Hey YouTube, Alex here and in today's video I want to answer the question, are expat YouTubers lying about Southeast Asia or Latin America, parts of Europe?
And part of what prompted this is that some people have pointed out, oh, you know, you look uh quite a bit older than you did when you left and looks like you gained some weight and these other critiques that are fair, right?
I mean, I was over there for a couple of years.
When I got back, really, most of the weight I gained was actually after I got back to the US.
So, I've been back for about uh almost 4 months now.
And when I was over there, I actually was walking a lot and exercising a lot.
And so, um I kind of wanted to just handle some of these critiques or explain them or answer to them and really tackle that question.
Are people being misled to go to Southeast Asia by expat media?
So, let's go ahead and get into the reasons uh my responses to this type of question and you'll find out if I think people are being misled or they're not being misled.
Uh so, for the first reason, no freedom of speech.
So, most countries outside the United States do not have freedom of speech.
Even several other western countries that people think of as uh very free countries don't necessarily have freedom of speech.
So when you think about an expat YouTuber and let's just say uh they're in Southeast Asia, these countries do not ensure freedom of speech.
So you're not guaranteed to be able to just oh I'm going to talk about whatever I want and it doesn't matter.
No, they have defamation laws.
They have laws against um speaking about politics, right?
In a number of these countries, the v the visa itself that you're issued upon entering, it explicitly states you're not allowed to talk about politics.
It's kind of a reminder there.
When you go to immigration, they have signs up.
Hey, if you uh get an attitude, if you start acting up, if you start being disrespectful, we can just revoke your visa.
So this idea that a expat YouTuber can just openly talk about whatever they want right off the bat that's not possible if they want to continue living in that country and for most of them the benefits outweigh the negatives or the downsides or else they wouldn't be there right and for some it's economic necessity if you can't afford to live in your home country uh you can't afford a decent standard of living you'd be going back to live in say a vehicle and working a part-time job and parking the vehicle behind that business and The alternative is you get to live in a tropical country and you have your own place and you don't have to work.
All you have to do is keep your mouth shut, filter what you say.
I think most of us are going to pick the easier of those two options with the idea in mind, okay, well, I'll just like not speak about certain topics publicly and I'll be able to continue living my life here.
So, uh, this idea they could come out and have, uh, charged opinions or be confrontational, there's very real consequences of that.
Does that mean that they're lying?
Uh, I don't really think so in a sense because you have to, one, you have to research the laws of a country you want to go to.
Two, you have to go, this is something I'm going to tackle later in this video, you have to go and visit yourself.
It's you you can't rely on social media to be completely objectively true because they may be very happy there.
Some of the things that may be an issue uh for you may not bother them at all.
Right?
Some people aren't bothered by noise at all.
For me, I don't really like noise pollution.
Some people, they might really like Asian cuisine.
Other people, oh man, I couldn't find proper Western food.
Um, so some of the things that the expat YouTuber, it's a self- selection bias.
a guy who can go over there and live 5, 10, 15 years, he's learned to tolerate some of the things that he or she doesn't like and is able to move past those and enjoy his life or her life where you're not seeing all the people who never started the channel, who tried it for a month, maybe even signed a year lease and decided like couple weeks in this isn't for me.
I an example comes to mind of a guy who planned to move to the Philippines, young guy uh younger than myself, and then within uh hours he was totally terrified.
Uh it wasn't anything that was wrong with the area or anything like that.
He just didn't understand how different it was going to be from his home country and couldn't adapt.
Uh for me, this wasn't an issue.
I knew from the first visit to Southeast Asia, I want to live here at some point.
I want to experience long-term life here.
It's very different than what you might see in Western media.
Uh but when it comes to the expat YouTubers, you have to realize like they like it.
It was working out for them and it behooves them to not uh talk about certain topics that may um impact their ability to stay right.
We're very fortunate in the United States and unfortunate at times that we have freedom of speech.
