One of my work colleagues is moving city, so I dug out my dusty notes on what I learned from the process of moving from London to Hong Kong and back again and thought I would share it for future travellers.
I benefited from going back and forth to Ireland, so resolved to make different mistakes to my parents loading our cars up to the gunnels.
I presume that you will be doing your own research that is destination-specific. There is usually a plethora of guides, subreddits, forums and websites. If you want to realise how far you are away from being one of the 1%, I can recommend the Hong Kong section of the Asiaxpat Forum as a way of finding out how the global elite live and the problems that they face.
One of the things that you first face in consideration about moving city is what to take with you. If you are filling a removal van, everything is going. if you are moving city, to the far side of the world. You start filtering things down very fast.
- Pack enough clothes for two weeks of office work and weekends. I had a couple of North Face basecamp duffel bags for this. They are robust and I’ve owned my set since the mid-2000s. Since then they went to the US and around Asia for work several times.
- Get plastic office moving crates and security tie-wraps for the rest of your stuff that will be going by sea. They are stackable and more resilient to water than the cardboard boxes moving companies would usually give you.
- Label the crates clearly. Laminate the labels and attach them to the crates
- Keep a list of each crates content, this will help you with any customs forms
- Pack a collapsable porter’s trolley in one of the crates. Your back will thank you.
- Take enough medicines for at least a month, it will take time to find a family doctor.
- Bring stuff that has memories.
- Only use a Kindle for leisure reading.
- Don’t bring anything that you can buy in a local supermarket including:
- Cleaning products
- Toiletries
- Kitchen cupboard staples
- Household basics like plates, cutlery etc
- Over the counter medicines like cold remedies and multi-vitamins
- Make a list in advance of travelling of the things that you need to do when you arrive. You will miss things off on this list. But what the list does is provide a sense of security that you can then work through.
- You can still sort out your UK tax affairs from abroad, which makes moving city slightly easier to do.
- Finance
- If you don’t have one already get an American Express card before you even think about travelling. They make it really easy to get a credit card in your new country based on your previous countries Amex history.
- In terms of banking, if I was going to do it all again I would have gone with Standard Chartered rather than HSBC as my bank when moving city from London to Hong Kong. But HSBC are better than nothing.
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