Are Canadians really that nice?

Forbes.com published their friendliest countries in the world list. Canada is rated overall number 2 on the list. Aside from eating from a tree, I always thought being friendly is one of Canadian's more well known stereotypes and we are the best at it. Here is our rankings in detail and it looks like Canada needs to work on our friend making skills.

Making friends: No. 11
Making local friends: No. 2
Joining community groups: No. 1
Organizing school for my children: No. 5
Organizing my finances: No. 3
Organizing my health care: No. 1
Finding somewhere to live: No. 2

The data comes from The Expat Explorer survey, commissioned by HSBC Bank International and conducted by the research company FreshMinds. More than 3,100 expatriates were surveyed between February and April 2009. The respondents were asked to rate 23 factors related to their quality of life, including food, entertainment, transportation, health care, finances, education and their ability to make friends. Each criterion was equally weighted to arrive at a score. The overall ranking is based on the average score for a country across the criteria. Eight measures were also selected to arrive at an integration score: organizing school for my children; organizing my finances; organizing my health care; finding somewhere to live; making friends; making local friends; setting up utilities; and joining local community groups. The integration score was used to determine the friendliest countries.

The top 5:

Number 5: Malaysia
Number 4: Thailand
Number 3: Australia

Drum roll...
Number 1: Bahrain

For the full list click here.

I absolutely looooved traveling to Malaysia and Thailand and highly recommended for anyone. But two of my less pleasant traveling moments happened in Malaysia and Thailand. One involved a taxi who didn't know where he was going and wanted to drop us off on the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere. The other involved name calling by a very pissy vendor who thought I bartered too hard.