But you can't make the presumption just because we have that here that we have that elsewhere.
And number two would be uh audience desires.
So some audiences out there, they want to hear negative stuff about other countries.
You see this with Western media that beats up on other countries.
Every time certain countries are portrayed in Western media, it's always negative.
Uh you see them portrayed as, oh, they're having these natural disasters and the poverty and all these bad things are happening.
Shouldn't, aren't you thankful you live in the west?
It's rarely uh positives.
And so I think expat YouTubers, some of what they cover is positive about these other countries.
And it provides a sort of counterweight to western media where oh you know uh discussing the familyoriented nature of some of these countries or discussing how uh the cost of living is modest.
I mean I remember when I told an American dentist uh dental assistant one time I had gone to Southeast Asia for treatment.
She got mad.
She felt like you're you're you're you're paying somebody else.
You're you're encroaching on our turf or our territory.
uh beyond just the scope of like, hey, the care might not be good.
No, she was legitimately upset that Americans would to attempt to save money, attempt to moderate their budget, go and seek treatment overseas.
And so that's what these expat YouTubers do.
They're catering to people that want hope as opposed to people that just want to see the negative.
The audience that wants hope is much larger than the audience that's just totally negative and all they want to know about is how it's not going to work out.
And oh, look at these fools for trying to better their lives and trying to improve and taking a chance.
Um, I feel like some of these negative people that want the expat YouTubers to only be negative are people who want an excuse to not try.
Don't even try.
Don't even go over to the Philippines.
Don't even go over to Thailand.
It's not going to make a difference.
Kind of like Eeyore.
It's not going to work.
It's going to be bad.
It's all going to go wrong.
D.
Well, I don't like that.
I look at like people needing to be high agency in all areas of their life and if they suspect it's going to work out for them based on watching videos and research um then they should take a trip.
It's unlikely for the majority of people that visit like Thailand is getting well over 30 million visitors a year.
Most of those 30 million people are having a good time.
Are there some who don't?
Well, yeah.
Just by sheer numbers, 30 million.
you're going to have some people that have a negative experience.
Uh, and if you only talk to that small group of people, uh, or maybe a tourism board from a competitor country, then yeah, you'll hear some negatives.
But I think that if you talk to most people, most people seem to have a good experience.
I had a friend I went to high school with and he visited Thailand uh, last fall.
He loved it.
This is the first time, his first time out of the country.
He picks Thailand based on his research and watching like my videos and talking to other people he knows in our home city about it and he had a great time.
Now, he's not a YouTuber.
He's not a social media influencer.
Uh he's not going to put that out there.
So, you have to think like a lot of people are seeking novelty in their lives.
They're seeking unique experiences and the expat YouTubers uh provide some insight into this.
I don't think it's the same as actually taking a trip.
I don't think it's actually the same as living there, but you get some sort of taste of what it's like to have that kind of experience.
And people like these feelood stories.
People also like some of the uh not so much drama but some of the tougher stories like uh Mike and Paul have both done videos about uh difficult circumstances or difficult situations and uh those are more like accurate representations of what can go wrong.
It's not you're going to go to Southeast Asia and a meteor is going to come down and obliterate everything.
It's more like, hey, if you're not careful with women, if you, you know, for for the single male expats out there, you could lose all your money.
Like, just that's a reality.
That could happen in your home country, too.
Uh other guys, like, hey, if you buy too many adult beverages, you could um end up in a very dangerous situation.
Same in your home country.
I I think that people have this self uh sort of they they they believe what they already believe and they look to find content that reinforces their beliefs rather than content that challenges their beliefs.
The first time I heard about going to Southeast Asia, I thought that's crazy.
America is the best country in the world.
Why would you go anywhere else?
It doesn't make any sense to live anywhere else and you shouldn't be going anywhere else.
Uh, number three, this ties into what I said before.
You have to visit.
You can't You're not going to get a sense of what it's like to be in Southeast Asia from watching uh YouTube the full sense.
