The Tropical Expat Lifestyle Comparison Matrix

The ideas in this post and the concept of the "matrix" spreadsheet tool were hammered out over a few beers with my mate Graham Coglan during our Shanghai teaching days, after I'd endured my 4th or 5th central China winter and had started plotting ways to do what I do (i.e. being a STEM Education Warrior and Renaissance Man) in more tropical locales.

I need to start by defining some key terms. Some of you might have noticed that I sometimes refer to myself as an "expatriate pirate" on social media. I can't quite remember who I should attribute the term to, but I remember reading about it around about the time I was constructing my Couchsurfing profile, circa 2008. It's related to the concept of location independence and geoarbitrage; the idea is that you move about from country to country, "plundering" the best exchange rates at the time. It was this idea that gave birth to the Tropical Expat Lifestyle Comparison Matrix.

The next term that requires explanation is "tropical expat". We've all seen them - that 30- or 40-something guy with a pony tail who lives in Mexico or Thailand, has an entire wardrobe of Hawaiian shirts and for whom "formal dress" means doing up a button or two and wearing flip flops.

A tropical expat - note the Hawaiian shirt, half unbuttoned. 

The tropical expat lifestyle

That then brings us to "the matrix". Rest assured, it has nothing to do with the movie series starring Keanu Reeves. Those of you in the teaching profession might be more familiar with the term "rubric". It basically refers to a set of criteria, usually with different numerical levels and connected by some kind of scoring system, arranged in a grid-like table. For some reason, back in those days at TAFE Queensland, we referred to it as a matrix. So when Graham and I started making a list of criteria by which to judge the suitability of tropical South East Asian countries for expat living, we naturally coined the term "Tropical Expat Lifestyle Comparison Matrix". As you do.

I'll let "the matrix", as I'll refer to it from now on, do most of the rest of the talking (writing?), but I'll finish by explaining the example numbers that I've included, and adding some clarifying comments on some of the criteria.

I often get asked why I chose to move to Vietnam after having spent 12 years in China. Well, I think these numbers tell that story. You can see how the criteria and importance weightings represent the lifestyle elements that I value and how much relative value I assign to each of them. Even when based on very rough, subjective ratings, Vietnam's normalised weighted score is significantly higher than the Pearl River Delta (where I lived for my final 4 years in China), indicating that my decision to move to Ho Chi Minh City was the right one.

A few clarifying points on the numbers and criteria that I've chosen:

• Cost scores are "best fit", and should probably be interpreted more as "price to quality ratio", with lower ratios (low price, high quality) obviously having higher scores out of 10. 
• My weather score assumes you are looking to live somewhere tropical, with lots of sunshine and mild or non-existent winter. It also refers to "quality" of weather, like humidity, temperature extremes, rainfall, etc (hence why even sub-tropical Canton scores rather low). If you are more of a "four seasons" person, adjust the scale. 
• Southern China's Wifi, while fast, is behind the "Great Firewall", hence the low score
• Language barrier refers to how easy or otherwise it is to find English speakers among the general population to communicate with in daily life, and not to how difficult the language is to learn (although these two factors may be correlated). 
• Some of the criteria are very "fine grain" while others have several factors lumped together. Feel free to combine, separate or remove criteria to suit your own situation and preferences. 

If you've been contemplating a similar move yourself, feel free to make a copy of the spreadsheet and adapt it for your own use.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on this - have I missed any essential criteria? What other countries would you add to this list? Share your ideas in the comments below!