes the rest of Belize The poverty is so stark and the haves stick out so much from the have-nots that You're gonna be the talk of the town wherever you decide to live because remember Belize is a very lightly populated country the whole place doesn't even have a half a million people and Because the majority of people there are very poor that means every gringo there is rich by contrast Even if you hail from a trailer court in Cleveland

[09:30] So as my new German friend says any first-world person who stays around long enough is gonna have problems with the criminal element So if you're not living or doing business in one of the tourist areas You can't help but appear to be the rich guy in the neighborhood According to local standards anyway And since you've got more than anyone else all eyes are gonna be on you and that's not a good position to be in Now as you probably know by now I always recommend living in a smaller town in Latin America off the tourist trail of course So doesn't that seem to conflict directly with what I'm saying about Belize? Well in my view of the 20 Latin American countries when it comes to crime in general and assaults and robberies There are three exceptions to that small-town rule and that's Mexico Belize and Venezuela

[10:15] Three countries where even if you live in a small town under 50,000 the crime levels still can be quite high Or maybe I should put it this way of the dozens of gringos and expats that I've known Who've lived in Belize for any length of time? Not just as tourists every single one of them has been robbed or assaulted at one time or another and while I'm on the subject Just one more thing about home robberies now It doesn't seem to matter where you live in the world if you leave your home Unattended for days weeks or even months when you come back from your vacation or whatever you might discover a break-in Now that's not gonna happen if you live in one of these guarded residential towers or in a guarded gated community And that's true whether you're in Latin America or not But remember this if you live in a guarded gated community or a residential tower

[11:04] There's a very good chance you won't have much of a yard at all Maybe a lot of common spaces outdoors, but it won't be yours So if you live in one of those places You won't be able to do what a lot of expats come down here to do in the first place That is try to become self-sufficient have a huge garden and a lot of trees maybe go solar or even completely off the grid so a lot of expats build or buy a house and have that big garden and That big lot so they're kind of away from things some even choose to live way out in the boonies and the smart ones Never leave their houses unattended for any length of time not for days and weeks anyway So it turns out the expats that I know that never have a house robbery or a break-in They're the ones that have planned for decent security. They have a fence or a wall They might have a dog or two and some motion detectors

[11:51] But most of all every expat I know has a cleaning lady live in or otherwise Manning the place when they're gone and or a maintenance man or gardener So for example most expats with huge yards if they're going out of town Normally, they'll just have the gardener or the maintenance guy stay on 24 7 The fact is a lot of expats don't want their cleaning lady living in while they're gone though others don't mind So to each his own on that count but if you use the maintenance man or gardener like I do the going rate for watching your house is about ten to fifteen dollars a Day, and if you got a full-time maintenance man already watching your house when you're gone might be part of the deal You've worked out with him in advance when he first got the job now for me personally since I don't have a live-in cleaning lady I have my gardener who's my maintenance guy watch the house

[12:38] But I don't want anyone inside the house when I'm gone in fact no one has the keys But me so when I'm gone he spends all his time outside or in the garage where I've got a cot a cooler a flashlight And a hot plate for him. It's as easy as that Now I'd like to read an email that should be of great interest to you guys who are thinking about Ecuador as a place to retire or become an expat by now I'm sure you know that big outfits like international living and quite a few retirement Newsletters have been touting it as one of the number one retirement destinations in the world Well you know what they say when everyone including your shoeshine boy and the taxi driver knows about a good thing or a great deal Well the blooms off the rows in fact That's when the party's over and now I'd like to offer you a little more proof of that from the horse's mouth so here goes

[13:26] I'll paraphrase a bit here on this email from Dustin and Meredith dear Johnny We emailed you two years ago to tell you how much we were enjoying the show and haven't missed an episode since By the way, we're Justin and Meredith formerly from Austin, Texas Now we're living aboard a pretty big cruising sailboat docked right now in Miami Which is way more Latin than Cleveland and poised to depart for the island soon when your show first started? I emailed you about my mom who retired from Virginia and built a dream home with her partner in El Matal Ecuador a small fishing village north of Bahia de Caracas and Canoa they bought their land down there in 2007 while there is an ambitious gated gringo waterfront community of neatly subdivided lots

[14:17] Just down the road from and a hundred or so feet beneath them turns out a guy and his brother who I won't name Right now have been selling these little beachfront lots for years online Gringo retirees are building there now. I wonder how that real estate bubble will sound when it pops Anyway, now they have internet in El Matal to listen to your show and even though it's in the middle of nowhere the once little village of Canoa has transformed in the last eight or ten years into a true Mecca of annoying gringo backpackers attracting a type of local surf culture Latin bad boy and similar parasites that tend to float to the surface in such places they try to get with or get something from or

