World's Friendliest Countries

A couple of months ago David Sutton wrote for Forbes.com a very interesting story about the world’s friendliest countries, when I saw the title the first country that came in my mind was the UAE represented Dubai, but after reading the conditions that make the country friendly in their views I thought no way the UAE or any GCC country can win this, below are some parts of the article;

“The country that once welcomed the tired, poor, huddled masses is now asking for a little reciprocation. And Canada, Germany and Australia are heeding the call.
They top a list of the countries most welcoming to expats. There, relocators have a relatively easy time befriending locals, joining a local community group and learning the local language.”

By reading the above lines, it becomes easy to anyone to figure out why the GCC countries can’t be the friendliest, becoming friends with the locals?? It’s really not that easy!

And we continue;

“Canada is the most welcoming; almost 95% of respondents to HSBC Bank International's Expat Explorer Survey, released today, said they have made friends with locals. In Germany, 92% were so lucky and in Australia 91% befriended those living there. The United Arab Emirates was found to be the most difficult for expats; only 54% of those surveyed said they'd made friends with locals.”

There were some talks about China and India in this article but I don’t care about it that why I will stop quoting here.

Now in the writer’s and survey’s point of view, you should go to one of the top three if you are considering relocating, and try not to go to the UAE or India or China, in my point of view he is totally wrong, and this survey just shows how willing the expats to melt into the local communities and not how hard the local community accepts them as part of it.

The country can be friendly is you can live freely, live the life you’ve had back home, or at least something close to that, and from my experience with a lot of western expats, they all said the same exact words “everyone wants to come to Dubai” “not just for the money”, as they told me that the money is one of the top priorities, but the most important reason is that they feel SAFE more than in their home lands, not as free, but free enough.

That is a friendly country….

For the full article please visit http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/09/relocate-world-countries-employment08-forbeslife-cx_ds_1210friendly.html