Most travel advice is about spending less on a trip. This is about something different: the trips that cost less than staying home, and the arithmetic that makes that true rather than aspirational.

Everything below is the same idea from different angles — that the price of a life is not fixed, that it depends enormously on where you stand, and that most people never once check the number. The calculators at the end let you run it on your own figures.

How much of this is first-hand

The cost-of-living side of this we have run on ourselves, living in Vietnam. The medical-tourism figures are researched, and we are not clinicians — that article says so at the top. What we have not done is price your situation — the calculators are built to show you the shape of the maths, not to quote you a figure.

The trips that pay for themselves

When you already need to buy something, where you buy it changes everything.

Where your money is worth more

The same income, a different dot on the map.

Making it possible

The practical scaffolding under all of the above.

Run it on your own numbers

Two calculators: what your life costs somewhere else, and whether a trip you already need to take could pay for itself.

Open the calculators →
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