40 years on the ground in Asia
Why these city guides are written by someone who has actually lived here.
AsiaCityMatch is not a listicle shop. Every guide on this site is written by a long-term Asia resident — not a travel blogger on a three-week visit. The goal is simple: give you the honest version of what it takes to actually move to an Asian city, including the parts the tourist sites skip.
The short bio: I've lived and worked in Asia for 40 years. Hong Kong and the Philippines first, for several years each, then Thailand from 2001, and Cambodia since 2020. I'm the CEO and owner of Coastal Boats Cambodia, a custom boat-building company I originally set up in Thailand in 2001 and relocated to Cambodia in 2020. Alongside that I run the Mumby 48 Build — a long-running documentation of a 48-foot catamaran project that's become a small reference point in the bluewater cruising community.
The through-line is the same: living and building things in Asia long enough to watch cities change. Phnom Penh in 2020 is not Phnom Penh in 2026. Bangkok's visa rules have been rewritten three times since I first moved there. Dumaguete's rent is now double what it was when I first passed through. Every guide on this site reflects what the city actually looks like this year, priced in 2026 dollars, with visa rules verified against the most recent policy changes.
Why the guides are different
Most online city guides optimize for search traffic — a thousand words of generic prose per city, scraped and rewritten, priced in 2019 dollars, with visa rules three revisions out of date. These guides are the opposite. Each one is a field manual: costs broken down line-by-line, neighborhood rent ranges set against real leases, visas reviewed against the current policy, healthcare escalation paths that reflect the actual hospitals people use when things go wrong.
They're written for people who are seriously considering a move — retirees, remote workers, couples — not for travellers scanning a top-10 list. If you're reading an AsiaCityMatch guide, you've already decided you want to live in Asia. My job is to help you pick the right city and skip the expensive mistakes.
The cities I know well
Phnom Penh, Kampot, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Hong Kong, Manila, Cebu, Dumaguete, Siargao, and Baguio — these are places I've lived in, stayed in for long stretches, or worked in during sourcing and build trips for the boat company. Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Singapore, Ho Chi Minh, Hanoi, Da Nang, Bali, and Taipei I've visited repeatedly over the decades. Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul, and Dubai I've spent shorter time in — the guides for those cities lean more on structured research than lived experience, and I say so where it matters.
What the guides cost — and why
The detailed PDF guides are USD 19 for small towns (Kampot, Dumaguete, Siargao, Baguio) and USD 29 for the big cities. If you want more than one, the 3-city bundle is USD 50 — pick any three. The free pages on this site give you the cost summary, neighborhood list, and visa overview. The paid PDFs add the 30-day arrival checklist, a tier-by-tier budget, the healthcare escalation plan, the specific apartment-hunting script, and the resource directory — the things you actually need once you've booked a flight.
Other things I've built
If you're interested in boat building, long passages, or following what a 40-year Asia resident actually does for a living, these are the two sites where that lives:
- boatsbycoastal.com — Coastal Boats Cambodia, the boat-building company
- mumby48build.com — the Mumby 48 build log
Contact
Questions about a specific city, a bulk order for a relocation agency, a licensing request, or a guest-article pitch? Email expat@asiacitymatch.com. I read everything — replies may take a day or two depending on where I'm travelling.
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