I'm thinking about Thailand. I have a friend who lives on Koh Samui island (
http://www.kohsamui.com/ http://www.kohsamui.org/). His monthly living expenses are about $1000 and include a cook, 2 maids, and an air conditioned house. You can vacation there in an air conditioned guest room for about $30 a night, and it looks like Hawaii before it got all built up. Flying on an Asian airline is pretty cheap: $700 or less R/T from the US West Coast.