Hello. Has anyone toured South America long-term as professional poker player?
A lot of countries offer 6 month visas, so it would be easy to hop between countries and spend year(s) there.

This is very different from say Thailand where you get 2 months and then have to VISA hop. I am also considering Thailand 5-year Elite Visa program, but South America would be another option to play poker abroad.

The positive sides:
- More variety of fresh food available (Asia is just rice, meat & repeat). I think food safety may be better as well with more organically grown food.
- Long-term stay, easier to settle for tiny VISA cost.
- More countries to visit within short distance
- I think poker legislation wise South America is safer long-term.

Negative sides:
- Physical safety, pickpocketers, gangs?
- Language barrier
- More lonely, less expats ?
- More crowded beach areas?
- Less developed. Internet-connections aren't great.

I would look more into Ecuador, Peru region more than Mexico. Thanks for any comments and tips.

Many areas in mexico is quite safe with many expats especially Americans.

About food, I think you're quite wrong about Thailand. Bangkok is like one of the best city in the world for food. Many michelin star restaurants, japanese and korean food is big here, fresh seafood and vegetables are everywhere.

Another point to consider is culture and how you look and how you would fit in.

You're also wrong about many countries to visit. Asia got a lot of countries all within a few hours flight.

I've been in Thailand for over a year now, and before that have visited it several times over the years. Here's my take on it as I am looking for a retirement spot in about 5 or 10 years. I will write with the assumption you have never been to Thailand.

1. Your money goes quite far here relative to the US. I'm assuming you're single, if you're single, you can have a nice modern 1 br condo in the middle of downtown Bangkok for $700. Something equivalent would be about $3500 in San Francisco. When I say equivalent, I mean access to ALL the modern conveniences that you can come up with inside and outside your condo.

2. Public subway and skyway transit is amazing here. You want to pick a condo walking distance to one of the stations. Stations are not shitty like they are in the US. They are a hub of commerce also, meaning most of them are directly connected via walkways to malls and other shopping, restaurants, food courts, banks, etc etc.

3. Malls in Thailand are the BEST in the world. (For reference I'd say US malls are below average)
Some malls have literally over 200 hundred restaurants, some are michelin star, in addition there are multiple food courts as well. Pharmacy, dentists, banking, fitness center, a WATER PARK, theaters, skating rinks, etc. There are also special events that seem to happen every other weeks as well.

4. The weather is always hot, hotter, and super hot. This is one of the key downside of Thailamd for me relative to say Vietnam, which is like always feel about 10 F cooler every season.

5. During burning season in the north, Bangkok's air quality index would be between 100 to 200 like every few days during the months of Dec to Feb. The north would be completely unlivable for me during this time. The south would be mostly fine.

My situation is with wife and 2 kids so my considerations are different from yours.

My wife is deadset I wanting Bangkok vs any other Thai city and other countries. Her reasons is that Bangkok has some of the best private international schools for our kids, albeit a bit expensive.

I prefer Hua Hin, which is a mostly quiet beach city 2.5 hours south of bangkok. Condos and houses are even cheaper there. They do have a couple of smaller malls. Better air. And if we need that big city feeling, it's a relatively short drive to Bangkok.

I’ve kinda done this if you include all of Latin America.

Only been in LatAm since Feb 2018.

2.5 years Mexico, 2 months Colombia, 1 month Peru, 10 days Guatemala, and now 3 months in Brazil. Planning to head to Argentina for 6+ months next year and probably visit Chile as well.

Internet has been very solid in Mexico City and seemed fine in Colombia and Peru in the big cities. It’s kinda sucked in Brazil and my phone signal isn’t great either.

Colombia has bad laws for online poker IIRC.

If you live in Mexico the visa is super simple, 6 months free and just leave and come back and get a fresh 6 months.

Spanish is pretty important but not essential, depending on the city.

