Moving to Kuala Lumpur

Today we look at moving to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia from Riga in Latvia. 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 Kuala Lumpur people speak Malay (official), English, Chinese dialects, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam. In Riga people speak Latvian and Russian.

Kuala Lumpur (KL) is the capital and largest city of Malaysia. Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. Kuala Lumpur is the cultural and economic centre of Malaysia. Riga is a major industrial, commercial, cultural and financial centre of the Baltics, and an important seaport.
The overall cost of living rank in Kuala Lumpur is 198 out of 300 global locations, which equates it with low cost of living locations. An expatriate moving from Riga to Kuala Lumpur will experience a change in cost of living of 1.4%.

In terms of the hardship people are likely to experience, assessed in global terms, Kuala Lumpur is ranked as a some hardship location with a hardship index of 20% compared to Riga with a hardship index of 40% which is an extreme hardship location.

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