Advice for (Short/Mid-term) Living in Mexico

I spent six months moving from place to place in Mexico with my partner, spending anywhere from a month to a week in each location. Here’s what I learned.

Table Of Contents

This list was developed over our time here. Most are things I thought of immediately after encountering them, then wrote them down.

Most of this comes from the perspective of someone raised in the US and encountering differences in how they would deal with things.

Packing

See here for a detailed inventory of what I packed. I fit all my belongings for our travel in a shoulder bag for passports and travel items, a backpack, and a carry-on sized travel bag as a check-in. My philosophy is that the smallest bag should have everything I need to leave the country in an emergency (passport, cards, cash) or thrive in an airport (ereader, gum, snacks), while my backpack should have enough stuff in it to be OK if my check-in luggage is lost.
First and foremost – YAGNI. You aren’t gonna need it. Pack light, you can always buy things later.
In my experience it’s harder to find quality clothing in Mexico, ie 100% cotton shirts or advanced-fabric clothing ala
Put a some relatively high-denomination bill (in mexico $200 or $500 peso notes) in compartments throughout your carried luggage. If you start to run out of money you can find some around, and if things get lost it’s good to have it distributed in case of emergency.
Find a way to get at least two, ideally three cards that can be used for ATM withdrawals. Put these in different places in your luggage. You shouldn’t need to convert cash from USD or get pesos in the US if you have a card which you can use to withdraw cash from ATMs.
Apple devices are less common in Mexico (~20% in mexico vs ~50% in US) so if you have to make an objective choice whether to bring a macbook vs a windows/linux laptop, or a iphone vs an android, non-iOS will have more support locally. It will be easier to find repairs, replacements, and chargers. That said we haven’t had significant problems with using apple devices and haven’t encountered platform-specific problems – for example since people use whatsapp, there’s no imessage split between platforms.

Useful items to pack

Travel laundry kit: Three foldable hangers, six small rubber-coated metal clothespins, and a line with clips on each end. Places usually didn’t have dryers, and sometimes you need to clean things yourself.
Micro USB cable: Ie “old android” charger. Your devices are probably USB-C or lightning at this point, but some household appliances like water dispensers attached to the top of water jugs, portable speakers, or a friend’s cell phone required these.
USB-C to Ethernet Adapter: Sometimes airbnbs have odd placements of routers or access points, wifi is weak, but there may be ethernet ports or ethernet cables available. For example a lot of TVs have boxes that connect to the internet via ethernet, and you can jack into those if the wifi is bad and you need to download some stuff.

Home Life

When you live somewhere for more than a few days that isn’t a hotel, there are some differences compared to the US.

House trash in many cities is not something you can throw in a bin on the road like the US. There are usually certain times that a truck will come, and you will walk outside and throw your bag in. Sometimes roving garbagemen pick up bags from the curb but this is not guaranteed. Listen for a cowbell, or ask nearby locals what the schedule is.
Get a pair of cheap slippers to wear in the house to avoid getting the floor dirty with your shoes, or getting your socks dirty on the floor. These are lightweight and flat enough to fit into luggage or backpacks. You can find fun luxury knockoffs for $40-$100 in the mercado district of any city. If you’re staying somewhere warm with a yard or beach, you can also get some flip-flops for outdoor use as you run errands or take walks.
Lavanderias, or laundromats, are commonplace around major cities. They come in two kinds, self-serve and full service. If you have clothes sensitive to certain washing or drying, do not bring them to full-service. They may discolor your clothing or shrink them in the dryer. If you are comfortable, you can chat with them about special needs like clothes that should be hang-dried or separation of certain colors.
If clothes are starting to smell bad, in a pinch you can extend their wearable period by hanging them in the sun. The sun will kill a lot of the odor-causing bacteria. Airflow helps a lot too, like hanging it in a windy spot. This is useful if you wear a shirt or pants a lot and only have one backup – you can hang some in the sun for the day while wearing others instead of throwing them on a chair in your room. This is also helpful for unwashed socks and underwear so they smell less as you travel with them.
In more tropical areas, ants and other bugs may be more persistent than expected. Clean dishes before going to sleep, clean up sugary spills quickly, and take out the trash often. Food can be kept in the fridge even if it doesn’t require refrigeration since it’s an airtight place that bugs can’t get to.

