Ok, so I’ve talked a bit about the charity work my wife and I do. As we have largely secured our financial future, we have turned greater attention to various causes we believe in. Here is something I’ve been working on a while and am now fully engaged in.
Some background:
A guy I have known (part of a secondary groups of friends) for over 20 years has been doing some inspiring charity work lately. Chris is an interesting dude and all-around good guy. He is originally from Toronto but, as a young adult, lived in Korea (and later married a Korean woman) for a while and regularly vacationed primarily in Thailand since his teenage years. When it was time to fully embrace adulthood, he moved to L.A. and had a successful film production company. Fast forward to a few years ago … He eventually got tired of corporate life, sold his company for a boatload, retired very early, and moved to Thailand.
Chris’s hobby has always been filming/editing videos, and he would document his travels for family and friends. He mainly was having fun and telling people back home about places to travel, food to eat, updates on visas and tax laws, and generally what life is like as an ex-pat. He eventually built up enough content that he decided to put his videos on YouTube. (With Chris’s background, the quality of his videos is much better than most of what you'd find on YouTube.) He started gaining a following and making some money on the side, but the purpose was just for fun.
Things changed during COVID. For a couple of years, Thailand shut down. And since tourists are a major part of the economy, the absence of tourists meant a lot of people were without work and, therefore, food and the means to support themselves. Chris then decided to take his YouTube money and distribute it to the locals. His followers on YouTube asked to contribute, and before long Chris was doing bigger and bigger projects, like putting together food packages to feed hundreds of people for a month. (This action caught my eye because this is what Lan has been doing for years in Vietnam for the Tet holiday.)
As Chris’s efforts became more and more popular (generating more money), he broadened his efforts. He went into the slums of Bangkok to give food and money to the residents there. He started sending food and supplies to orphanages in the north and homes for disabled children in the south and on Koh Samui. He even teamed up with an Aussie who owns a tour boat company to get food and supplies to locals on the more remote islands.
I contributed a little to these efforts, but at the time my wife and I were focused on Vietnam. Unfortunately, as have written previously, it’s a big effort to be charitable in Vietnam. Attract too much attention and in short order a government official will confiscate a lot of your money and/or supplies. When that happened to us, we realized we would not be able to help to the degree we wanted. It is a frustrating and losing effort. We still provide money for food and supplies during Tet and other endeavors, but it on a gradual and limited basis.
More currently:
I’ve discussed previously that my wife and I intend to be semi-retired in a few years and then want to live part of each year abroad. We originally thought about living in Vietnam, but while we enjoyed visiting the country, there’s too much corruption to feel comfortable living there. We’ve pivoted and now lean toward Thailand. Besides being very ex-pat friendly, it’s an excellent travel hub for the rest of Asia. Bangkok would be a good base to travel throughout the country and abroad. So, in recent months (after we got back from Vietnam this summer) I’ve been doing research on traveling and living in Thailand.
So, after adjusting fire (and always subject to change) on our retirement plans, I started re-visiting Chris’s videos with more serious attention. I was originally reviewing his videos on being a long-term tourist or ex-pat in Thailand. This is when I discovered a video on a charitable endeavor from a year-and-a-half ago that I missed. Rather than me rambling on, I’ll let Chris tell the story:
This video (and subsequent ones like it) s something that really connected with my wife and me. The young lady (Anantaya) in the video is from the Hmong tribe. We saw first-hand the difficult lives these people lead when we were in Vietnam. And this young lady wants to be a nurse, so that made this feel personal for us. What we really want to do charity-wise is to provide assistance that will fundamentally change someone’s life for the better. We want to help people rise to their level of talent and work ethic. We have the means to help, so we feel this is something we have to do.
So, through Chris, I connected with Michael at iCare. Michael has an inspiring story of his own. He is from Sweden and his parents moved to Thailand when Michael was a child, and the family started pursuing charitable causes. This has become Michael’s life’s work. I just recently sent enough money to fund a full college scholarship to one of this year’s graduating class at the orphanage. It’s an honor to help this cause, and I will try to make this an ongoing effort.