Danger isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be but not super safe by any means. If you’re street smart you can mitigate it fairly well.

south america is great. an opportunity to learn spanish, which is a much easier language to learn than some asian language. can live in hotels pretty cheap ($30 / night for a nice hotel, including breakfast buffet). internet isn't really a problem, my last hotel here in sao paulo was rock solid, my new hotel you can't really play from the room but it is rock solid from the lobby (there is like a bar area with tables where you can sit and grind and order coffee and drinks and what not). food is amazing. you do have to bounce every 3 months for the most part, but that isn't a big deal imo. chicas. closer flights / cheaper flights if you are coming from n.a. physical safety isn't a big deal, especially if you are not making yourself a target, more likely you run into something like being pickpocketed or even robbed for your money but not actually hurt. i've spent a decent amount of time in latin america and virtually nothing happend to me (was robbed by the cops once in tijuana). casinos, including live poker.



one thing I recommend, sticking to the major urban areas (for quality internet), and then checking hotel reviews for comments on the wifi. or you can go the airbnb route, and if you get a direct wired connection to a cable modem you should be golden. me i'm a fan of hotels. you can search hotels on google and get a good idea of different prices and ratings. generally you need to book a bit in advance to get the best deals.

My 2c, although most of my South America experience is more from traveling a bunch, not being an expat.

Not in my book, most of South America is even more meat and rice oriented than SE Asia, with less interesting spices and flavors and less variations from country to country. Personally, I'm taking Asian food all day every day. There's also less street food in South America, so I guess that means it might be safer theoretically, but I didn't find that to be true. Still some very good food scenes in some of the big South American cities like Lima and Buenos Aires.

I'm not sure on this, but it is nice that many countries in SA give you a visa free 90 days.

Umm South American countries are pretty huge. And airfare from country to country is wayyyyy more expensive than SEA. Not a positive.

no idea on this one


Negatives:

Yup, definitely more dangerous than SE Asia, especially if you're walking places alone at night or being a drunk idiot, but people with street smarts should be fine.

This is a pretty big one. South America can be a bit of a lonely place sometimes if you don't know Spanish. Some of this depends a bit on the country though, as to how willing locals are to interact in English with a gringo. But you always get by! And there are plenty of gringo bars, well there were in non-pandemic times.

Not really. Maybe in Rio or something? South America in general just doesn't have that many super nice beaches.

Big cities are mostly fine. Outside of big cities you definitely run into more terrible wifi than in SEA. [/QUOTE]

I would say it seems to make more sense to do South America if you're looking to do kinda longer term, learn Spanish, get immersed in the culture, etc. The people that seem to like South America the most usually seem to have made multi year commitments and have gotten to be pretty good Spanish speakers of course. Obviously you won't know how you like it until you come! But if I was planning a year or less, I'd go for South East Asia.

If I were to come back to live in South America I think I'd choose Colombia or Peru. The only reason I would live in Argentina would be for the insane insane value of the dollar there nowadays!

Seems like a pretty good reason to live in Argentina though. I’m probably moving to Buenos Aires next year for a while to take advantage of the extra spending power.

Colombia has the worst food and is very meat, beans, rice heavy. Also with pretty restrictive online poker laws. Peru (and Mexico) are incredible for food.

What about scopolamine in Colombia? I don't mind the "normal" street dangers but a drug that can that eliminates free will and can wipe your memory is pretty scary. Does it happen often?

yea, if you hang out with shitty hookers often id guess your chances of getting scope'd go up. spanish is 100% essential if you plan to spend year(s) here. I hop back and forth between asia and latin america every couple years.

without language i would say don't come if you are looking for long term, especially if you are solo... unless you go to super heavy tourist resort type destination, or solely frequent expat scenes for social interactions and immediately find a girlfriend/assistant who speaks english and is willing to do all the little things for you. I know plenty of people who do that and have a great time and still know less than 50 words in spanish after years here, but it takes a fairly extraordinary person.

honestly asia sounds better, cheaper, easier for you from the little you described. if ur from usa just come down here for visits as tickets are just as cheap from usa to S. america as they are from country to country within S. america

A lot of solid advice already from folks ITT, but here is my 2c from someone that has lived a few years in both SEA and SA :

- As a couple of people have pointed out, if you do not plan on learning Spanish/immersing yourself in the culture here, I would highly recommend SEA instead, as the latter can be an introverts dream - unless until it catches up to you after a few years...

