Country - Dominican Republic, Coste Norte (Puerto Plata, Cabarete, Costumbar)
Firsthand Experience? - Yes

Cost of Living - 5 - Probably a 20-25% discount on average cost of living in US. If you load on up on local products and live between cities you could save more.

Recreation - 8 - Good beaches, good nightlife if you don't mind friendly non-pushy working girls. (10 if you like working girls)

How Scary - 5 - Depends on the area but generally not that scary, Dominicans are a friendly people. Hell's Angels are around but they have been put on notice, if you got into trouble they are probably as like to help as anyone else.

Poker Playing - 5 - Good games but not 24-7 and games bigger than 3-6NL don't go everyday.

How Easy to Get There and Stay There? - 10 - ~$20/month to overstay with no blacklisting or any possibility of jail/deportation. Shouldn't drive while you are on an overstay but most expats don't drive anyway. You can get legal permanent residence thru a lawyer for around $1K or do it yourself for much less but probably not worth the hastle. Large German and Canadian expat enclaves.

Spanish is the key here, can get private lessons for $20/hr or go to school for cheaper, you probably won't last long without it. Education is not great here so you will probably find less people fluent in English than in the other Spanish cities listed ITT.

Philippines

Cost of Living - 7 - Probably similar to Thailand, although I think rent in a good location might be slightly more, and electricity is more. Many things are even cheaper though.

Recreation - 8 - Again similar to Thailand. However, here you have the added plus that virtually everyone speaks English here.

How Scary - 6 1/2 - If I do expat things and go to expat places I'm not that worried about violence. A few of my friends have been shaken down by the police though, although except in one case they were at fault. I'm pretty scared of dying in a Taxi due to driving conditions and Taxi standards.

Poker Playing - 9 - Online poker is legal, and live poker exists up to $2/4 deep semi-regularly. Some lawmaker has been trying to make online gambling illegal for several years but without success.

How Easy to Get There and Stay There? - 9 - You can pretty much pay $50/month, leave every 1 1/2 years, and come back a few days later. Only thing preventing it from being a 10 is that you either have to go to a non-aircon immigration office and it takes quite a while in waiting time, or you have to go to a nicer air conditioned office that is far from where you want to be living.

Girls - 7 - It's really easy to find a non-upper class girl, and from what I understand they're a lot less mercenary here than in BKK. However similar to Isaan and Hi-so girls in Thailand, the rich girls 'look' different due to having more Spanish and Chinese blood. Like Thailand, it's also difficult with them, but probably easier than Thailand. I think on average the Thai women are better looking but the really good looking ones here have a Eurasian look which is hard to beat.

Extra: BKK and Manila feel similar, except that BKK feels like a slightly more advanced/better run/better infrastructure third world city. The upside here is that it's English speaking, and particularly virtually all written material is in English.

alex23 think you are generalizing a little without mentioning specific area's, obv you could add or minus a few points in each category depending on what area in phils you are at. Another thing about immigration is you can just pay someone to take your documents in for you, here in cebu I paid a extra 500 php to a travel agency every two months for over a year with little problems (tourist visa) and didn't have to physically go into the office until I decided to convert my visa.

Oh and btw I will agree with you that it can't be a 10 due to the ****ing incompetency of the immigration staff and government officials in general here, still very possible just a lot of unnecessary head aches when I transferred my visa.

I guess ill do a write up

Guangzhou, China

Cost of Living - 6 Although prices are going up it is still pretty "cheap". The rents are still not too expensive and food is really cheap. Going out at night and drinking is the most expensive but this is quite common in Asia

Recreation - 8 Tons of discos, KTV, massage centers. Quite alot of life on the streets. Its quite complicated to be bored

How Scary? - 9 Safest city/country I have found myself in. There are hundreds of cameras along the streets and usually alot of security staff at each building entrance

Poker Playing -
2: Online, quite hard to play and internet is not too good
7: live... Macau is 2.5-3h away in bus, when train opens it will be 50mins

How Easy to Get There and Stay There? 5

Visa is a pain in the neck and you will probably need residence permit for long period, anyway Hong Kong is 2h away in train to renew visa

Girls - 9 I prefer chinese girls than thai or filipino, lighter skin, slimmer bodies, perfect asses... and they are mostly "normal" girls, also easy to hook up with them because there are not so many foreigners around, they find u terribly exotic

GZ,
how easy is it to get around if you don't know a lick of chinese?

also, can you elaborate on the outdoor activities available there?

And I can link you to stats which show them to be of a much lower incidence than they are in Thailand. What I'm saying is that the higher crime rate is not just confined to people who get pissed and then try to punch on with Thai bouncers. It affects people who are minding their own business just as much.

Obviously if you never go anywhere except to your apartment, beer bars and 7-11 then you are unlikely to be a victim of crime because there are too many witnesses. But going alone to a beach or somewhere like that at night in Thailand is definitely more dangerous that it is in somewhere like Australia or the UK.

There needs to be a "Job opportunities" category.

I don't know anything about South Africa but the reason for the high murder rate in Colombia is the drug trade and the ongoing fight (war) between drug traffickers and the police/military. Most tourists aren't actively fighting against the armed forces so their mortality rate is going to be significantly better than the national average. A Colombian I talked to recently told me that the ordinary people there take it upon themselves to protect the tourists, and this is consistent with everything I've heard from people who have been there.

Using generalized statistics for an entire country to make proclamations of the safety of tourism in very specific areas is pretty terrible, except in cases of saying that the entire country is safe. There's a reason why some very violent countries have thriving tourism industries while others have absolutely none.

+1. This would be nice, though I suspect the only jobs for foreigners that are remotely worthwhile in most countries involve teaching English...

Ross Kemp's documentary about gangs .. ep. from Medellin, Colombia, part 1/5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4SuXmEre70

Are you arguing with me or supporting me? I think it does a pretty good job of illustrating that much of the violence there is pretty far removed from tourists and wealthy expats.

This guy also has a documentary on gangs in LA but obviously LA is still very safe for people with lots of money who don't do stupid things.

I have heard so much good about Panama, and almost nothing bad. It's especially friendly for Americans because English is widely spoken and they use the US Dollar as their main form of currency. Not only that, but you only pay taxes on income earned in Panama. I'm guessing you probably wouldn't have to pay taxes on online poker income. Anyone know for sure?

Well this thread has been sucessfully hijacked it seems, and not even in a good way...

Waste of a good thread potential

And btw: agree with spiv that sure in some respects Thailand can consitute more danger than a 'developed' economy, but however in all honesty the facts are skewed as people, especially young men go there for a 'hardcore' vacation, something one might not do with say... Vancover, which results in abnormal behaviour and copious amounts of alochol, once again something that may not happen in other countries.

Its all relative, and to boot don't be a dumbass and ur fine

So I have taken all the "Thailand safety" stuff and put it in the Ask us about Thailand thread, it was completely out of this threads scope.

I think we should add to this rating system some climat/weather factor - if I was going to exaptriate from Poland I definitly would choose Thailand/South America before Holland/Finland where conditions are the same, or even worse than here...
I would really appreciate such ratings from people living in Panama or Macau, these are countries I was lately considering moving to.