Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Moving to Lilongwe

Today we look at moving to Lilongwe in Malawi from Vientiane in Laos. We highlight cost of living and other major differences likely to be experienced in our series of short blogs on moving between different international locations.
In Lilongwe people speak English and Chichewa (both official). In Vientiane people speak Lao and French (for diplomatic purposes).

Lilongwe is the capital of Malawi. Vientiane is the capital and largest city of Laos. Lilongwe is the political centre of Malawi while Blantyre is the economic capital. Vientiane is situated on a bend of the Mekong river, which forms the border with Thailand at this point. A short link connects Vientiane with Thailand over the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge.

The overall cost of living rank in Lilongwe is 93 out of 300 global locations, which equates it with middle cost of living locations. An expatriate moving from Vientiane to Lilongwe will experience a change in cost of living of 37.6%.
In terms of the hardship people are likely to experience, assessed in global terms, Lilongwe is ranked as a high degree of hardship location with a hardship index of 30% compared to Vientiane with a hardship index of 40% which is an extreme hardship location.

Source: http://www.xpatulator.com as at July 2011.

No comments:

Post a Comment