pacman's mirror-list needs to be updated/reordered if move large distances
across the world, so that pacman can pull packages from the fastest mirrors
available in the current area.
The reflector utility can be used to pull an updated mirror list from the
Arch Mirror Status page (https://www.archlinux.org/mirrors/status/).
I used the following to update the mirror list:
sudo reflector --verbose --latest 10 --protocol https --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist