Moving to Avarua

Today we look at moving to Avarua in Cook Islands from Guangzhou in China. 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 Avarua people speak English and Cook Islands Maori. In Guangzhou people speak Mandarin Chinese.

Avarua is the capital and largest town in the Cook Islands. Guangzhou is a sub-provincial city and the capital of Guangdong Province in the southern part of the People's Republic of China.
Avarua has several supermarkets, two banks, several restaurants and other shops specializing in the sale of black pearls and other handicrafts. The economy is based on tourism, trade, fishing and agriculture. Guangzhou is the main manufacturing hub of the Pearl River Delta, one of mainland China's leading commercial and manufacturing regions. Guangzhou's economic output is ranked third among Chinese cities after Beijing and Shanghai.

The overall cost of living rank in Avarua is 91 out of 300 global locations, which equates it with high cost of living locations.  An expatriate moving from Guangzhou to Avarua will experience a change in cost of living of 40.5%.
In terms of the hardship people are likely to experience, assessed in global terms, Avarua is ranked as a high degree of hardship location with a hardship index of 30% compared to Guangzhou with a hardship index of 30% which is a high degree of hardship location.

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