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How my KL relocation was easy! (Kuala Lumpur)

Hi Internations,

I wished to put up a small post regarding my relocation experience from Melbourne Australia to Kuala lumpur!

So lets start with the logistical nightmare! I have a beautiful wife and 2 y/o daughter (hehe not the nightmare) and I have 2 x BULL ARAB dogs (about 50kg each) who dont travel well. Anyone relocating with pets can know the stress of this!

So lets talk about timeline.

Month Protected content negotiation.
Month Protected content moving plan.
Month Protected content wife / Daughter to her family for 1.5month
Protected content Housing in KL
Protected content up house in Melbourne
Month Protected content
Month Protected content container of house goods & Pick up family

MONTH Protected content of all this move was on the table for quite a while, the role is a GM role for an international company in SEA (looking after branches in 5 countries). To get down to the nitty-gritty , when negotiating I really made sure the salary package was up to expectation, including correct bonus structure and inflation. Additionally I made sure my superannuation was accounted for. Now I have been with the company for 10 years - so I made sure my time with the company was recognised and what this means Is my long service leave is still applicable. All moving expenses were to be covered by the company. A car allowance was discussed - however I changed this to a fully supplied company car (model chosen at time of negotiation). The reason why no car allowance is because if we had to move in a years time, it would be one more thing to sell. Health insurance for myself and my family is fully comprehensive. Housing is almost 100% paid (just under due to housing choice). Schooling is covered for my daughter. Additionally one fully paid trip home per year for the whole family. Ok so I feel im protected time to plan!

Month Protected content put together a huge plan, trying to think of every thing we need to account for. This included:

- Finding a new house (when and where)
- who to move us (getting 3 different quotes)
- Where to send the dogs while we are moving
- Who will move the dogs? (thank you Protected content
- Where will the family stay while I setup.
- Where will I stay while inbetween houses
- What will I do about drivers lincences.
- What will I do about banks? (still having issues with this one - thanks citibank :( ).
- Visa applications / Work permits (this was fun - allow as much time as possible for this!)
- Selling a car / Buying a car for wifey
- Getting Married (horray visa process hehe)
- Dog and Family immunisation.
- Booking flights
- Organising mail redivert.
- Cancelling accounts and opening accounts.
- Understanding tax implications / planning around this.

In all the list has 65 actions which needed to be done. But hoo-rar we had a plan! Next stage - to do the plan! Ohh and did I mention - we are getting married next month!

Month Protected content bells oh and get rid of the family (hehe).

So this month was full on - I needed to find a new house in KL first. So how do you do that when you are not a local , don't know areas and have 2 big dogs to put into a rental property! Get some help of course. Initially I threw up a post on Internations, got some replies. Agnes Lynch really helped me! She jumped on the phone - talked me through locations, asked a bunch of questions on what I was looking for. I explained I wanted to travel to KL for approx 2 days to look at properties and I wanted to make the decision on those days. She lined up about 15 properties to look at. I jumped on a flight and got to it! We have an Awesome house now , all thanks to her help. And really she has been one of the reasons this process got a lot easier! SO back on the plane!

Back to Melbourne - I packed up the family and off they went to Brisbane to family! This was a GREAT move and I recommend moving to do this! Packing up a house with a 1.5y/o (at the time daughter) would have been a nightmare. Getting this out of the way helped heaps as I could just get stuck in without worrying where she was! It was also great for my wife and daughter to spend time with their family!

Next thing is GET a GOOD GOOD GOOD moving company! we used a company called Kent moving ( Protected content ) and I tell you what, they got in - packed everything up and knocked the job over fast! Also on the other end, unpacking was great! They brought 8 guys out,. and rebuilt all furniture, and put everything away. Sure I moved some stuff again - but it really helped getting into a new place!

SO lets get sidetracked and talk about the DOGS journey. As I said , my dogs are big and really not meant to fly. So we needed some good help to get this part of the journey going! First of all - we put the dogs into boarding for 2 months while everything was going on! In this time we needed to move into a house , get all immunization done, all transport papers done and yay this sounds like fun. So we used a doggy day care company - instead of a boarding kennel - to look after the dogs. The advantage in this was they got great affection from the staff , they also had Protected content to play with every day. They were not locked up and had a great amount of room to play! Thank you Protected content for really looking after us. The price was similar to a boarding kennel for so much more! The next thing was they worked with the pet relocation company to organise the move! This was great!

We used Protected content to help us with the pet relocation. They did all the paperwork / immunisation - so we didnt have to do anything, door to door! Really this was a big worry of my mind!

So moral of the story is really get some good help, it will make life so much easier.

Currently the family has been here 1 month - we are all loving KL! Because of good planning (and help from this forum) this experience has been easier than it could have been!

I hope some people can get some value from this - if you need to know about about the whole experience, or have questions - please drop a message in here. Happy to help!

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