Do you have ambition to live or retire abroad?

Mr. Blue Sky said
As mentioned earlier, there is no perfect place that exists .. it’s probably good that there isnt, or else it would be overrun… that said, i think Thailand is the closest to perfect that ive found .. i think the ‘perfect place’ title would potentially go to the Philippines if they could somehow get a handle on the food situation.. they do a lot of things that appeal to us as Americans- they speak English, they drive on the correct side of the road, etc- but i struggled, i mean really struggled to find anything edible in my time living in Cebu City… western food, or Filipino food.. but if youve got ur own compound and if you have a Landers or an S&R nearby , you would probably be ok just cooking everything on ur own .. somehow though, Thailand knocks the food thing out of the park.. it reminds me a lot of NOLA, in that it’s hard to find a bad meal- but here it is a fraction of the cost .

Okay, so I wondered why you hated Filipino food so much, now I know. You have not experienced it. The Philippines is like the US and the food varies significantly where you are at. You're experience was essentially eating a basic meal in Iowa and never tasting New Orleans Cuisine. I eat Filipino food probably 1-7 times per week, depending on if my wife is cooking Filipino food, but sometimes she'll cook Thai, or pretty much anything else she has tasted and can recreate. My wife is from Angelest City, Pampanga, which famous for its cuisine to the point where people travel there to eat it. Whenever we meet other Filipinos or someone finds out my wife is from Pampanga, they say "Oh, she can cook". I have people at work constantly asking me for my wife to cook lumpia or pancit for them and most recently at my Squadron's Christmas Party, we brought a couple traditional Filipino dishes, those were the first to be cleaned out while all of the American stuff just sat there. I have not been to Cebu, but I have been to Bohol, both are Visayan islands and the same food. There was not a lot of options there and most things were seafood, so we had great food, but if you were looking for something different, it probably was not there.

English is taugh in the schools there. It's pretty much Tagalog in Kindergarten and English the rest of their school years. Tagalog is then just taught at home. Most Filipinos speak 3 languages, Tagalog, English and their dialect. The dialect in Manila is Tagalog so people from Minala may only speak 2, English and Tagalog.

FWIW, I love Thai food. I probably eat Thai food as often or close to as often as I eat Filipino food.