Florida, I think you have a good question -- How to begin PT?
I retired about 15 months ago and have been outside of the USA for about 9 months of that time. I spent almost 7 months in Southeast Asia touring through 7 countries there and I just finished up 2 months in Colombia. Three friends of mine, who live on three different continents, joined me for about a month each for different parts of the journey. I am meeting one of them again next week for a short trip and I am meeting another one in India in January.
Before this odyssey, I had never been on any vacation for longer than 3.5 weeks. And I had never been to Asia. I had not really planned to be a PT and I am not ready yet to define myself as one. I just wanted to take a long trip to Asia and see what happened.
My suggestion is to visit some places and see how you like them. When I was traveling around I found places that I liked, a lot. For instance, I really enjoyed my time in Chiang Mai, Thailand. So much so that I plan to return to Thailand for several months starting in September. I made friends on my journey, both locals and expats, and I make an effort to stay in touch with them. I liked Medellin, Colombia, but I am not sure yet if I like it enough to live there part-time, I think I might prefer Mexico. I would definitely never live in Vietnam after visiting there. There were a lot of positive aspects to Cebu, Philippines and KL and Penang, Malaysia.
Now I am settling into a pattern of not traveling so much. Instead, I plan to go somewhere and just live for awhile (Thailand this year). And then I will have a "vacation" in India this winter and then return to Thailand for a couple more months. Some family members plan to come join me in Thailand around the holiday season, also -- warning, PT is contagious!!
Another suggestion I have is to downsize severely and ruthlessly cut overhead. When I am not in the USA, my total monthly overhead is around $170/month. That includes my high deductible health insurance, mail drop, car storage/insurance, and on-line subscriptions (WSJ, YahooMail) but does not include income taxes. Obviously, I do not own a home. Before I leave this time, I am considering both selling my car and legally establishing Texas residency. I am currently culling all of my worldly belongings down to fit into about 4 cubic meters, and hopefully less (I am admittedly a downsizing fanatic)
Language is an issue. I speak pretty good intermediate level Spanish as I just spent 2 months in Colombia. It would have been a major struggle to travel there without at least basic language skills (same for China -- I had Mandarin speaking friend with me there). Speaking the language opens up so many possibilities. In Thailand, many more people speak English than in Colombia. But your constellation of Thai friends is definitely limited by the language barrier. In other countries, like Malaysia and Philippines, many more people speak English.
I plan to spend my first month in Thailand this year in an intensive language school. I hope this will give me a base so that I will continue learning -- without a base it is hard to even learn, especially an Asian language. Thai is about twice as hard to learn as a Romance language and only half as hard to learn as the harder Asian languages of Japanese/Chinese/Korean (according to the US State Dept foreign language training statistics).
I do not have a solid long term plan at this point. But I am considering living half time in Thailand and living half time in Latin America. And spending about 3 or 4 weeks twice a year while transiting between them with relatives and friends in the USA. Long term, as in when you get old, I think one will pretty much have to pick one place to live.
Kramer