KUALA Lumpur has beat some of Europe’s most illustrious cities to emerge 4th in the 2017 InterNations Expat city rankings.

The Malaysian capital is only behind Manama, Prague and Madrid, among 51 cities rated by expats.

It’s quite a climb for Kuala Lumpur, or Kay El, as it is known to Malaysians, which came in 24th last year.

On the opposite end, Paris, Jeddah and Lago were ranked the worst three cities for expats, after Dublin and Riyadh.

Participants were asked to rate more than 25 different aspects of urban life abroad on a scale of one to seven. The rating process emphasised the respondents’ personal satisfaction with these aspects and considered both emotional topics as well as more factual aspects with equal weight. 

The respondents’ ratings of the individual factors were then bundled in various combinations for a total of 13 subcategories, and their mean values were used to draw up four topical indices: Quality of Urban Living, Getting Settled, Urban Work Life, and Finance and Housing. 

Kuala Lumpur was top in the Getting Settled Index, which takes into account the friendliness of locals towards expats and availability and cost of accommodation. 

The top 10 cities for expats, according to the 2017 InterNations Expat City Rankings, are:

1. Manama
2. Prague
3. Madrid
4. Kuala Lumpur
5. Amsterdam
6. Barcelona
7. Johannesburg
8. Bangkok
9. Basel
10. Frankfurt