International Living Daily Postcards

Putting a pin in a map is perhaps not the best way of finding the place to spend the rest of your days, but this is what my husband Norman and I did when we decided to move overseas. We simply pulled up Google maps, closed our eyes, and left the rest to chance.

Since moving to Ecuador three years ago, I’ve had two marriage proposals from men I’d met only minutes before and several unexpected kisses (the real smack-on-the-mouth kind; not the air kind).

It’s another leisurely morning in paradise for Helen Murphy, as she strolls through the garden of her tropical-island home. She repots her plants and reorganizes her purple orchids. She has all the time in the world to spend, as she plants new seeds in her nursery and takes photos of the latest blooms to post online later.

Sailing into the sunset to start a new life in a tropical paradise is the stuff of many retirees' dreams. However, sometimes the fear that they'll also be leaving behind First World amenities holds them back. But there's a place where you can forget those worries...Cebu City, on the island of Cebu in the Philippines, is that place.