The people you’ll interact with when renting

The landlord

Assuming you aren’t staying with friends, a landlord will arrange your stay in exchange for money. This could be a whatsapp number a friend gave you or whoever runs the airbnb

The doorman

If you’re at an apartment complex or any shared living, you’ll meet the doorman. If you’re familiar with china, it’s the baoan: combination security guard, first-response handyman, and doorman. He will help you with anything you immediately need. Give these guys some gifts. Buy an extra pastry from the panederia or buy him a soft drink you think he’ll like. And a small tip won’t hurt.

This guy will be who interacts with the outside world on your behalf, and if he’s happy you’ll be happy. Spending time chatting or bringing him a treat will help.

Utility workers

Sometimes there will be a problem with your water or internet, or sometimes someone will want to read the power meters.

Airbnb

Airbnbs are the a cost-effective way to easily set up lodging in otherwise unknown places. You can save more money than Airbnbs if you know some people/agencies locally that rent places (ie for 3 month+ intervals) and even better if you can stay with people you know. But as somebody only looking for short-term rentals, or someone without local connections it’s a good idea to choose airbnb. Plus they have good protection and insurance in case a host does not provide certain advertised services (eg wifi; parking) or tries to cheat you.

Get the whatsapp number of everyone’s place you stay at.
Renting for a month+ at a time will give you a good discount, and imo it’s a sweet spot of time to spend somewhere.
If you like an Airbnb a lot and want to come back another time, you can probably message the owner on whatsapp and get a discounted rate since you are avoiding airbnb’s platform fees and taxes.
Between guests, the host may turn off the gas, switch off the hot water heater, unplug appliances, turn off water for a washer, etc to save money. So if something isn’t working when you arrive, investigate its source first before asking for help.
In some places, municipal construction caused our water to be shut off, for hours or up to a day at a time. It’s a good idea to have a plan for this. For example, if you go through a 5L jug of water, instead of recycling the empty jug you can fill it up with tap water to use in case of emergencies to wash dishes, wash things, etc.
Don’t get too scared by one-off bad reviews, but be worried if there are many reviews about the same problem.
While an airbnb listing may say it has hot water or a kitchen, the amenities may be inadequate for your needs. For example a kitchen could have a single gas burner, a tiny sink, no pots, and no microwave. Or “hot water” could mean one of those hot water shower heads that doesn’t really work. In these cases pay attention to the reviews and photos.
Expect to clean some things up or fix a few things yourself. For example drains might be clogged with hair and it’s easiest if you take care of that.

Learning Spanish in Mexico

Mexico is a great place to learn spanish or improve your ability.

If you’re curious and put a little effort into learning, you will pick up some spanish without too much effort. But you will only learn what you practice. This means that if you only are using the language to buy food at restaurants and stores, your spanish will be more limited to those interactions. You might feel like you have good spanish, but if you go into topics that you are not experienced with you may not be able to communicate effectively. It doesn’t take much spanish to get by in daily life.

General Learning Methods

My advice as someone that’s spent a lot of time learning languages is summed up as spend time learning. If comparing two language learners, the person who spends the most time actively engaging with the langauge (active listening, speaking, active reading, writing) is likely the better speaker of the language.

Alongside active functional time spent with the language, doing flash cards or exercises will help.

Anki is the best tool for this. It’s an app that uses a method called spaced repetition. As Gwern puts it:

Spaced repetition is a centuries-old psychological technique for efficient memorization & practice of […] spacing out each review with increasing durations as one learns the item, with the scheduling done by software. Because of the greater efficiency of its slow but steady approach, spaced repetition can scale to memorizing hundreds of thousands of items (while crammed items are almost immediately forgotten) and is especially useful for foreign languages & medical studies.

Read that essay if you need convincing. But it is proven to work and is the technique used by people that need to memorize things.

I’ll write an article about anki/SRS someday, but the easy explaination is the following:

As you learn the language, develop a list of words or phrases you want to memorize.
Download AnkiMobile (ios, worth the $25) or AnkiDroid (android, free)
Sign up for a free AnkiWeb account to sync your cards in case you lose your phone
Sign into the account, and begin entering the words and phrases with type Basic (and reversed).
Every day, go through the cards until you have completed the review.
Adjust the settings as needed.

It’s clunky software, but clunky in the way a manual transmission is awkward – it allows more customization and control over your journey. For example there’s some way (I haven’t tried) to have it speak the words to you as you review them. Or methods to do fill-in-the-sentence problems.