- Food varies a lot from country to country, both in SEA (think Thailand, Japan, Vietnam as opposed to the Philippines and Cambodia ), with Japan and Peru being on a tier of their own, and Vietnam, Thailand and Argentina being quite satisfactory. Btw, am definitely a foodie.

- The live poker scene for live mid-HS MTTs in SA >>>> SEA if this matters to you.

- Safety is alright in SA after you learn how to navigate, get to know which areas to avoid etc.

- SA is simply more alluring to me culturally in terms of language, architecture (B.A. definitely has a European heritage), music and just a general sense of belonging. In Asia, even if you learn the local language, you will always be the white foreigner. Here, you can integrate more.

And, btw, there are a ton of threads to check out already. GL

Not gonna rehash things others have said, but I have some nuanced perspectives on a couple topics:

Safety: It's easy to say that safety isn't a problem as long as you have street smarts and use common sense and blah blah blah, and to some extent that's true, yet you still have people victimized by crime all the time in these cities and it's not because they're all stupid. Often there are tradeoffs to be made between safety and convenience/expense/fun. It can be mentally taxing to always have to stop and think over the safety factors each time you want to leave your house. In some cities this will be much more of a problem than others, and it will bother some people more than others. Fortunately, not many people get hurt during robberies so if you're okay with replacing your phone and the contents of your wallet then you don't need to stress too much. (But you should still be smart.)

Language: A lot of people speak English at a conversational level, and a lot of them want to practice, but few of them are fluent enough to do this without exerting a lot of mental energy. They literally will get tired of talking to you after a while. They also will almost never speak between themselves in English just for the benefit of foreigners who are present. If you don't learn Spanish, you will not integrate very well with locals, although you can still socialize. (You'll also struggle with basic daily activities like shopping.) Conversely, you'll be quite popular if you speak Spanish fluently. You can build up fluency pretty quickly if you make an effort to avoid befriending people who speak English.

Visas: Not sure which countries you're saying have 6 month visas. I've visited 8 countries and never gotten that. I'm afraid you might be referring to Argentina where you get 90 days and can get a 90 day extension. So I want to clarify that the 90 day extension is bullshit. It's not a fresh 90 day visa. What they are actually giving you is the stamp which lets you leave the country after having overstayed your visa. So if you're staying more than 90 days, you should always just stay as long as possible and then pay the fine at the airport when leaving. It's counted exactly the same in their records, and it's not limited to just 90 days extra. And for some reason they care a lot about how many times you've overstayed and how many times you've entered the country, but not how much time you've actually spent in the country.

Planning on driving all around SA in my camper as soon as we get a vaccine and borders open up again.

Haven't spent any time in Asia but spent 5 months in Peru and 1 in Brazil and really enjoyed it. Never had any issues with safety, worst thing that happened is my sandals were stolen at the beach a few times.

Regarding loneliness, depends on the city, but I was never lonely in Lima and I don't speak any Spanish. Just take some good pictures and get on Tinder. Your SMV is going to be a couple of points higher coming from NA/Europe, so that's pretty sweet.

OP posted in his blog that he will be going to Thailand after all, but I just wanted to highlight the solitude element in case anyone in the same situation is reading...

I believe that the situation of knowing Spanish or not and feeling lonely is quite accentuated in pandemic times, as the touristic scene is not what it was/a lot of foreigners who did not speak Spanish, went back to their home countries. It is a small sample size, but the only 2 expats that I know in Buenos Aires that do not speak Spanish, REALLY feel like outsiders and lonely af Again, these are not normal times and backpacking around is just not a thing right now and staying in one place (almost) requires to speak the local tongue (or at least have a strong social circle prior to arriving).

I mean, this is going to vary depending on your personality and how much socializing you're used to back home.

I'm an introvert and not someone that sees his friends daily, so I'm fine spending time on my own. I just need an English speaking girl or 4 to spend some time with and I'm all set haha.

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