April 12, 2010
Malaysia
PLUS:
- London's V&A Museum Opens Its New Renaissance City Galleries...
- "I Was Horrified By Your Totally Unfair Reports About Investment In Brazil"...
----------
Choose Your Dream Retirement--
Free Report Shows You How To Make It Real
Here's your chance to choose your personal, custom-fitted retirement paradise from among the world's top retirement havens.
Choose the overseas Shangri-la with your name on it. Then we'll send you the Country Retirement Report that will show you how to make your new life in your dream haven a reality.
In fact, we'll send you up to 7 FREE reports when you act now.
Full details here.
----------
Dear Live and Invest Overseas Reader,
"Vicki and I visited a tiny fishing village on the northwest coast of Malaysia," writes Intrepid Correspondent Paul Terhorst. [
Take a look.] "While we were there, a local guy named Chin befriended us and showed us around.
"Chin recently retired after 20 years working in Singapore. He was a buyer for a company that makes motherboards for cell phones. But Chin says margins are too small, it's too tough a business. He decided to retire, move back to his village, and go for the big money: bird's nests.
"Consumers buy the nests and boil them to make bird's-nest soup. The thick broth supposedly strengthens the lungs, immune system, libido, and more. Wikipedia says bird's nests are 'among the most expensive animal products consumed by humans.'
"Chin mentioned several times that bird's-nest soup helps the lungs. I asked Chin if the soup could cure lung cancer. 'Paul,' he said patiently, 'if bird's-nest soup could cure lung cancer, we wouldn't have people dying of lung cancer, would we?'
"Certain kinds of swiftlets make the valuable nests with their saliva.
Chin's village borders on a huge mangrove forest that produces a steady supply of what swiftlets prize most: mosquitos. Swiftlets have been nesting in the area for years.
"Chin built his first bird house about six months ago. [Take a look.] While standing nearby, I heard a steady racket coming from the bird house, birds singing and squawking.
"I said, 'Your bird house seems to be full already. Just listen to the noise.'
"Chin said, 'No, I've had very few birds so far. What you hear is an MP3 player I hooked up. It plays bird sounds 24 hours a day, although I turn down the volume at night. My neighbors need to sleep.'
"Buyers who export to China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States show up regularly and pay 4,000 ringgit (US$1,250) a kilo. About 130 nests make up a kilo. Chin hopes to produce a kilo a month beginning in a year or so. And that's just a start. Swiftlets tend to return to their place of birth to set up their own nests. As long as Chin can attract birds in the first place, with a fine setting and the right bird sounds, volume should increase exponentially. And there's very little cost.
"Chin needs only to harvest the nests and to disinfect and carry off the bird droppings. The droppings can carry disease, which could kill off the bird's-nest business, not to mention the birds themselves.
"As soon as he can tap into his retirement fund, Chin plans to build a second bird house. He'll go into business with his brother, who owns a cafe in the village. They'll tear down the cafe and build a new, four-story building with a ground-level cafe, an apartment on the floor above, and then two levels for birds.
"Chin has never married. I told him he should look for a young wife.
That way, when the business gets going, Chin will die and leave all his bird's nests to his rich young wife and kids. Chin laughed, a hearty, full laugh, but I suspect he took me seriously. People, and generations, come and go. But bird's-nest production is forever."
Kathleen Peddicord
----------
Beautiful, Welcoming, Peaceful, And
Almost Unbelievably Cheap
This is the best time in our lifetimes to consider Asia. This beautiful and exotic region is more open today than ever, and it's possible for Westerners to travel almost anywhere they'd want to go. At the same time, Asia is fast-changing, and you have today a window to experience it before the face of this ancient land of emperors and adventurers is too dramatically altered.
But perhaps the best reason to take a good look at this region right now is that it hides the world's most affordable retirement havens...
the cheapest places on earth to live well.
Intrepid Correspondents Paul and Vicki Terhorst have been exploring this exotic, welcoming, and peaceful part of the world for three decades. During their most recent adventures, they've tempted me with tales of comfortable US$11-a-night hotels, tasty, filling lunches for 50 cents, and other bargains almost too extraordinary to believe.
Their verdict?
See Asia now.
Paul tells you more here.
----------
"The
Victoria and Albert Museum," writes Correspondent Paul Lewis from
London, "has just opened a bunch of new galleries specializing in Medieval and Renaissance Art, built at a cost of US$50 million over the last seven years. This 'Renaissance City,' as the museum calls its new galleries, houses a major collection of some 1,800 pieces from the storage rooms, most of which have not previously been seen by the public, at least not in recent decades.