Alternatively SpanishDict has a built-in flash card system, but you cannot (to my knowledge) create custom entries or adjust anything about the experience. It works well until it doesn’t work. But it does have a system where you can speak to it and have it determine if you are correct! But I only keep a small deck for words I have trouble pronouncing here.

Spanish Education for Short-term Living

The best quality education you could probably get would be something where you are learning for 30-50 hours a week for a semester, run by a university. University of Veracruz’s semester language courses look promising for example.

But if you are traveling and staying places for 2-6 weeks, or have a full-time remote job, there are usually independent spanish schools where you can spend time and money to learn spanish in a structured, classroom environment. For example we found La Hacienda Spanish School in Guanajuato city to be a great fit for us, and they had transparent pricing, flexibility, and great teachers.

These kinds of schools are also a way to meet other people. The average person that decides to take a ~month trip to Mexico to spend 2-4 hours a day in a classroom is probably more ambitious and curious than the average traveler and likely worth spending time with.

Some advice regarding this:

If you just go to class everyday and do the minimum-required homework, you will learn but not very quickly. It’s better to drill the vocab or grammar topics using tools like anki or spanishdict flash cards, and completing additional exercises on top of your normal courseload.
Try to take a trial class before committing to a week, and negotiate the price for that trial class (or the price for the week) before doing it.
Some teachers (especially university students) may want to speak with you in english. Spanish classes can be tiring but you’re paying them to learn spanish – remind them to speak only in spanish unless they are explaining something that you could otherwise not understand.
If you have a good foundation, you may end up in classes that repeat things you already learned like future tense or specific vocab.
In the lowest levels, other students may not be motivated to learn which may impact your learning. If you can, study enough before traveling to at least get in the second-lowest-level class to improve your odds. Otherwise if the school is flexible enough, try to take a class a level up.

Alternatively, you can take lessons from private tutors. A trick my partner found is to sort on Italki for native speakers from a place we are, then to message them and ask to do in-person lessons and get their whatsapp.

But the ultimate way to learn is to spend time with other spanish-speakers. This is hard for the first-time learner but if you have an open mind and are practicing your anki deck every day, you can manage.

Businesses

Businesses usually expect to be contacted via Whatsapp text message. For example, if you see a barbershop that is closed when it says it is open, text the number on the store’s sign. If you find a car rental business on google maps, just message the number listed. Instead of filling out some form on a website or calling a business, texting is usually the move. On whatsapp it will say if the number you are trying to contact is on whatsapp.
When eating out or hanging out for a while in a more touristic area, there will be people that approach you selling candies, cigarettes, or songs. It’s completely normal for them to enter (non-upscale) restaurants and go table to table – something that isn’t as normal in other countries. Be respectful when saying no, looking their goods over and being polite. I’d recommend giving someone money to play you and your companions a song at some point.

Shopping

Supermarkets and mercados will sometimes not provide plastic bags. Pack reusable bags (they pack flat) or buy some there.
Oxxo and other convenience stores will always be more expensive than supermarkets or mercados.
Mercados in tourist areas (or in general) are usually not a good deal for some items, particularity produce. From what locals have told me, they are best for getting quality meat, specialty items, or particular amounts of dry goods (ie 250g of pinto beans). Better prices can be found around the mercados in independent stores. You can find the best places by walking around and seeing where older people shop and which stores are busy. But as a traveler, the price difference probably won’t be too large.
Tianguis (the more informal markets) and people selling trinkets are where you can really bargain.

In our experience it is rare to get scammed or overcharged for produce or other simple goods and services. We pay close attention to the prices and value of things, are polite, speak some spanish, and things work out. But if you go into a transaction with a blatant disrespect or frankly if you look like a mark to someone that thinks they could get a few pesos from your ignorance, it may happen.

Know the value of things, ask for the price before you are in a position where you are forced to buy the good or service, question discrepancies, and you will be fine.

If you want to learn the flow of bargaining and buying things at tianguis, watch this video and the other videos on his channel.

Cash

Most places take only cash or prefer cash. Carry a card if you are going to more upscale places, ie places you are paying $700+ pesos.
Carry coins with you: $10 peso coins are good for busses or smaller transactions, $5 are useful for getting into restrooms, and one and two peso coins are good for getting good change back. If your total is $202 you will understand the need for coins.
Carry medium bills with you: Always have a $50, $100, and $200 ideally. Many places did not have much change, or were unwilling to give it. If you do not have a good amount of change, ie spending a $500 bill on something that costs $211, expect to get lots of small coins back as retribution.