I find you're going to get one of two.
You're going to get vacation mode.
So, you're going to watch people having a very expensive vacation and oh, that's what it's like to vacation there.
Well, that's what it's like to live there.
Living anywhere is much more mundane.
I think back to uh my friend who visited Thailand, and I had actually left Thailand a month prior, unfortunately.
But I already knew with him coming to Thailand for a month, I wasn't going to be able to keep up with him budget-wise.
So, he's working full-time job in the US, Western, he's looking to have all the what you might call luxurious or nice experiences in Thailand, and I'm happy for him.
like a lot of that stuff, you know, staying in the nice hotels, having the nice Thai food, the massages, the beach visits.
That's incredible.
Like this is to me worldass uh experiences, but I'm living there dayto-day.
I can't afford to go stay in a $100 a night hotel.
I can't afford to go do a beach trip every single day.
It's kind of like your hometown.
If your hometown's a decent sized US city, I'll take um well, I'll use San Francisco because I transplanted to San Francisco.
A visitor to San Francisco might do an Alcatraz tour.
They might go to a Giants game.
The They might go to a 49ers game.
They might go to uh a neighborhood tour where they do a food tour.
Maybe they go to a Michelin star restaurant.
Somebody living in San Francisco, unless they're like a wealthy tech exec, they're probably not doing all those things in a weekend.
Their weekend might be, "Ah, I worked all week.
I'm going to go to the park.
Maybe I do one of those activities, but I'm not doing all of those activities." And it's similar in Southeast Asia where if you visit, go do some of the normal people stuff, what I call normal people stuff.
Go to the grocery store, right?
a tourist who's in full-on tourism mode, they're there for a couple weeks, they don't want to take time out of their vacation to go and cook.
Uh they don't want to um they're not going to need to go to the pharmacy or they may not need to go to the pharmacy and get their prescription medication every month.
They may not need to uh establish online banking.
They're probably not going to need to do a lot of those boring day-to-day activities.
And you're not going to get a sense of those things if all you're watching is content curated for engagement and to build an audience to make money.
It's like if I watch a documentary or if I watch a movie, right?
Um it's not really reflective of reality.
It's it's meant it's made for a purpose and that's not wrong.
Uh but it's you have to have you have to have some amount of grace or extend some amount of grace to YouTubers uh um do a difficult u sort of work.
It's difficult to get it going and to be successful.
It's not so difficult to just like sit in front of a camera.
But if you actually want to be consistent, consistently putting out content, planning content, lining up guests, if you're doing interviews, uh editing, if you are doing certain types of content, making thumbnails, all that stuff takes a lot of effort.
And people want to be rewarded for that effort.
And so they they want to also help their audience.
And uh a good chunk of the audience has no interest in living abroad.
They don't see it as really necessary.
They think it's too risky.
they've got X, Y, and Z reasons as to why they never do that.
So, if you want to like figure out, hey, are they are they on my wavelength?
You got to visit.
Uh, number four, think of them uh think of a lot of expat YouTubers as salespeople, right?
They're their goal is to have ad revenue and other forms of income as an as reward for their work.
They're putting in a lot of time.
They're getting up early.
their scheduling uh and they have expenses.
Camera gear is not free.
It's not cheap.
They may pay editors.
Uh it's not just, oh, they're getting rich and nobody else like and they do nothing to get rich and nobody else and they don't spend any money hiring anybody else.
No, like a lot of successful YouTubers have editors.
They have staff.
Some have secretaries or assistants.
They've got to purchase equipment every year.
They may have to like if they do an interview with somebody, they may have to take somebody out to lunch just to, hey, I appreciate you taking time out of your day.
Uh they may need to maintain a vehicle to go to and from uh filming locations.
They there's a lot of costs that come up with YouTube that are not readily apparent to audiences.
And so, think of them as salespeople.
Like when I need to purchase a car, I'm probably going to have to see a saleserson or engage with some kind of marketing material or a sales function of a website and I may not want to.
