Day: July 27, 2025

• Matthew Straight and April Pasilang traded city life for an off-grid home on an island in the Philippines.
• The couple spent about $85,000 building the property, which came with a guesthouse, a pond, and a vegetable garden.
• Living on the island of Bohol has allowed them to reclaim their time and be less attached to material things.

When Matthew Straight and April Pasilang lived in Cebu City, the oldest city in the Philippines, the constant hum of traffic made it hard to slow down.

“We didn’t really ever get to open a window. It was always closed,” Straight, 46, told Business Insider.

Straight, who grew up in New Zealand, met Pasilang, now 44, in the Philippines in 2016 while working in the fitness industry. In July 2024, he moved from his base in Australia to Cebu City to be closer to her.

The bustle of city life got old fast.

Straight had always thought about living off-grid in the countryside, but he didn’t think Pasilang would be interested.

“When he mentioned it, it was like, oh my God, I wanted that too,” Pasilang, a yoga instructor, told BI. She grew up on the outskirts of Cebu City, where space was plentiful and her family grew their own crops, and she longed for that kind of simplicity again.

They didn’t plan to leave Cebu City, but a two-night trip to Bohol, an island about two hours by ferry, changed everything.

They stumbled upon a piece of land they liked in a small town called Corella. Although it was only about a 15-minute drive from a large market and mall, the area was quiet, with few neighbors, and just a short drive to the beach. They bought it on a whim.

“I thought it would happen maybe in five years or something. It never crossed my mind that it would happen so quickly,” Pasilang said.

Building an off-grid home

The couple paid 1.3 million Philippine pesos, or about $23,000, for the plot of land, which measures about 15,500 square feet. In October, they broke ground on the construction of their off-grid home.

Straight drew a simple floor plan, and the couple worked with local architects and builders to design their new place.

The two-bedroom, two-bathroom main residence was designed with an open plan layout to maximize natural light and airflow. Steps away, a separate one-bedroom guest house offers a comfortable stay for visiting family and friends.

Outside, there’s a pool, a vegetable garden, and a pond — plenty of space for the couple to grow their own food and unwind.

Hoping to be as self-sustainable as possible, the couple outfitted the house with rainwater storage tanks and a solar panel system.

“We don’t want to be at the whim of global supply chain issues,” Straight said.

They spent 4.84 million Philippine pesos on building the property, which included the costs of their appliances, furniture, fencing, drainage, and their solar energy system.

They moved in in April.

“Now we’re getting the veggie gardens going,” Straight said. “We just picked some eggplants, okra, and chilies in the morning.”

The couple also has plans to buy some chickens and raise tilapia fish in their pond for their own consumption.

They’ve grown close to several neighbors, often stopping by with extra produce from their garden or homemade treats, like Pasilang’s banana bread.

Among the familiar faces is a 75-year-old woman who runs a small convenience store where kids from the nearby elementary school stop by to buy snacks.

“Then there’s another neighbor who’s 83 and fit as a fiddle. He walks around carrying big bottles of water, and he’s ripped,” Straight said.

The sense of community is unlike what they experienced in Cebu City, or even in Australia, where Straight lived for more than 10 years.

“Everyone looks out for each other here. They’re just so kind and thoughtful and generous, even if they don’t have much,” he said. “And you reciprocate that.”

Their friends from Cebu drop by regularly, and the couple says they’ve also connected with new people through their homestead-focused YouTube channel — a hobby they picked up when they started building their home.

Living with intention

Moving away from the city has allowed the couple to live at their own pace.

“We wake up, open the sliding doors, put a pot of coffee on, and take a look at the garden. We just decide what to do based on what needs to be done in the garden, like filling up the garden beds,” Pasilang said.

In the afternoons, Straight does online nutrition consulting work, and once he’s finished, the couple brainstorms ideas for their YouTube channel.

They’re no longer rushing from place to place, worrying about their to-do lists.

“Everything was always go, go, go and structured, because you really have to time it due to the traffic,” Straight said.

It’s all in line with their goal to slow down and lead a more purposeful life, especially for Straight.

Back in Australia, Straight juggled multiple jobs: managing a gym, running a taco business, and overseeing a café. He also owned several rental properties.

Losing his mother to pancreatic cancer in 2017 shifted his outlook. Straight traveled back and forth between Australia and New Zealand to spend time with her while she was sick.

“I thought, gosh, I’m having to leave her to go back to a job — where I’m just exchanging time for money, which will come and go — instead of spending time with my mom,” he said.

The experience made him realize that he wanted control over his time. After reassessing his priorities, Straight saw that he could live with less and be happier for it.

When he moved to the Philippines, he only had three boxes and two suitcases.

“It was actually quite therapeutic, getting rid of all my stuff and then coming to the Philippines and buying things intentionally — quality stuff that’s not going to just be thrown away in a year’s time,” Straight said.

They haven’t found any downsides to their new life yet. “We have everything we had in Cebu but with a much easier, slower-paced life,” he added.

Apart from being less attached to material things, the couple says their lifestyle change has improved their mental health.

“When you get a text message or you’re checking social media, you get that dopamine reaction in your brain,” Straight said. “But now, we get the same thing by going out to the garden and seeing that the okra has grown an inch in a day.”

Do you have a story to share about building your dream home in Asia? Contact this reporter at agoh@businessinsider.com.

• Royanne Ng weighed a Columbia graduate school offer with a pros-and-cons list.
• The Singaporean student turned it down and chose a master’s in Amsterdam instead.
• She said she valued relevance and cost over Ivy League name recognition.

When Royanne Ng got into Columbia University last year, she should have been elated. Instead, the nearly $80,000 first-year tuition and fees — not including housing — made her stomach turn.

The Singaporean student turned the Ivy League program down and chose one across the Atlantic instead for a fraction of the cost.

At Columbia, she was offered a spot in the Film and Media Studies MA with a concentration in emergent media — a track that explores formats like virtual and augmented reality. The 28-year-old is now pursuing a one-year master’s in cultural data and AI at the University of Amsterdam, a program that blends machine learning with theory and tech policy.

Ng also applied to NYU but wasn’t accepted, and she ultimately dropped her application to the University of Edinburgh in the UK.

Her postgrad degree had to be “very strategic,” she told Business Insider — a move to boost her job prospects and reposition her career in Singapore.

“If I’m going to spend this much of my financial savings on a degree, it has to be really, really worth it,” she said.

The US once had a near-monopoly on elite higher education. But as tuition rises, safety concerns grow, and political rhetoric turns hostile toward international students, the calculation is shifting.

Here’s how Ng made her choice.

Prestige vs practicality

Columbia’s program offered big advantages: name recognition, accomplished alumni, and the implicit promise of career opportunities, Ng said.

The brand name, she added, carried the common assumption that it gives students “a head start when it comes to job opportunities.”

But the costs were impossible to ignore. Columbia’s program ran for two years and charged nearly $80,000 in tuition and fees just for its first-year students. In contrast, the University of Amsterdam’s fees were about €17,000 for a one-year program.

“The difference is just so stark,” she said, especially when Columbia required a hefty deposit that felt like too much commitment.

It wasn’t just about money. She said many US courses were “more traditional” — rooted in legacy disciplines and slower to adapt. Europe had programs that were a lot more novel and flexible, often designed with interdisciplinary or future-facing themes, she added.

Amsterdam’s curriculum hit the mark. Ng said it aligned with her goal of transitioning from tech communications and a humanities background into a career that connects AI and policy — one she hopes to pursue in Singapore.

Safety and geopolitical concerns

Ng’s family was also worried about her safety if she chose to study in New York — and so was she.

For someone who had lived in Singapore her whole life — a country known for its low crime rates and political calm — she was concerned about gun violence, racial politics, and geopolitical uncertainty in the US.

Still, she said the right school depends on the student’s goals after graduation. Students hoping to stay and work in the US might prioritize a school’s brand, alumni network, and credentials.

But Ng plans to return to Singapore, so standing out in the local job market mattered more.

Ng is set to finish her program in August.

Here’s her pros-and-cons list of US graduate schools:

Ng had created a rough version at the end of 2023 while debating whether to choose the US for graduate school.

When BI reached out to her in June, she pulled it together into a neat table: