The internet’s favorite expat survey dropped its rankings, and Panama took the crown. InterNations polled more than ten thousand expats across 172 nationalities, ranked 46 destinations on 53 factors, and produced a tidy top ten: Panama, Colombia, Mexico, Thailand, Vietnam, China, the UAE, Indonesia, Spain, and Malaysia. Kuwait, Türkiye, and South Korea hold the bottom. Panama earned its win, with 94 percent of expats there reporting a good life, friendly locals, and affordable everything.
We read the whole thing with interest, and then we did what we always do with rankings. We set them down and asked the better question.
What Ten Thousand Strangers Can Tell You
Surveys like this measure averages, and they measure them well. Cost of living, ease of settling in, healthcare, internet speed: real factors, honestly scored. If thousands of expats report that Mexico makes friendship easy and Kuwait makes leisure hard, believe them.
Notice, though, what the top ten is quietly optimized for. Panama wins on decent infrastructure at affordable prices, which is a wonderful sentence and a very specific promise. An average is a portrait of everyone and a portrait of no one. You are about to move one single person, and that person has requirements no survey measured.
Start With Your Mood
Here is the first thing we ask anyone dreaming of a move, long before visas and neighborhoods come up. What does your mood run on?
Some people run on sunlight, full stop. Send that person to a city that counts its truly sunny days in the dozens, London being the famous example, and the postcard life curdles into seasonal depression with good museums. Some people run on being around others and wither alone; some people need solitude the way others need company. Are you moving for the food, and what happens to you in a country where the food is merely fine? Can you live minimally, or does convenience keep you sane? Every one of these answers eliminates countries the rankings adore, and that is the point.
The Immersion Question
The second thing we ask decides more outcomes than any index: are you willing to fully immerse yourself in the culture and learn the language? In our experience that willingness is the best predictor of whether a move becomes a life or becomes a long, expensive visit. The expats thriving in Panama and Colombia and Vietnam are overwhelmingly the ones who leaned in. The ones who recreated their old life in a new zip code tend to come home early, and slightly bitter.
Where We Land
You may have noticed France sits nowhere in that top ten. We put someone on the ground there anyway this summer, as regular readers know, because the fit was right for the person and the mission. That is the entire lesson in one move. The list tells you where the average expat is happy. It cannot tell you where you would be, and you are the only sample size that matters.
The rankings are a fine place to start dreaming. The mood interview, the honest audit, the shortlist built around one specific life: that is the version we do with our travelers.
You know you’d travel with us.
Follow Ariventures on Instagram and TikTok for more from the road.