Uh but that's just what it is.
If I want to see content on Southeast Asia without going over there, right?
If I've never been over there, if I don't know anything over there, I've got to engage with media.
That's my best shot.
like way cheaper than buying a a thousand plus dollar plane ticket and booking flights, taking time off work and all that.
So that's the kind of tradeoff that you have to have is look, I want this information or this value.
I'm going to have to give some time and I need to use my own discernment, right?
So um it really all comes back to you've got to visit.
And I think that's what people are trying to circumvent is I want to figure out if I can live there or not.
It's like well have you visited?
you haven't visited, you really ought to visit and maybe come for a couple of weeks, see what it's about.
There's I'm sure there's plenty of people out there you'll never hear about cuz they're not content creators that come out.
They come out for a couple weeks.
They try a few different cities.
They're like, "Ah, it's too hot.
The language barrier is worse than what I thought it would be.
I don't like like I miss driving my personal vehicle." uh whatever number of reasons are problematic, but there's plenty of good people that find out this is nice for vacation.
Like I'll come here and vacation here every year.
Uh but for me to move here permanently is just not for me.
And you have to have that boundary.
Like when watching YouTube, watching content, it's worked out really well for this individual.
They seem to be loving it.
uh just because they love it, just because it's worked out for them doesn't mean it's the right fit for me, doesn't mean that I'm going to enjoy it and they're just trying to share how it helped them.
It's not necessarily them telling me you should move here, too.
Like a number of these guys, I give Mike and Paul credit.
They don't solely, it's not every video is you need to move here, you need to move here, you need to move here.
They do plenty of stuff where it's like, "Hey, this is where things went wrong for this person." Well, if things went wrong for a certain individual, they have to take responsibility for that.
Um, number five, and this is the fifth and final point, is unrelated issues.
I call it island of misfit toys.
As far as expats, a lot of expats, especially in the more economical countries, it's more like the island of misfit toys.
Another friend of mine says it's the scratch and dent aisle.
Um, most of the people who would consider moving to Southeast Asia, moving to a a lower income Latin American country, they're not the guys or gals who have had perfect lives.
They have been through a divorce.
They've been through a bankruptcy.
They uh have had issues with their families, estrangement.
They've had any number of issues.
And those issues are going to be present whether they're in Southeast Asia or the United States.
Um I lost my parents at a young age.
That's going to be true whether I'm in the United States or in Southeast Asia.
That's a personal issue that to some extent follows me wherever I go in the world.
Uh and will cause me stress regardless of where I am at.
I probably age faster than somebody with a normal family background.
That's just part of it.
um you know unrelated issues like if you're divorced whether you live in the US or Southeast Asia that's a deeply stressful and difficult event for a person to go through uh not just financially but also emotionally spiritually they may have some guilt or some shame associated with that a lot of people who become expats uh they're not the people whose lives are going perfectly in the US they've got the paid off house they've got the dream car they've got the dream girl or dream guy if like whatever their preferences are.
Typically things didn't turn out perfectly for them in life and they're going abroad because it's a risk they're willing to take to try to have some enjoyment in their life.
And I've seen a lot of expats who have been through a lot really enjoy and embrace their life overseas and it worked out well.
Other guys, they find their problems that follow them and they're not able to overcome them even halfway around the world.
Um, you see this in expat hotspots with guys melting down, guys that have anger issues, guys that have emotional problems, personality disorders.
They're going to act a fool wherever they are.
You know, some of these guys now, they uh may not they may be in a position in the states to where because they're not as well off compared to the average local person, they may have to temper some of it.
like if they have a job, they've got to make their boss happy.
They can't just sit there and act a fool in front of their boss.
But they're in Southeast Asia where all of a sudden they make five, sixx what the average local person makes.
Uh they feel more entitled to act like that hot shot.
So something I heard that's interesting is money doesn't really change people as much as it makes them more of who they are.
