My dream posting would be Bangkok or Yangon but I wouldn't get huffy about Dar es Salaam or Maputo. H doesn't speak French so a lot of my favorite places are pretty far down the list in terms of making us both happy.
Maputo is actually very high on my list! DH and I both speak Portuguese and a friend who was posted there for work a few years ago loved it.
To answer the OP, it wouldn't take much for me to move, but DH' would have to be on board. I'm much more open to considering temporary international relo's than anything domestic, even if a domestic move also had a fixed timeframe. If I am going to uproot myself, I want my kids to have the opportunity to see how people live in other parts of the world and possibly learn or perfect another language.
For a permanent move, I'd have to weigh all the pros and cons, just like I would if I were offered a new job or were going to make an offer on a house/pick a new school for my kids/ etc.
Aaaaaaaaaand my BFF is moving away. Both my besties, leaving within 6 months.
This is the part that sucks about living an expat lifestyle.
It is not all puppies and rainbows. There's a lot of suck, too.
This is true. But a lot of my NY friends also fled to the suburbs or back to their hometowns when their kids started elementary school. This is the danger of living anywhere where a large percentage of your friends are not actually from there.
And my parents' crowd is now experiencing the phenomenon of people scattering to different places to retire somewhere warm or to be with their grandchildren in x location.
It seems like people are much more mobile these days.
I have not read the other responses, but DH and I have this conversation on a monthly basis. His BFF is an expat and loves it. If the right opportunity came up, depending on location- the $$ aspect differs, we would seriously consider it and probably go.
So my friend in London (for 8 years now) and my friend in Switzerland (for only a year) spent a lot of time during tea talking a lot about how hard and alienating it has been for them to live abroad. CH wants to move home as soon as she can without owing her firm a ton of money. So there's that too?