Food, safety, proximity to other Asian destinations, low cost, fast Internet, everything close by (e.g. one can take a break from Bangkok with a quick flight to the south)... it goes on.
The internet in Latin America sucks compared to east Asia.
It's not even remotely close. I say this having used 130 gigs of high speed mobile data over the past month, tethering wherever I felt like it, and spending under $30 USD for the privilege.
Hey, have you been to china? Internet isn't really great there especially if you venture outside of the Chinese net. Heck, some websites won't even work without a vpn....
I have been mostly bouncing between Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan, but even so, what Latin American city offers internet service at a similar speed and price as you could get in Chiang Mai, Saigon or Singapore? I sure haven't seen one.
I have lived most of my life in Brazil, and even though I am very privileged, the following has happened to me:
1) Watch stolen by drug addict with a syringe when I was 12 years old
2) Cellphone stolen by a thug with a glass shard when I was 16
3) Also when I was 16, three thugs tried to steal my cellphone, they said they would blow my brains if I didn't comply and faked having a gun (I didn't).
4) Two thugs invaded my frat house, held us hostages with handguns, and stole all we had (I will never forget the cold metal of the gun touching my head, while I was threatened).
5) My car was jacked right in front of my house.
6) Another cellphone stealing incident that I'd rather not share in details.
7) My spare tire was stolen while I was in a bar for a couple of hours.
This is just what has happened to me in less than 30 years. Stories like those abound. My girlfriend also went through (4) and (7), independently of me. Pretty much everyone I know has had a cellhphone stolen at some point in their lives.
If you want to actually experience the dread that is living in Brazil, search for "brazil" in reddit's /r/watchpeopledie.
Latin America really varies by country. You'd have to be insane to want to spend time in Venezuela right now. Brazil, especially north Brazil has a reputation for violence.
Chile on the other hand is very safe, has good infrastructure and is a pretty pleasant place to visit with lots of varied scenery and low corruption. They even have a startup incubator program. The beaches don't have warm water unfortunately.
For what it's worth the U.S. has four cities in the top-50 list. I've been to a couple of them. Yeah you can't be a dummy, but I don't think most people there are in fear of their life.
No matter what I do, I would always look like a foreigner in Venezuela. This is also true in Thailand but they seem to do a much better job of protecting farang from violent crime.
When you're living in Latin America as an expat, the odds are pretty strong that you're in or near a tourist resort with very little (observable) crime. I say observable because, yeah, of course a mafia is operating in the area, but it's not an all out war like in Tijuana or Juarez because it's not lucrative for the mafia to scare tourists off. Tourists go to the mafia's bars and restaurants at the end of the day, which is part of how they launder money.
It's not like you're gonna spend your whole time in the resort. Otherwise why bother going to Latin America? We have resorts here in the US too.
Indeed, most people who travel to Latin America want to travel and do sight-seeing. And that can be dangerous, especially for "gringos" (Anglo-Saxon whites) because they are perceived as wealth targets by kidnappers.
You don't really have that problem in a place like Thailand.
I am very hesitant about visiting visiting Brazil especially since it would cost me $$ as an American (yes, I understand it's reciprocal).
However, I don't think it's fair to lump all of Latin America together. I found living in Peru for 9 months safe, and I travelled all over the country. I also visited Bolivia and Colombia but less extensively. In fact, most of these places felt safer than SF after you know the lay of the land.
