Bali

> > anyone can move to bali. it's cheap as fuck to get set up here,
> > there are a fair few interesting jobs if you're motivated and creative,
>
> So how would you go about doing it, I assume you would need some savings
> if not to get you out there?

yeah, you'd need to save up some money but a little bit goes a long way
if you're motivated, and especially if you know someone out there who
can help you not get ripped off to badly your first few months. 2000
euro could be stretched long enough to find a job if you didn't go out
drinking in spendy places too much. (you can rent a basic but cool place
for about 100/month, indonesian food is <1 a meal, cook yourself eggs
and toast for breakfast, local beers about E1/bottle, 1-2 in a bar,
occasional western meals can run anywhere from 3 euros to 30, motorbike
rental 50/month...) you'd want to spend a month sitting around on the
beach being a bum getting the feel of the place, and after budget some
time and a little bit of money for indonesian language lessons. then
once you've got your bearings start looking for work.

> Also what is there in the line of work?

teaching english is a shoe-in if you've got a certificate that says you
can (takes a month and E600 to get, here or in europe (i think)) but
the pay here in bali is a bit shit. still, enough to live on. if
you've got vynil and are good at shmoozing it would be easy to find work
djing, you can get up to $100/night (maybe 50 is more common?) or at
least i've had that offered to me, haven't taken anyone up on it yet
cause i've been busy with my band... dont know if that would be a
regular figure, but i again my impression here "on the ground" is that
you could find a regular gig that paid the rent pretty easily* also
once you've been here long enough to learn basic indonesian and make
some contacts, i get the impression here are loads of foreign run
import/export businesses (or tourism or other such stuff) that would be
quite happy to hire a motivated ex-pat. i have one japanese friend that
works for a tourist company, and another that manages a restaurant, and
several friends cooking in restaurants. most of these jobs just pay
enough to get by, but if you liked the overseas lifestyle, just living
and working in a foreign country is a huge resume builder for the
industry - for instance if you decided you needed money more than living
on a beach you could probably translate fluency and business experience
in bali into a high-paying international corporate job in jakarta,
singapore or hong kong later down the road...

*also i forgot to mention, for entertainment work you need a working
visa which can be quite expensive to get - about E1500! but again if
you were good at shmoozing you could try to start off with a residency
at some big club like hard rock or double six, where they would probably
sponser you as part of the deal. hmmm, actually now that i think about
it that visa would be important cause otherwise you have to make visa
runs to singapore every month, which is bloody expensive. anyway the
thing is if you shell out for the work permit (and it's all about
plopping down the cash, you dont actually need a job or sponser or
anything) you would have a *very* easy time finding work cause hardly
any western entertainers have them so if you do people are quite keen to
hire you (parties are simply more popular if the flyer has "dj whoever
(uk)" on it) or you could get a business visa for E300 (i think!) that
lets you stay but not work for 6 months without having to leave, then
use that 6 months to find a working situation that sponsors you...

so anyway, yeah, you'd need to bring some cash. but not *that* much. i
figure a motivated emplyed person could save up enough in a matter of months.

obviously none of this is gospel, ymmv etc. but it do believe it's
possible to do as i have loads of friends out here who already have.

> assume the dream job of making huts from bamboo wouldn't pay but is
> there anything in the line web design?

i hear there's a market for it in phuket, thailand

oh, and there's quite a bit of work for architects. and if your dream
job was making bamboo huts i recon you could find an angle doing exactly
that. do it yourself first (it would cost a bit but then you'd have a
bamboo hut to live in) and then act as a commision-taking "interface"
between lazy foreigners who want to buy a bamboo hut but cant figure out
all the intricacies of building a bamboo hut in indonesia (property
buying/renting legalese, contracting labor etc)

actually the cool thing about bali is that it's full of weirdos who had
some strange dream job like building bamboo huts or starting a
traditional-asian-meets-dj-band and just showed up here and figured out
how to do it. opportunities simply abound here if you're patient and
can deal with the down parts of it (and yes there are few...)

> And finally a completely hypothetical question this
> one, if a person was to move abroad and forgot to pay their credit card
> and various other debts what are the chances they would catch up on you
> when you got back, if you didn't go back to the last known address?

i pretty much did this when i was much younger. in america, they just
call you and bug you relentlessly for a year or two (and it's way harder
for them to track you down if you leave the country for a while and come
back to a new address) then it tapers off to once or twice a month,
then nothing. 5 years later, if you find yourself making good money,
you pay off a fraction of the cost to the agency that bought your debt
from the credit card company in return for clearing your credit record,
and get a mortgage. worked for me.

dont let them get ahold of your parents phone number though.

-messiah