Welcome to the Second World

I have just returned from Bali, and couldn’t believe the number of Aussie expats who now call this island paradise home.There are high profile people like Tony Smith, the former champion AFL player who took his entrepreneurial skills to Bali after the demise of Breakfree and MFS and is trying to cut his teeth in a thriving new business environment where there are endless opportunities.Then there are the numerous ‘no names’ who have simply had enough of Australia for a range of reasons (cost of living being one of them) and have moved to a place where value for money is literal and you can live like a king at the cost of an Aussie pauper.Trust me, many of the expats are a far cry from the drop-outs of the 70s who were trying to escape into a haze of irresponsibility and unreality.Many are in fact successful business owners who feel restricted by Australian business conditions and taxes and are looking for other opportunities in Asia – with Bali the place they want to base themselves for obvious reasons.If there is one thing about Bali that differentiates it from Australia, it is the cost of living. Everything else is actually quite similar. I wouldn’t even call it Third World.Since the Bali bombings in 2002, the standard of medical care has improved dramatically with the Bali International Medical Centre becoming a fully-fledged, 24-hour, international-standard hospital. International education facilities are also of a very high standard.The influx of foreigners wanting to base themselves in Bali has also raised the standard of accommodation, which include all the mod-cons such as improved sanitisation, Pay TV and internet services.Denpasar Airport resembles a south-Asia version of Heathrow, with flights coming in with such regularity from all over the world, making access to the rest of the world easier than taking a flight from Sydney Airport.My most expensive main meal (a seafood curry) cost me the equivalent of $A4.70 – and that was at a fancy restaurant on Nusa Lembongan. The cheapest was a chicken curry for about $A2 in Kuta.They say that if you can spend more than $A50 a day in Bali then you are irresponsible with your money, and that includes costs of long-term accommodation.On that basis, if I had $500,000 in cash, and I calculated a spend of $A50 a day, the money wouldn’t run out until well after my retirement in 23 years. In fact, at age 65 I would still have more than $100,000 in the bank not even taking into account accrued interest.The general theme to discussions I had with some of these expats is that Australia is not the Lucky Country it used to be. It is a post-Global Financial Crisis way of thinking. Why not be a little more risqué?They say the cost of living in Australia is exorbitant, and it’s only going to get worse with federal and state debt to re-pay, carbon taxes, flood taxes, and any other taxes that WILL emerge in the future.These people have jumped off the treadmill of a costly Australian life where one tends to feed the machine with fewer rewards and over-regulation instead of being incentivised to be entrepreneurial.They have moved into a new world which is not without its issues (doing business in Indonesia is not without its pitfalls and it has a history of being a terrorist target). But with its insatiable beauty, excitement, opportunity and low cost of living, the benefits certainly outweigh the risks.Bali is an island that David Attenborough once referred to as heaven on earth – and Australians are no longer just flocking there for their holidays, they are flocking there to start a new life.Good luck to them.