"Many are large stone artworks hard to exhibit, including religious and secular statues, window-frames, wells, Gothic altars, Italian Renaissance street lights (which burned oil-soaked tow), and huge chimney-pieces. There are also notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci filled with his spidery mirror handwriting.
"The most impressive exhibit is probably the 'boar and bear hunt tapestry' woven in 15th-century Flanders. You can scrutinize while listening to the modern English poet Simon Armitage reading his translation of a hunting passage from the 14th-century poem, 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.'
"Or you can listen to period songs accompanied by the viola de gamba.
You can read up on the exhibits in the new computer monitors conveniently located around the galleries. These show details otherwise hard to see and provide a full curatorial account of each object on display.
"Among the unusual exhibits is a wine glass with a windmill in the stem used for a drinking game. The drinker had to down the last dregs of wine while the windmill was turning or else pay for a round for those watching him try.
"Admission is free. The underground station is South Kensington, and you can get to the museum by underground passage."
"Kathleen, I have been reading your newsletters for over a year now and, in general, find them very interesting.
"I was, however, horrified at your editor's totally incorrect and unfair
reports about investment in Brazil that you published recently.
"Brazil is the fifth-largest country in the world, 8.5 million square kilometers, unlike 'twee' Panama. The coastline alone is 7,491 kilometers, the same distance as from London to Havana, Cuba. Maybe that helps to put things into perspective.
"Just the distance from Rio de Janeiro to Salvador is the same as from London to St. Petersburg or from Barcelona to Libya. Therefore, with the very greatest amount of respect, Kathleen, please do not fall into the general press trap of lumping all Brazil together.
"Would one not invest in Barcelona, for example, because of problems in Libya?
"One simply cannot state generally 'Brazil' when referring to Natal or Fortaleza.
"The areas you mention, Natal and Fortaleza, have been forerunner favorites for international property investments. However, these places are really for 'The Bucket and Spade Brigade' and not for the discerning visitor or investor. I don't have to harp on' about the pitfalls and downfalls of investments in that Natal and Fortaleza area. There's enough of that already being published on the Internet. It's the old 'Pebble in the Pool' syndrome, like Benidorm on Costa Blanca, Spain, or Magalluf in Mallorca, Spain. Dreadful areas!
"The international developers of huge projects in that area have 'caught a cold,' as the saying goes, and many are pulling out big style. Several others are marketing (and taking deposits) on properties that simply don't exist. All CGI's (Computer Generated Images). This all gains a bad name for sincere real estate agents.
"Take a look at Bahia and the area around Salvador City, the Coconut Coast, the Bay of All Saints, the Dende Coast, and Camamu Bay, all areas where serious and discerning investors at all levels are placing their capital.
"After 30 years of real estate experience in Spain and its islands, I moved to Bahia over seven years ago and am involved with various sincere projects here in the resort, hotel, residential, commercial, and golf course sectors.
"Please re-consider your statements, Kathleen. They are rather misleading for anyone who may wish to invest in Brazil, the 'B' in the BRIC countries and a favorite for investment at present."
-- Michael P., Brazil
Resident global real estate investing expert Lief Simon replies:
"I used Forteleza as an example of where a colleague has invested. My comments were to do with the country overall and remain valid. My bottom line point is that I don't see Brazil as a top option for the small real estate investor.
"The idea of Brazil being the 'B' in BRIC helps to make my point. I wouldn't suggest that a small real estate investor buy for pure investment in Russia, India, or China either. If your agenda is personal use, that's something else. If you're a big-time property investor with considerable resources supporting you, again, that's a different thing.
"But for the small investor with limited funds and limited international experience, Brazil comes with too much administrative hassle to bother and too much risk, especially if you buy with financing. I see many first-time and novice investors buying pre-construction units in Brazil (yes, in this case, I'm speaking specifically of the Fortaleza region) without having any real idea what they're getting into. They are not prepared for the reality of the currency risk. They don't even understand it. Many are buying for retirement, using retirement funds. I think it's a mistake.
"This could change, but it is the reality today.
"I agree that Brazil is a big county offering a great deal of opportunity. As a friend who is investing in the country puts it, 'I look for lively, active markets. These are the markets where you can make money.' And, yes, right now, Brazil certainly qualifies.
"That said, I also believe that, if someone wants to invest in the country, they have better options than buying real estate directly."
