MM2H targeting 70,000 Hong Kong retirees. Have you been to Hong Kong? I have personally been to Hong Kong 3 or 4 times. I love it everytime I am there. Lunch becomes cheap if you wait until after 230pm. Hotels are not that great due to the prices but I love Hong Kong food, sights, shopping and the convenience of MRT and walking. Once, my friend drove me around in Hong Kong in his Mercedes 2 door car and showed me all the super expensive homes there. If you are working in Hong Kong and buying a property there, it would set you back many years of savings for downpayment. Don’t try to imagine those huge bungalows or even the apartments depicted in the TVB dramas unless it is the smaller ones. In fact, I told my wife that unless I am super rich, it may not be that conducive to retire in such an expensive city.
Recently, I read about the news of MM2H programme for Hong Kong retirees and the offered retirement solution and property investment was in Cyberjaya. Okay, it was the first time that I have ever heard of Cyberjaya becoming a retirement haven. I mean, normally when you talk about retirement, Georgetown, Kota Kinabalu and even my hometown Ipoh would be a more popular choice but Cyberjaya? Some reasons which I think is quite true include climate, medical facilities as well as human, cultural and geographical environment. Of course, there’s also the fact that compared to Hong Kong, everything does seem to be affordable. As an example, your salary in Hong Kong may not be high when compared to the home prices but once you transfer it here to Malaysia, it will grow many times more.
The development in Cyberjaya that was being launched for these Japanese was named ‘Roppongi @ Cyberjaya. I have personally been to the Roppongi district in Tokyo. Everything’s high end in Roppongi and one ladies T-shirt which I showed my wife a few years ago actually costs RM800. Yes, a T-shirt. This Roppongi @ Cyberjaya integrates work, dining, shopping, entertainment and education all within a high-density, high-intensity yet green urban environment. It is said that this will be the first ‘micro-climate township’ in Malaysia with completion due in 2019. Some other good rankings for Malaysia as a retirement haven include top retirement destination in Asia by internationalliving.com for 2013 and 2014 and another one by Longstay Foundation of Japan which rated it as the most popular long-stay destination for retiring Japanese for the eighth consecutive year since 2006. Read about MM2H for Japanese here: MM2H Malaysia for Japanese, 3,346 here and ‘busier here than in Japan’
Oh yeah, for these Hong retirees, language or rather dialect is unlikely to be a problem as Cantonese is widely spoken and TVB dramas continue to be very popular even if these days, the Korean ones are attracting more attention. Besides, Kuala Lumpur remain to be very international with KLIA and KLIA2 and these two airports are not that far from Cyberjaya.
written on 28 Sept 2014
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