Is there good bus service in Yucatan: Riviera Maya, Playa del Carmen, Cancun, Merida, etc.?
Jason Waller - Playa del Carmen Real Estate
Yucatan has a lot of buses. We have a great bus system called the ADO Bus that you could take to any of the cities around here or make an airport run. They’re big, large air-conditioned buses with movies, comfortable seats, with bathroom that are very inexpensive. The airport run (about a 40 minute ride) will cost you less than $10 and you can take a bus from here in Playa del Carmen to Merida, and from here to all the major cities and all the way to Mexico City.
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Yucatan has a lot of buses. We have a great bus system called the ADO Bus that you could take to any of the cities around here or make an airport run. They’re big, large air-conditioned buses with movies, comfortable seats, with bathroom that are very inexpensive. The airport run (about a 40 minute ride) will cost you less than $10 and you can take a bus from here in Playa del Carmen to Merida, and from here to all the major cities and all the way to Mexico City.
And then we have city buses, which I don’t go on. They drive fast, they pack in as many people as they possibly can and it’s just a bundle of confusion. They’re cheap. It will cost a couple of pesos to go on a city bus, perhaps around 15 to 20 cents.
(ADO bus travel advertisement that features Belize and Yucatan, Mexico, pictured.)
How much do restaurants cost in Volcan and Cerro Punta, Chiriqui Province, Panama?
Tehany De La Guardia - Tehany Realty
Restaurants in Volcan go from $3.50 per person a full meal up to $20.00.
For example if you go to Bambito Hotel, which is a 5 star hotel;
Bambito Hotel Sunday Brunch is $16.00 per person. Great International food.
At Dos Rios Hotel you get...
Restaurants in Volcan go from $3.50 per person a full meal up to $20.00.
For example if you go to Bambito Hotel, which is a 5 star hotel;
Bambito Hotel Sunday Brunch is $16.00 per person. Great International food.
At Dos Rios Hotel you get International food, but you can find a pizza for $6.00 :
Regular meals, which come with different options of meat (fish, chicken, meat) rice and beans, salad and plantain tajadas are between $2.50 and $3.50 per person.
A restaurant were you can get a hamburger with milkshake for $6.00 or international food for approximately $10.00 per person is similar to this one:
There are many other alternatives, including gourmet restaurants at $15.00 per person.
What's the best strategy for asset protection and wealth preservation offshore?
Stewart Patton - U.S. Tax Services
Be very very careful when researching offshore asset protection strategies. There are sharks in these waters. Lots of people with absolutely no professional credentials whatsoever have set up shop as self-appointed offshore asset protection gurus, and they'll happily give you advice on all sorts of things they have no real understanding of.
In general, there are two main benefits to moving assets offshore: (i) you potentially make yourself look...
Be very very careful when researching offshore asset protection strategies. There are sharks in these waters. Lots of people with absolutely no professional credentials whatsoever have set up shop as self-appointed offshore asset protection gurus, and they'll happily give you advice on all sorts of things they have no real understanding of.
In general, there are two main benefits to moving assets offshore: (i) you potentially make yourself look less wealthy than you are to someone who may want to go after you, and (ii) you remove your assets from an environment where they can be frozen with a simple phone call from a judge or regulatory agency. However, if push comes to shove, and you are at all interested in not lying under oath, then your creditors may still be able to reach assets you hold offshore (by forcing you to hand those assets over to them).
Holding assets offshore typically does NOT reduce your U.S. income tax liability. The typical offshore asset protection structure is tax-neutral, which means that it doesn't change your U.S. tax position at all--you are still subject to tax on income from passive investments you hold offshore. However, there are certain offshore strategies that DO work to reduce or defer payment of U.S. tax, but these are specialized structures that must be designed by working with a U.S. tax attorney.
(Shark Spotting Mac notebook sleeve by Jet Metier, pictured.)
If I want to live in Nicaragua, what's the difference between citizenship and residency?
Jonathan Butcher - NICA
The difference between residency and citizenship is about the same is every country. One establishes where you live semi-permanently or permanently (residency) and the other establishes where your home country is located (citizenship).
For example, I am still a U.S. citizen, but I have applied for residency in Nicaragua because I live here most of the time, and I want to conduct business here carefree. Usually, people will only change their citizenship for political...