[15:04] Get something for the young backpackers that have settled there now I'm only 40 but all this stuff still makes me cranky then he goes on to say but then yesterday I'm walking around here in Miami listening to public radio on earphones when I hear the following Then Dustin gives me a link to an article in an audio file Entitled the most welcoming and the least welcoming countries around the world It says here that according to the World Economic Forum survey the countries which regard themselves Now this is an internal survey as the least welcoming to foreigners are Bolivia Venezuela and Russia now that's an internal survey of how those countries citizens view their own

[15:51] Attitudes towards visiting foreigners now just as an aside here France is seen as the least welcoming country of all to foreigners That's a no-brainer However, that's how outsiders view France turns out when the French people themselves are pulled on that question They don't think they're unwelcoming or unfriendly at all figures, huh? Anyway, the email goes on to say now Johnny generally what I heard on that link didn't surprise me based on my travels I know Venezuela is the worst if only because I followed the reports of piracy and violent crimes against yachts Very closely then the email author Dustin gives me another link to an updated piracy site That shows all the reported attacks against ships worldwide

[16:38] And he says if you're interested in the best most up-to-date website for tracking high-sea piracy Incidents then Justin gives me the link here in case you guys want it And just to summarize the high-sea piracy incidents in South and Central America last year in 2012 Honduras Venezuela and Panama are the big three in piracy reports then Justin goes on to say so Johnny with Ecuador being rated as so Unwelcoming that didn't surprise me either because I felt a certain hostility During my six months in el metall that I couldn't really put into words at the time it was more than just a Kanoa local bad boys who had nothing to get from or with or for me and

[17:23] Therefore gave me nothing but dirty looks. I didn't know if it was just me or what But it seems that the 22 year old blonde hippie gringo backpackers thought coastal Ecuador was just amazingly friendly But I found it downright hostile much of the time then the email finishes up with a question How does that so-called friendliness factor fit into the long-term picture for those of us who want to become expats way down south? Anyway, keep up the great work on the show It's a real treasure for us weirdos who otherwise feel completely misunderstood signed Justin and Meredith Well, Justin and Meredith, you know, sometimes I feel us weirdos outnumber the regular folks But then again, I don't hang out with any normal people. I mean take expat Eddie for example

[18:12] So what do I know? Now in response to a few of the things he's talking about on that Ecuador thing with that steady trickle of gringo Surfer types coming through it sounds exactly like what started happening in Costa Rica some 20 years ago History just repeating itself again Suddenly the word got out with the surfer crowd up north that things were dirt cheap laid-back and easy down in Costa Rica And now it's the same in Ecuador But you see what happens when a beach spot finally starts developing like that That's when all the shift list young boys between the ages of 15 and 30 And I mean every preening young Latin dude within a hundred miles when these macho dudes realize that there's young stupid Americans with money And young stupid American girls who like young Latin surfer hard body types and these Latin hard body guys

[19:03] No, there's a new crop of gringos coming in every couple of weeks Well, that's a highly volatile mixture that the parents back home in Cleveland would never approve of and these are guys Of course that don't have any real jobs or any source of income or any education but they have all the time in the world to sharpen their surfing and pickup skills to work on their tans their muscles and their English and hone their methods to befriend stupid young gullible gringos and especially the gringas and These young Latin guys Let me tell you their number one priority is to get a first-world woman pregnant that way being the father of a half gringo kid There's a very good probability that they'll get a green card and a free trip up to Cleveland And if not, they just might get bought off by the young surfer girls

[19:48] Very unhappy parents somewhere up in the States who never in their wildest dreams Figured on having a high school educated Ecuadorian son-in-law and let me tell you there's a lot of kiss-off checks being written to guys like Coming from very unhappy grandparents up in the first world I know of a case or two like that from the days when I lived back in Costa Rica You get the point enough said about that now as far as the general friendliness issue I have to say that anytime I'm off the tourist trail the Latins are extremely friendly You've got that gringo advantage going for you But it seems as soon as you get anywhere where the gringos are mingling and they've tried to create a little island of gringo Niss in a foreign country and believe me gringos have a propensity to do that

[20:33] That's when you get the insincerity and the false smiles from the locals And if you hang around in a place like that long enough soon enough you figure out you're pretty much a dollar sign or a quick way to a green card for the locals and Contrary to what you might think even the Cubans and the Venezuelans are very happy to see gringos even though for years The government line has been that gringos are imperialist jerks and horses asses But you and I know it's our government that's imperialist and it's the gringos in Costa Rica who are horses asses But you see the fact is all middle and lower-class Latins who comprise 80% or more of the Latin population Everyone you meet's got a brother and aunt and uncle or a cousin up in the states 99% of whom had snuck in illegally at one time or another and just for that reason the fact that every Latin's got a relative

