Greetings from Kuala Lumpur - seems like everytime I get a chance to actually sit for 10 minutes and think about writing a blog, we have changed cities!
We moved to KL in December 2016 - well, the better half moved earlier, but I was stranded on a facility in the middle of the South China Sea for 6 months before I got to really spend any time in our new place. Since making the decision to move, it's been a non-stop domestic administration roller-coaster. I would love to itemise it all, but I am unable to recall the number of trips to police stations, embassys, immigration departments and government bureaus, never mind the sheets of paper transferred between all these locations. Next time I'm going to keep a record.
Anyone who has ever moved overseas knows that it takes months for the paperwork to catch up with your bodies and gear. We didn't know where we wanted to go when the Korea project finished, and we spent months (read: years) obsessing over our next location. This was compounded by our client's on-again-off-again flirting with the idea of doing another project - so we knew we needed a place to settle for an undisclosed length of time - long enough to ride out the oil price downturn, and short enough that we could up-sticks and go to another project on a whim. Needless to say, this is not easy to find!!! You can't do a student visa, because you burn the bridge if you don't complete the course. We were too old to get an unskilled working visa (most aren't any good after 30) and THERE WAS NO WORK. In this situation visas become the most important ingredient in your life as an expat.
When we initially investigated the Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) visa a couple of year ago we discounted it as not viable due to the expense and the hoops required. At the time the Malaysian Ringgit (MYR) was high and the cost would have made our budget too tight to handle. We had one set of friends who had recently completed the process and it looked arduous and expensive for little reward, and it wasn't until another couple we know went to talk to the agents at Penang My Home that we realised that the visa might just work for us. The MYR had dropped substantially and the set-up for the visa was vastly different to what we had understood from reading online.
That was in June. We were hard up against the deadline for making a decision - in fact, we had made a decision: we were going to go to Thailand on student's visas. The project was finishing in July. We literally couldn't have made the decision any later. The next four weeks flew as we attempted to compile all the documentation from Korea and Australia which the Malaysian government would need to decide on our suitability for the visa. And we moved. And I finished the project I was on. Generally it was chaos.
By the end of July we had established an apartment in Kuala Lumpur and the gear was en-route from Korea - as was my facility, which was heading to Singapore for some additional TLC prior to going to work, so my better half got stuck with the unpacking and the expat set-up. This is where it gets really fun.
We still didn't have our final residency visas, and I was overseas, so EVERYTHING was difficult. From getting phone and internet contracts to getting the intercom fixed. This is standard when you are expatting and nothing we hadn't experienced everywhere else, but it's one of those things - it just takes time. Lots and lots and lots of time.
In December we got the news the visa had been approved - yes, 6 months later - and so it all began again - trips to immigration departments, multiple attempts to get driver's licenses transferred, learning about local health insurance - and where to go if you need to use it!
As I write this, the paperwork for our licenses is still sitting on our kitchen table (paperwork required so far: Passport and copy of both bio & visa pages, Korean Drivers License and copies of both sides, original of Korean to English translation of drivers license, and police reports from Thailand) - I hope we can get it sorted on Monday, but I offset that against having finally found a really, genuinely GOOD location for grocery shopping yesterday - only took 8 months! It's a price we pay for the life we lead, and I really wouldn't change it for anything.
So that's what life looks like in the first 6 months of moving to a foreign country - lots and lots of paperwork. If you are moving with a company, your new best friend will be your agent, but as we found this time, when you move by yourself, the cost is all in time, and it's all yours.
We moved to KL in December 2016 - well, the better half moved earlier, but I was stranded on a facility in the middle of the South China Sea for 6 months before I got to really spend any time in our new place. Since making the decision to move, it's been a non-stop domestic administration roller-coaster. I would love to itemise it all, but I am unable to recall the number of trips to police stations, embassys, immigration departments and government bureaus, never mind the sheets of paper transferred between all these locations. Next time I'm going to keep a record.
Anyone who has ever moved overseas knows that it takes months for the paperwork to catch up with your bodies and gear. We didn't know where we wanted to go when the Korea project finished, and we spent months (read: years) obsessing over our next location. This was compounded by our client's on-again-off-again flirting with the idea of doing another project - so we knew we needed a place to settle for an undisclosed length of time - long enough to ride out the oil price downturn, and short enough that we could up-sticks and go to another project on a whim. Needless to say, this is not easy to find!!! You can't do a student visa, because you burn the bridge if you don't complete the course. We were too old to get an unskilled working visa (most aren't any good after 30) and THERE WAS NO WORK. In this situation visas become the most important ingredient in your life as an expat.
When we initially investigated the Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) visa a couple of year ago we discounted it as not viable due to the expense and the hoops required. At the time the Malaysian Ringgit (MYR) was high and the cost would have made our budget too tight to handle. We had one set of friends who had recently completed the process and it looked arduous and expensive for little reward, and it wasn't until another couple we know went to talk to the agents at Penang My Home that we realised that the visa might just work for us. The MYR had dropped substantially and the set-up for the visa was vastly different to what we had understood from reading online.
That was in June. We were hard up against the deadline for making a decision - in fact, we had made a decision: we were going to go to Thailand on student's visas. The project was finishing in July. We literally couldn't have made the decision any later. The next four weeks flew as we attempted to compile all the documentation from Korea and Australia which the Malaysian government would need to decide on our suitability for the visa. And we moved. And I finished the project I was on. Generally it was chaos.
By the end of July we had established an apartment in Kuala Lumpur and the gear was en-route from Korea - as was my facility, which was heading to Singapore for some additional TLC prior to going to work, so my better half got stuck with the unpacking and the expat set-up. This is where it gets really fun.
We still didn't have our final residency visas, and I was overseas, so EVERYTHING was difficult. From getting phone and internet contracts to getting the intercom fixed. This is standard when you are expatting and nothing we hadn't experienced everywhere else, but it's one of those things - it just takes time. Lots and lots and lots of time.
In December we got the news the visa had been approved - yes, 6 months later - and so it all began again - trips to immigration departments, multiple attempts to get driver's licenses transferred, learning about local health insurance - and where to go if you need to use it!
As I write this, the paperwork for our licenses is still sitting on our kitchen table (paperwork required so far: Passport and copy of both bio & visa pages, Korean Drivers License and copies of both sides, original of Korean to English translation of drivers license, and police reports from Thailand) - I hope we can get it sorted on Monday, but I offset that against having finally found a really, genuinely GOOD location for grocery shopping yesterday - only took 8 months! It's a price we pay for the life we lead, and I really wouldn't change it for anything.
So that's what life looks like in the first 6 months of moving to a foreign country - lots and lots of paperwork. If you are moving with a company, your new best friend will be your agent, but as we found this time, when you move by yourself, the cost is all in time, and it's all yours.
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