MALAYSIA’S capital Kuala Lumpur was recently added to a list of the top 20 friendliest cities in Asia.
In the study, Kuala Lumpur was ranked in the bottom five of the list at 15th place.
Taipei, Taiwan takes the top spot, Singapore in second place and New Delhi, India in third place.
The study by online learning platform Preply also included several Southeast Asian countries in the list.
Among other Southeast Asian nations, Singapore bags the top spot with Bangkok, Thailand in second place and followed closely by Hanoi, Vietnam in third place.
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Manila, Philippines was ranked fourth while Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam came in fifth place and Kuala Lumpur in last place out of the six Southeast Asian countries listed in the study.
Several metrics were used to determine each city’s friendliness scale, analysing their visitor return rate, acceptance of diversity, safety index score and rating the its friendliness to foreigners.
Not only that, each Asian city’s English language proficiency was taken into account in the study.
Among the 20 Asian countries listed in the study, Kuala Lumpur’s visitor return and acceptance received a score of 17% and 195 out of 200 points respectively, being one of the highest scores in these two metrics.
Surprisingly, the study placed Malaysia last in the acceptance of diversity metric at 13 out of 100 points despite the capital city being well-known as a multicultural hub.
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In the study’s safety score index, Kuala Lumpur scored 38.57 out of 100 points while at a scale of one to five, the capital city scored three for its friendliness to foreigners.
Regarding the city’s English language proficiency, Kuala Lumpur scored a total of 568 points.
Meanwhile, Singapore outperformed Kuala Lumpur in other aspects, despite the city’s high visitor return and acceptance rate scores compared to the island’s scores of 14% and 164 respectively.
Singapore also scored 52 out of 200 in its acceptance of diversity metric, at 39 points ahead, with the country’s safety index at a high score of 74.68 out of 100 however, the island’s friendliness to foreigners scale showed a score of three, similar to Malaysia.
With the English language known to be Singapore’s official language, it is no surprise that the island scored the highest out of all 20 Asian cities at 631 points in the language proficiency aspect of the study.
