Thursday, August 18, 2011

Moving to Vientiane

Today we look at moving to Vientiane in Laos from Yokohama in Japan. 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 Vientiane people speak Lao and French (for diplomatic purposes). In Yokohama people speak Japanese.

Vientiane is the capital and largest city of Laos. Yokohama is the second largest city in Japan.
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. Yokohama has a strong economic base, especially in the shipping, biotechnology, and semiconductor industries.

The overall cost of living rank in Vientiane is 261 out of 300 global locations, which equates it with low cost of living locations.  An expatriate moving from Yokohama to Vientiane will experience a change in cost of living of -42.3%.
In terms of the hardship people are likely to experience, assessed in global terms, Vientiane is ranked as an extreme hardship location with a hardship index of 40% compared to Yokohama with a hardship index of 30% which is a high degree of hardship location.

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

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