ATMs, banks, and larger transactions

Mexican banks will give you change. If you got a bunch of $500s form the ATM, walk into a bank and ask them to convert bills. In my experience they have done this every time.
At ATMs, request something like $1950, $2950 or $3950. This way you are getting some change. Otherwise they will usually just dispense $500 notes.
When doing transactions at the ATM, a good VAT is around $20-$50. The highest I’ve seen is $80 at HSBC.
After you agree to the VAT at an ATM, do not accept the conversion. By saying yes you lose money, by saying no you save money. Just say no to the conversion.

At a certain level of spending, or if buying things in advance remotely, you will eventually need to do bank transfers to send sums of money. Get an account with Wise, deposit money, and then you can send it quickly to people that provide bank info – this is the method we were recommended, and it has worked every time. They can also send you a debit card that you could use as a backup for ATM withdrawals if you lose your normal card.

Taxis

Some cities like Xalapa don’t have Uber, and half the cars on the street are taxis. You won’t have a problem finding them.

If you have the time, write down the address (and maybe a simple map??) on a piece of paper to hand the driver. This makes it a lot easier for them. Otherwise there’s no problem just telling them the address or showing it on your phone.
After establishing the destination, ask the price before closing the door. The understanding is that if you don’t agree on a price, you can leave the car. You will probably get a better price asking first.
Don’t slam the door or trunk too hard.
Get the number of a local taxi or taxi service as an uber backup, and save it in your whatsapp contacts. You can ask a friendly taxi driver for his number for example. Uber is common in many places, but not always reliable. In some cities it can take much longer to get an uber when at a further location, or sometimes it will simply say you are out of the range. Taxi service can be 50%-100% more expensive than uber, but you can send them a message on whatsapp to schedule pickups, or arrange travel to far-off locations.
Compared to uber, in my experience taxi drivers are more professional and understand the city better, handling difficult terrain or tricky-to-navigate streets better than the average uber driver.

Cars

If you have a decade of experience driving, especially in cities, driving in mexico isn’t too bad. This advice comes from my limited experience driving, but also observing while taking taxi trips or participating in traffic as a pedestrian.

The mood on the road in my experience is “always keep moving, but be prepared to slow down.” For example people may roll through busy stop signs but keep their eyes on other cars to make sure each person has their turn. The roads are usually more “mixed-media” with pedestrians and dogs crossing traffic, and drivers will usually be prepared for this and slow down just enough not to hit anyone.
There are some (federal?) highways with few/no exits that are faster than normal routes, but have tolls. Tolls for a 45-minute journey can be $100-$200 pesos. These highways are designated “Cuota” vs the “Libre” routes that have less lanes, more stops, and tons of speed bumps.

Parking

I don’t completely understand parking. I don’t think there are always rules, but more dibs and informal arrangements if there aren’t signs. But a yellow curb (even a faint, faded yellow paint) usually means you can’t park there. In general it’s worth asking someone.

We’ve tried to park on a yellow curb, had a friendly conversation in Coatepec with a lady who who first told us we couldn’t park there, but then told us that we could park in front of her driveway during the day. A taxi parked there at night but the space was unused for a few hours.
We were arriving at a market in Altotonga and asked if we could park on a yellow curb. He said it was no problem since it was Easter.
Sometimes an outdoor man (franelero) with a red cloth or light baton will bring you to park somewhere nearby, and you’re expected to pay him a bit. My understanding is that they either have informal arrangements with businesses that they park cars in the spaces of, or just de facto control the space. My intuition is that it’s a good idea to tip these guys since they’ll be watching over your car.
In crowded or dense situations, you may be double or triple parked. Leave yourself time for the parking guy to get you out in these cases.
Other times non-yellow curbs had boxes and other items set outside ala chicago dibs.

Renting Cars

I only rented a car once so you can find better advice from others.

If you can’t drive manual, make sure an automatic is available.
Make sure you have a credit card that does not have the word “Debit” on it, even if you normally can use it as a combination credit-debit card. It may not be able to be used for security when renting a car. If this option isn’t available, you may need to pull $10,000 pesos from an atm to put down as a security deposit.
Take pictures/video of the entire car before you get in, including the interior, trunk, under the hood, and under the sides/bumpers.
You may need to pay a larger deposit or higher fees as a foreigner. But in less tourist areas, you may not need to.