Everything you need to actually plan this move — not the aspirational version, the real one. Start with the full guide if you want to read it straight through, or jump into the questionnaire if you want a plan built around your specific situation.
What moving to Southeast Asia actually involves, start to finish — baggage and shipping realities, vehicle decisions, customs rules, and the ground-level details most guides skip entirely. Written to be read straight through.
Read the Guide →Answer questions about your actual situation — why you're moving, what you're leaving behind, where you're headed — and get a guide assembled specifically around your answers, with nothing irrelevant to wade through.
Start the Questionnaire →There's no wrong entry point here — both paths above end up covering the same ground, they just get you there differently.
The full guide walks through the entire process in order — what to do with your belongings, vehicle decisions, shipping realities, customs rules, timelines — the way you'd read any long-form guide. Good if you're still early in deciding whether this move makes sense at all, or if you just prefer reading over answering questions.
The questionnaire skips anything that doesn't apply to you — no kids, no pets, no vehicle to sell — and surfaces the specific things that do: your nationality's tax rules, your destination's visa options, whether your situation calls for a phased move. Good once you have real specifics to work with.
These three come up in almost every relocation, and they're genuinely complex enough to deserve more room than a quick guide answer — that's what the tabs above are for.
International schools exist in real numbers across all five countries. The question isn't whether they exist — it's how to tell a genuinely good one from a nice campus with good marketing, and whether a school is even the right tier for your situation.
Two genuinely useful, free resources exist and should be your starting point rather than a Facebook group recommendation: the US State Department's Office of Overseas Schools directory (state.gov) lists State Department-assisted schools by country — an informal quality signal since these schools meet baseline standards for embassy family enrollment.
international-schools-database.com is a free, searchable directory covering the actual current landscape: 196 international schools in Thailand, 193 in Malaysia, 146 in Indonesia, and 42 in Manila alone — filterable by curriculum, fees, and class size.
A school carrying real accreditation isn't automatically "the best," but it means external, ongoing standards review rather than just a nice campus. The signals that actually mean something: IB World School status, Council of International Schools (CIS), WASC and NEASC (US regional accreditation bodies common across the region), and Cambridge International authorization.
None of these guarantee quality on their own — but a school with none of them carrying a premium price tag is a legitimate question to ask about directly.
| Country | International schools | Typical annual fee (age ~12) |
|---|---|---|
| Philippines | 42+ in Manila alone | Verify current figures per school — Numbeo-based regional data suggests notably lower than Thailand |
| Thailand | 196 nationwide | ~฿471,000/year (verify current) |
| Vietnam | Concentrated in HCMC and Hanoi | Verify per school — FV Hospital-adjacent international zones tend to cluster higher-tier schools |
| Malaysia | 193 nationwide | ~RM42,508/year (verify current) |
| Indonesia | 146 nationwide | Varies enormously — Jakarta and Bali command a real premium over other regions |
Fee figures shift yearly and by specific school — always confirm current pricing directly with the school rather than relying on any published guide, including this one.
These five countries are genuinely not equally pet-friendly, and treating "bring your pet" as one uniform process across all of them is the single most common mistake in relocation planning for pet owners.
| Country | Quarantine | 2026 detail worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| 🇵🇭 Philippines | 30 days, but home quarantine, not a facility | No titer test required, no banned-breed list — genuinely the most pet-friendly of the five |
| 🇹🇭 Thailand | Usually none if paperwork is correct (officer discretion to hold 30 days) | Bangkok's BMA introduced a pet-per-residence limit in January 2026 — worth knowing for condo living specifically |
| 🇻🇳 Vietnam | Generally none if compliant | No titer test required from any origin country |
| 🇲🇾 Malaysia | 7 days mandatory at a KLIA facility (most countries), can extend to 6 months case-by-case | A real restricted-breed list exists — check the DVS/MAQIS site directly rather than assume |
| 🇮🇩 Indonesia | 7–14 days — the strictest of the five | New PCR test requirement for cats from the US, Netherlands, and Russia; active embargo on dogs specifically from Thailand |
Get an ISO-compliant microchip before the rabies vaccination — order matters, since vaccinating first can invalidate the chip's usefulness for documentation purposes. Rabies vaccine timing windows are typically 21–30 days before travel, not immediately before. You'll need a vet-issued health certificate from an accredited vet in your origin country, timed to each destination's specific window.
Professional pet relocation services handle the entire process door-to-door, including permits — genuinely worth knowing about as an option, not just the DIY path, especially for anyone already overwhelmed by everything else on their moving list. Roughly $2,500+ for a cat or small dog to Malaysia is one real reference point for what this costs.
The real decision isn't item-by-item — it's a lens you apply to everything: cost of storing or shipping, versus replacement cost, versus how genuinely irreplaceable something is.
Irreplaceable items — photos, family heirlooms, documents — where cost barely matters because the item can't be repurchased at any price. If you're relocating permanently with a partner, this is exactly the category where the shipping cost is worth paying without much debate.
Anything with a real local equivalent at your destination. A vehicle or motorcycle is the classic example — dealerships for most major brands, including ones people assume aren't available (a Harley-Davidson dealer exists in both Manila and Bangkok/Pattaya, for instance), mean nothing is actually lost by selling here and buying there.
Financially valuable but not sentimentally irreplaceable, and your destination or timeline is still undecided. This is where the honest cost-and-risk math matters most, because storage adds up fast against something with a fixed resale value.
| Unit size | Fits | Standard (2026) | Climate-controlled |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5×5 | A few boxes, small furniture | $40–$70/mo | $50–$90/mo |
| 5×10 | Studio or minimalist 1-bed contents | $60–$120/mo | $75–$150/mo |
| 10×10 | Full 1–2 bedroom apartment | $100–$180/mo (national avg. ~$120–$136) | $130–$230/mo |
| 10×15 | Larger apartment or small house | $150–$220/mo | $190–$280/mo |
| 10×20 | Full household or vehicle storage | $150–$300/mo | $200–$380/mo |
National averages as of 2026 — actual pricing varies significantly by city and facility. A 10×10 unit runs roughly $88/mo in Houston versus $250+/mo in Los Angeles or New York. Get a size consultation from the facility directly rather than guessing.
This is a genuinely bigger story than most people realize, and it directly affects anyone assuming "leave it in the bank box" is still a default option.
For passports, deeds, birth and marriage certificates, and any other originals: scan everything before departure, regardless of what you decide to do with the physical originals. This costs nothing and takes an afternoon, and it's the single highest-value hour you can spend on this whole category.
A home safe (a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars, per what displaced customers report) or moving to one of the banks still offering the service. Ties directly back to the shipping decision above: documents and photos are exactly the category where digitizing plus shipping the physical originals — rather than storing them — is the safest call, since a storage unit's climate risk applies to paper just as much as anything else.
The same handful of questions come up over and over across the story, the questionnaire, and the deep dives above. Here they are in one place.
"Easiest" depends on what you're optimizing for. The Philippines is generally the most pet-friendly and has the fewest language-barrier issues for English speakers. Thailand and Malaysia have the most mature visa pathways for retirees and remote workers. There isn't a single "easiest" answer — it's genuinely worth reading the country-specific visa and cost-of-living pages before deciding, since the right fit depends on your specific situation (family size, pets, budget, remote income).
Most of what's covered on this page — schooling research, pet paperwork, deciding what to sell or ship — is genuinely doable yourself with enough lead time. Professional services (pet relocation being the clearest example) exist for a reason though: they're worth the cost specifically when you're already overwhelmed by everything else on the list, not as a default first move.
Legally, usually yes. Practically, for most expat families, no — and it's a language issue, not a legal one. Instruction shifts to the local language starting in early grades across all five countries, which mostly rules it out unless your kids are already fluent or you're planning to integrate long-term. The private local school middle tier (cheaper than international, better English instruction than public) is worth considering before jumping straight to international school pricing.
Indonesia and Malaysia have the strictest requirements of the five — mandatory facility quarantine rather than home quarantine, and in Indonesia's case, a newer PCR testing requirement for cats arriving from specific countries. The Philippines is the most pet-friendly overall: home quarantine only, no titer test, no banned-breed list.
Storage makes sense specifically for items that are financially valuable but not sentimentally irreplaceable, when your destination or timeline isn't fully locked in yet. If something has a real local equivalent at your destination (a car being the classic example), selling it usually beats paying to store it indefinitely. If it's genuinely irreplaceable — photos, heirlooms, documents — that's the one category worth just shipping regardless of cost.
No — this is general orientation, not tax, legal, or immigration advice. Cross-border tax situations in particular are genuinely worth sorting out with a qualified professional, since the cost of getting it wrong tends to be much higher than the cost of a consultation. Use this page and the questionnaire to know what questions to ask, not as a substitute for asking them.