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is it possible to rent a room in sao paulo for r$50/day?
i remember checking nightlife prices and its crazy expensive.
Not that I'd recommend it....but when I lived in Sao Paulo...and this was 1998, I stayed in pensionne house. It cost me around r$200/month! (Exchange rate was real pegged to the dollar back than).
Granted I basically had a bed in a very large house that had about 35 Brazilians living there. For awhile I shared a room, then I moved into a 6 bed part of the house. It was a little cheaper, kind of like a permanent hostel, where everyday you wake up and see the same people in the other beds regularly.
I lived in Pinheiros, so the living arrangement allowed me to get to know Brazilians by living with them, and freed up some money to go hit Jardins on the weekends. (Pinheiros and Jardins are great areas of Sao Paulo - I felt very safe even at 3am drinking and walking home to the pensionne house).
Not the most recommended way to go....but I didnt have hardly any material possessions with me outside of clothing and some books. So, somewhere to sleep was all I needed, and keep those few things were all I needed.
Not the recommended way, and it was probably the cheapest a person could possiby go....
Actually, if I were to ever go back to Brazil...and if I wanted cheap accomodations, Sao Paulo should be lowest on the list. It's the most expensive city by far, the economic engine of the continent. The New York of South America. Good for finding english teaching work though, which is why I was there.
Having had that experience, and if my situation was different than it currently is, I'd love to try a city in the Northeast and go for cheap accomodation with close proximity to a beach, and try to pick up just enough english teaching work (quite low pay already), to try to make things work.
As you might have guessed, Brazil doesn't offer much money, but it certainly gives a great lifestyle. I loved living in Brazil, despite not having a particularly enviable position - living in a pensionne house, low pay work, etc.
I don't have anything in particular against Brazil and i enjoyed my time there whilst on my travels around South America but there are many other places i'd choose to live ahead of Brazil. Like i said, nothing against Brazil, it just doesn't rank highly on my list of places to live.
Yes, I would. It wouldn't be my number one choice, but if it was a decision between staying here in the US and going to Brazil to live, I would choose there. At least for a year.
I had a positive view of Brazil until I talked with an expatriate executive (from Rio) in Banco Do Brazil
who explained to me all the negatives in her country, especially the enduring poverty and total lack of social security (worse, much worse than in the US, even before Obama's reforms) and of course violence and lack of security in big cities. On the other hand, she traveled to Southeastern Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam) and couldn't stop raving about these countries...an upper middle class Brazilian from Rio who thinks Vietnam (!!!!!) is better than her own country...food for thought!
04-29-2011, 04:02 AM
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Yeah, I voted "NO" in the "Would you like to live in Brazil" poll.
Brazil has some nice things about it but its cons(such as what you mentioned in your post) might outweigh the pros. So I have a slightly more negative view of Brazil than I have of a positive one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pigeonhole
I had a positive view of Brazil until I talked with an expatriate executive (from Rio) in Banco Do Brazil
who explained to me all the negatives in her country, especially the enduring poverty and total lack of social security (worse, much worse than in the US, even before Obama's reforms) and of course violence and lack of security in big cities. On the other hand, she traveled to Southeastern Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam) and couldn't stop raving about these countries...an upper middle class Brazilian from Rio who thinks Vietnam (!!!!!) is better than her own country...food for thought!
I had a positive view of Brazil until I talked with an expatriate executive (from Rio) in Banco Do Brazil
who explained to me all the negatives in her country, especially the enduring poverty and total lack of social security (worse, much worse than in the US, even before Obama's reforms) and of course violence and lack of security in big cities. On the other hand, she traveled to Southeastern Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam) and couldn't stop raving about these countries...an upper middle class Brazilian from Rio who thinks Vietnam (!!!!!) is better than her own country...food for thought!
You can't get an unbiased opinion from a Brazilian expatriate. Most Brazilian folks who are expatriates only go to foreign countries because they don't like their own country. In the other hand, there are literally MILLIONS of highly skilled Brazilians who could easily get a Green Card and go away from Brazil (because they are highly skilled professionals) and simply don't do this, and stay in Brazil. Actually, the number of those highly skilled professionals who prefer to stay in Brazil exceeds by far the number of those who go to other countries.
The woman you knew was from Rio de Janeiro? She probably had some bad experience with urban violence in Rio (the most violent city in the country, by far). She probably never pondered the possibility of living in another Brazilian city, like Florianopolis, Aracaju or João Pessoa.
About the "total lack of social security", I don't know what she is talking about. Brazil offers free education and free healthcare to all its citizens. What is true is that the quality of free education and free healthcare offered by the government to the citizens is not as good as it should be, because of severe budget restrictions. That's why the middle class prefer to pay private schools to their children, and pay health insurance to have access to private hospitals and clinics. But, anyway, people can get a free CT scan or a free MRI in a public hospital without having to pay even a cent.
For Brazilians the motivation to go abroad is decreasing year after year as the middle class in Brazil is growing rapidly while the situation abroad is deteriorating.
I don't like those expats who keep bashing their country abroad, they probably do the same with people behind their backs. Not to mention that they usually failed at home and blame everyone else but themselves for it.
The media also play a role in that. Brazilians have the wrong image of the North just like the North has the wrong image of Brazil. There are many thousands of Brazilians here in Portugal. They came here attracted by what they knew about this country from the media, but many of them are disappointed and leave again as soon as they can afford to. There is a non-profit organization that helps impoverished Brazilians raise the money for a ticket back home.
I would love to live in Brazil. The reason I chose China over Brazil for study abroad is that I feel i could walk anywhere in a Chinese city and be okay. I feel like walking around a lot of cities in South America there might be some restrictions. I've never been to South America but i feel like I would get mugged there than China. Not trying to generalize. I would love to travel to south america or Brazil.
The only thing I like about Brazil is the women and the food. But those 2 pros are not enough to make me want to spend the rest of my life down there because there is more to life than just women and food. You also need to make a decent living wage and Brazil is not a country that would provide that for me. I would never want to live in a Brazilian periferia which is Portuguese for ghetto.
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