So if somebody's a jerk in their home country and they go abroad, uh they're a bigger jerk.
If somebody struggles with too many adult beverages in their home country, well, chances are if they move to a cheaper country, they can afford more of that.
And so, uh, when it comes to me, I have challenges in my home country that are going to be there regardless of what I do.
I have to accept that, right?
I have to accept that my folks are gone.
I have to accept that I have to move across the country for work opportunities.
I'm no longer in my hometown.
These are just part of the reality of life.
And also, I was there for a couple years.
Like, you're going to age somewhat in a couple of years, especially if you're around like you're transitioning from your 20s to your 30s, your 30s to your 40s.
Uh, also, I got a lot of sun.
I use sunscreen, but getting that much sun will make you look older.
I did gain weight coming back because it's stressful to transition back to life in the US.
That's just uh anytime you're gone for a couple of years, you're having to remember, oh yeah, okay, now I've got to drive.
Okay, now I've got to deal with the bank a lot more often because I'm spending more money.
Now I've got to find a place to live uh based on a now I've got to find a job.
So I've got to find a job.
Then I've got to find a place to live based on that job.
Then I've got to move in.
Then I've got to uh get used to a new housing situ.
like all the challenges of living in Southeast Asia combined with high cost of living and a faster paced life and more expectations.
I mean living in the US there's a lot of expectations placed on us to pay taxes to pay bills to do a lot of things on our own.
In Southeast Asia I can hire a cleaner for very little money where here I'm cleaning like I went and vacuumed this morning.
There's a lot of responsibilities that fall squarely on my shoulders and I another thing would be cooking.
Southeast Asia it's very cheap to cook.
Uh coming back I'm having to okay now I've got to cook a good chunk of my meals cuz it's expensive to go to a restaurant here unlike in Thailand for example where it's pretty economical to go to a restaurant.
Uh so some of that that stress is just the normal stress of life.
Some of that is it doesn't match the ideal.
Um, I didn't I I was a little bit surprised by shifting from, okay, prior to this two-year stint, then it was a vacation mode.
Now, I know what it's really like.
Okay, I know what it's like to accidentally get food poisoning, unfortunately.
I know what it's like to stub my toe or scrape my knee, have to go to the hospital just to get it cleaned up, make sure it doesn't get out of hand.
I know what it's like to um have too much time on my hands, be bored in the US.
Like, yeah, we get bored sometimes, but we got enough work cut out for us that like, hey, my life is fast-paced enough.
I'm not I don't know.
It just there's a lot to talk about, but I don't feel like I ruined my life going over there.
I was in a transition point out of the tech industry.
I needed to find a new opportunity and uh being over there freed up time for me to unwind, to decompress, to try to plan my next steps, to find new opportunity.
The cost of living is so low.
I actually had the time to think about what I wanted to do next.
Where here in the US, things move quick.
You don't really have time to think as much when you're in go go mode as you do in Southeast Asia.
Uh so yeah, do I regret it?
Not at all.
Did I age?
Yes.
So what?
But I'm glad I had the experience.
I always wanted to do that.
Is my life ruined here?
No.
I came back with enough savings to land on my feet.
I actually just signed a job offer today.
So, I'll be going to work in about a week, starting my new job.
I've got a place to live within budget based on my income.
My life is fine.
It's as long as you prepare effectively to go to Southeast Asia, it can be a very rewarding experience.
But a lot of people um they don't prepare effectively.
They want shortcuts.
That's a big thing is a lot of expats want shortcuts or would be expats want shortcuts.
People in general want shortcuts.
And I'm no longer one of those people.
So, thanks so much for watching.
Comment down below.
Do you agree with what I've said here?
Do you disagree?
Does it not reflect your experience?
Do you feel misled by some expat YouTubers?
I personally think they provide a valuable service.
If you don't like the service, you don't have to watch, but you get some value.
Wonderful.
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And we'll see you soon.
Bye-bye.
