Ahhh havn’t updated this for a while, I’ve been pretty busy with work and what not, was up in Laos not too long ago, and been traveling around Thailand a bit.

I’ve uploaded some new photos, and when I find the time I’m going to add that Google maps module to the gallery so my photos show on the map with the GPS tags…

here are the new photos

As most my friends know I’m really into karting, property race karting, it’s the purest form of racing where every kart is so evenly matched it’s down to driver skill rather than how your car is tuned.

So, I’ve decided to start my own karting team with 2 drivers for the season, picking up a few sponsors around the place, which is awesome considering the karts alone are like $10k each K

Regardless – think it’ll be fun J

The definitive realisation

So I’ve worked it out. Australia is a total waste of time! Financially and partially for life that is.

Over the last few weeks I’ve had various conversations with friends about my living offshore, what it’s like, why they don’t do it pros and cons etc etc and it made think.

So I’m going to layout a bunch of pros and cons… I might keep adding to this list.

Cons:

·         You can’t see your old friends anymore

Yeah that’s all I got.

Pros:

·         Interest rates for loans is lower than Aus

·         Property and land costs less

·         People’s wages are lower, so to do anything costs less

o   Build a house

o   Pay staff

o   Get anything at all done costs very little

·         Hospitals are better than in Aus

·         Police are corrupt, so if you want to do anything shady, you can just pay them off

·         Since property is cheaper office rent for a 3-4 story building is about $1k a month

·         My 5 programmers cost me the same as 1 programmer in Aus

·         Cost of living is cheaper

o   Food

o   Fuel

o   Drinks

o   Entertainment

o   Travel

o   Shopping

·         Computer hardware is cheaper (that’s a pro for me)

·         Taxes, oh my taxes, I pay overall around 1% tax… if that.

·         I’m learning 3 languages

·         Cheap to get up and running with your own business

o   Staff wages here range from $100 a month to $1,000 a month depending on job type and staff work 6 days a week – 48hr working week (+ lunch breaks)

o   Someone to sit around and do basic work will cost you $100 a month

o   Receptionists / basic office staff $400 a month

o   Staff with 3 years Uni experience $400-$500 a month

o   3 Years Uni and a high paying trade $700-$800 a month

·         You have HEAPS more time for yourself, and I’m talking HEAPS… everything is outsourced for so I have way more time to do anything I want

o   All my laundry is done for $12 a month

o   House cleaning 2x weekly costs me $10 a month

o   Couriers

·         The BIG shopping places don’t open till 10am, but they don’t close until 10pm, so everything is open longer hours 7 days a week

·         Travel is super cheap, I can fly anywhere in Asia for under $100

Like really, your day to day life in Aus is wake up, go to work, so you spend time travelling wherever, I know people who are travelling over an hour each way every day… You work all day, come home, you have commitments at home usually, cook, wash, clean etc…

Here, traffic is low, travel time is 5-10 minutes to most places, and I don’t cook, clean or anything. I cook once a month if I’m lucky, every other single meal is bought, it’s just the way it’s done, the food is good, clean and cheap and better then I could cook anyway.

Your typically Thai home doesn’t have any cooking facilities either, so it’s the way of life here. My house is pretty big and western so we do, I do cook here and there but it’s rare.

If you have a kid, here is better again, in Aus parents pay $500+ a week for childcare and all the rest, but here you can hire a fulltime nanny for that or less a month.

The other big plus is financially, 75% of my income is in USD, the rest in AUD and GBP etc. With the right offshore banking structures you can avoid tax totally. An example would be, a bank account in HK with a company attached, I think company tax is 10% in Hong Kong, but you’re only taxed on income generated in HK, any money made outside of HK, say US, or AU is not taxed.

Oh and property, a large block of land will set you back $20-30k. a nice big 3 bedroom house $60-70k tops. In Australia the equivalent will set you back $500k+

Okay, so i’ve uploaded even more photos now and that should be pretty much up to date. there’s some random photos of around thailand, some photos of the time i spent in one of the more civilised villages out near cambodia (they had houses, my first village didnt), and my photos from the formula 1 in Sepang, Malaysia are up…

In total, there are 16gb+ of photos and videos, 60 seperate albums with a total of 10,154 photos and videos.

the big party i went to before i left australia up in toowoomba with pete and mikey are now up!

 only took what 9 months? sorry pete

okay so I’ve finished adding all the photos that were on the old site, i’m in the progress of uploading 5 more gig, little over 1,000 more photos.

that will bring the gallery total image count to over 10,000 photos.

 most of the new photos i’m uploading now are from malaysia, toowoomba (party before i left) and the rest are from all around thailand…

I havn’t taken all that much photo wise around thailand yet. I’ll probably start doing that more now that the website is finally up… I need to get the gallery and blog customised yet, I need to install the GPS tracking for the gallery so you can see on google maps where the photos were taken…

all in good time.

ok so I’ve finally got around to move the site to one of my newer servers.

In the process I’ve killed all the old data and put a new design in.

hopefully I’ll start updating this site more often, make it back into what it used to be, my personal blog

at the moment this new site is still a work in progress, the layout isnt right yet, and overall its not finished. i havn’t templated the gallery yet, i’m still in the process of uploading the 16gb of images and adding them all to galleries, sometime soon i’ll intergrate the gallery into the blog.