The difference between residency and citizenship is about the same is every country. One establishes where you live semi-permanently or permanently (residency) and the other establishes where your home country is located (citizenship).
For example, I am still a U.S. citizen, but I have applied for residency in Nicaragua because I live here most of the time, and I want to conduct business here carefree. Usually, people will only change their citizenship for political reasons such as exile or refugee. However, its highly recommended to invest in a cedula (residency card) if you want to live in Nicaragua most of the time. It will cost about $800 for the attorney fees.
The history of Portugal is a very broad question, so I will address it just in summary form.
500 years ago, Portugal owned half of the world and 500 years later we are just a little small humble country of Europe, which can tell you quite a bit. We were, 500 years ago, a very important country, responsible for controlling half of the goods produced of half of the world. Spain had the other half. And then came the Dutch, the English; the explorers, and they took over some...
The history of Portugal is a very broad question, so I will address it just in summary form.
500 years ago, Portugal owned half of the world and 500 years later we are just a little small humble country of Europe, which can tell you quite a bit. We were, 500 years ago, a very important country, responsible for controlling half of the goods produced of half of the world. Spain had the other half. And then came the Dutch, the English; the explorers, and they took over some of the rich countries that we controlled.
The colonies we had like Brazil, Mozambique, and Angola, survived for the last 300 to 200 years. But as the world developed, it was no longer allowed for countries to have colonies so we released our last colony in 1999, which was Macau in China. We had various dynasties of kings and queens and mixtures of royalty with other European countries.
We’re a country of explorers, very brave and courageous because if you could just imagine, 500 years ago, with no conditions, with little wooden boats discovering and crossing oceans and discovering countries, that can tell us a bit of the Portuguese culture. So yes, it’s a very brave culture, and a very brave country. We discovered half of the world and today we’re just a little civilized country of Europe.
(Duke of Vise, Henry the Navigator of Portugal considered the patron of exploration, pictured.)
The number one form of transportation in Ambergris Caye is a golf cart. So for the majority of the island, people are driving golf carts. There are taxis, mini vans, and some industrial equipment, too but majority of the traffic is golf carts. The speed limits are less than 15 miles per hour. Driving in Ambergris Caye is like driving around Disney World on a golf course.
Nothing is really named here in Ambergris Caye, so directions tend to be fun. ...
The number one form of transportation in Ambergris Caye is a golf cart. So for the majority of the island, people are driving golf carts. There are taxis, mini vans, and some industrial equipment, too but majority of the traffic is golf carts. The speed limits are less than 15 miles per hour. Driving in Ambergris Caye is like driving around Disney World on a golf course.
Nothing is really named here in Ambergris Caye, so directions tend to be fun. Streets have names but they are also known by just the common vernacular of how something is described. In downtown San Pedro, which is the largest town on the island, there is a front street, back street, and middle street. The actual street signs have different names, but they are known locally as with their more descriptive nicknames.
Coconut Drive goes north and south through the middle of town. It runs all from south and all the way north of the island as far as you can imagine you can drive. The road is paved for about 3.5 miles from San Pedro to the north. After that it becomes more of a dirt road.
(Room for four in this golf cart in Ambergris Caye, Belize, pictured.)
One of the objectives of our trip is to experience firsthand what it would be like to live in different environments abroad, irrespective of what we thought we knew beforehand. We dubbed it the “Try Everything So You Really Know What You’re Talking About and What You Like Tour”, or for short, “You Don’t Know Until You Go”. Part of that experience was to get a feel for the locals. Herewith, our view of Mexicans and Mexican food.
I moved to Panama from Toronto in July, 2007, but the airline I flew on would not take my dog Roscoe -- something about the summer heat being too much for animals in the cargo hold. So I ended up having to ship Roscoe by a different airline to San Jose, Costa Rica (at three times the cost of my own flight), and of course I then had to drive from my new home in Panama to San Jose to pick him up.
Thus began, innocently enough, my career as an international...
Good food is like good sex – most people don’t need it every day, but life becomes drab and colorless when it disappears entirely. Here Panama ranks low (on the food index, not the sex index). Most meals in Panama, whether at home or in restaurants, consist of white rice and beans with a bit of leathery meat or chicken. Fried foods are also popular – especially hojaldra (fried bread), tortillas and other things made of corn -- with predictable results for the national body...