Some background:
A guy I have known (part of a secondary groups of friends) for over 20 years has been doing some inspiring charity work lately. Chris is an interesting dude and all-around good guy. He is originally from Toronto but, as a young adult, lived in Korea (and later married a Korean woman) for a while and regularly vacationed primarily in Thailand since his teenage years. When it was time to fully embrace adulthood, he moved to L.A. and had a successful film production company. Fast forward to a few years ago … He eventually got tired of corporate life, sold his company for a boatload, retired very early, and moved to Thailand.
Chris’s hobby has always been filming/editing videos, and he would document his travels for family and friends. He mainly was having fun and telling people back home about places to travel, food to eat, updates on visas and tax laws, and generally what life is like as an ex-pat. He eventually built up enough content that he decided to put his videos on YouTube. (With Chris’s background, the quality of his videos is much better than most of what you'd find on YouTube.) He started gaining a following and making some money on the side, but the purpose was just for fun.
Things changed during COVID. For a couple of years, Thailand shut down. And since tourists are a major part of the economy, the absence of tourists meant a lot of people were without work and, therefore, food and the means to support themselves. Chris then decided to take his YouTube money and distribute it to the locals. His followers on YouTube asked to contribute, and before long Chris was doing bigger and bigger projects, like putting together food packages to feed hundreds of people for a month. (This action caught my eye because this is what Lan has been doing for years in Vietnam for the Tet holiday.)
As Chris’s efforts became more and more popular (generating more money), he broadened his efforts. He went into the slums of Bangkok to give food and money to the residents there. He started sending food and supplies to orphanages in the north and homes for disabled children in the south and on Koh Samui. He even teamed up with an Aussie who owns a tour boat company to get food and supplies to locals on the more remote islands.
I contributed a little to these efforts, but at the time my wife and I were focused on Vietnam. Unfortunately, as have written previously, it’s a big effort to be charitable in Vietnam. Attract too much attention and in short order a government official will confiscate a lot of your money and/or supplies. When that happened to us, we realized we would not be able to help to the degree we wanted. It is a frustrating and losing effort. We still provide money for food and supplies during Tet and other endeavors, but it on a gradual and limited basis.
More currently:
I’ve discussed previously that my wife and I intend to be semi-retired in a few years and then want to live part of each year abroad. We originally thought about living in Vietnam, but while we enjoyed visiting the country, there’s too much corruption to feel comfortable living there. We’ve pivoted and now lean toward Thailand. Besides being very ex-pat friendly, it’s an excellent travel hub for the rest of Asia. Bangkok would be a good base to travel throughout the country and abroad. So, in recent months (after we got back from Vietnam this summer) I’ve been doing research on traveling and living in Thailand.
So, after adjusting fire (and always subject to change) on our retirement plans, I started re-visiting Chris’s videos with more serious attention. I was originally reviewing his videos on being a long-term tourist or ex-pat in Thailand. This is when I discovered a video on a charitable endeavor from a year-and-a-half ago that I missed. Rather than me rambling on, I’ll let Chris tell the story:
This video (and subsequent ones like it) s something that really connected with my wife and me. The young lady (Anantaya) in the video is from the Hmong tribe. We saw first-hand the difficult lives these people lead when we were in Vietnam. And this young lady wants to be a nurse, so that made this feel personal for us. What we really want to do charity-wise is to provide assistance that will fundamentally change someone’s life for the better. We want to help people rise to their level of talent and work ethic. We have the means to help, so we feel this is something we have to do.
So, through Chris, I connected with Michael at iCare. Michael has an inspiring story of his own. He is from Sweden and his parents moved to Thailand when Michael was a child, and the family started pursuing charitable causes. This has become Michael’s life’s work. I just recently sent enough money to fund a full college scholarship to one of this year’s graduating class at the orphanage. It’s an honor to help this cause, and I will try to make this an ongoing effort.