[21:21] Up there your average Latin believes there's some kind of bond that's been forged between us And I'm talking off the tourist trail again And I'm not saying that Latin's aren't genuinely friendly on the tourist trail to some of them are of course But on the tourist trail as a rule they've been so overwhelmed by wealthy gringos wealthy by their standards And the sad fact is some gringo tourists are a bit pushy and demanding So for example if there's a light bulb and a lamp burned out in your hotel room It's not going to be a Latin guest that calls down to the front desk and complains about it It's gonna be a gringo so as we pile down there and wield our influence in these areas Eventually a little of that ugly American attitude trails down with us because as much as we try to blend in in the end We just never can unless we go completely native and that's something I'd never recommend for one thing no matter how you try

[22:11] You'll never be able to dance like a Latin and you'll never be half as good as a local guy is with a machete Now just for a second think about how you yourself rate the friendliness of other countries It seems like we've all got double standards on that count because you know if you ask an American to rate another country's supposed Friendliness well, I'll bet you ten to one if you ask him or her about a country They've already visited you'll get a pretty rational answer based on experience However, if you ask an American to rate the friendliness of a country, he's never visited before well That's like firing a shotgun in the dark all he's got to go on is what he's seen in the media Or what he's heard from someone who's visited the country before or what he or she has heard from me on the expat files hmm

[22:57] Not to say you couldn't take an educated guess, but you could be all wrong about that, too How would you imagine people from North Korea viewed gringo visitors or tourists? I mean in 2012? I think they had about six tourists didn't they well actually you'd be wrong if you think the people of North Korea do not like Visiting gringos or first-worlders in actuality what I've heard from a few journalist friends of mine who've visited North Korea And they weren't gringos they were European because they won't let gringo journalists in anyway for all the North Korea government Posturing against first world imperialist capitalists the people on the street actually look at first world visitors with all in wonder From what I hear as long as you're down hanging with the common man You've got a gringo advantage on steroids that is if you don't get kidnapped by the government and thrown into a gulag

[23:47] Same thing applies to Venezuela or Cuba with all that anti-american propaganda going down You'd think they'd rip a gringo tourist to shreds yet when you get there And you've actually got boots on the ground the common people are as natural and as friendly as can be in fact your gringo advantage Has not diminished one iota. I know I've been to them both and now I'd like to give you some more thoroughly depressing news about Ecuador courtesy of one of our expat wannabe regular listeners up at NASA and the headline says Ecuador to sell a third of its Amazon rainforest to Chinese oil companies and by the way if you want the link on that just Send me an email at the expat files at gmail.com or Johnny at expat wisdom calm Anyway, let me read some highlights of this depressing article

[24:34] Ecuador is planning to auction three million of the country's eight point one million hectares of pristine Amazonian rainforest to Chinese oil companies Jonathan Cayman of the Guardian reports this report comes as oil pollution Forced neighboring Peru to declare an environmental state of emergency in its northern Amazon rainforest now Ecuador owes China more than seven billion more than a tenth of its GDP as of last summer In 2009 China began loaning Ecuador billions in exchange for oil shipments and soon China's National Petroleum Corporation will have a 30% stake in Ecuador's refinery business, too It turns out the Ecuadorians are so dependent on the Chinese to finance their development that they're willing to compromise in other areas

[25:25] Such as social and environmental regulations Says Adam Zuckerman of the California based Amazon watch group And it says that seven indigenous Indian groups who live on the land are not happy at all the leader of Ecuador's Shar people one of those indigenous groups has said that they have not consulted us And we're here to tell the big investors that they don't have our permission to exploit our land So that's what's happening right now in Ecuador and how's that gonna turn out? Well, it looks like the indigenous groups are gonna have to bend over and get the blunt end of the totem pole on this one Since that's how oil deals work in third world countries And that's how the Chinese operate they invest in your infrastructure buy your government bonds and loan you big money

[26:12] Then when it comes time to scoop up the rights to the mining and mineral deposits They've got you by the balls and they force you to cut back on your environmental regulations and believe me That's what's happening all through South America right now But to a much lesser degree in Central America because as of now they haven't found any really big oil deposits However, I want to read you a part of this want ad that's been running in all the big Central American newspapers Now I have in my hand a quarter page ad and it reads like this and it's in Spanish. So I'll translate prestigious multinational corporation in the energy sector is looking to hire qualified Chinese Mandarin and Spanish interpreters and here are the requirements to get the job it says must be fluent in Chinese Mandarin and Spanish and

[27:01] Preferably have worked three years minimum as a translator in the energy mining or industrial sector So anyway, what that tells me is that the Chinese haven't actually got their tentacles into Central America Not nearly as much as they've penetrated countries in South America like Ecuador Who as far as the oil and mining sector is practically a satellite of China already? So what's the future hold for Ecuador? Well, I predict an explosion in the number of Chinese restaurants and a shortage of stray dogs You've been listening to the expat files living in Latin America Coming to you each week from somewhere south of the border and don't forget you can email me on anything at all about Latin America

[27:48] The expat files at gmail.com See you next time