There is a very interesting table on the Numbeo Web site (Quality of Life Index by Country 2015) that ranks 86 countries on a variety of indices: quality of life, purchasing power, safety, health care, consumer prices, property price to income ratio, traffic commute time and pollution. Click one of the indices and you can list the countries in the order based on that index. The only thing of interest to me left off the table is weather.
I'm making this post about comparing the cost of living and quality of life between LOS and Ecuador.
About Numbeo's reputation I went to practically the only web site I ever use for that: wikipedia. (Numbeo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). This is what they say about Numbeo:...Description[edit]
Numbeo is a collaborative online database which enables users to share and compare information about the cost of living between countries and cities. [1]
Website is operated by Numbeo doo, company registered in Serbia. Founder of Numbeo is ex-Google software engineer....Popularity[edit]
Numbeo was mentioned or used as a source in hundreds of major newspapers around the world, including Forbes, Business Insider, Time, The Economist, BBC, The New York Times, China Daily, The Telegraph. [3]
Numbeo claims to be the biggest website of its kind with more than 1.3 million data collected as of August 2014. [4]
According to alexa ranking, in August 2014, Numbeo.com was among top 10000 websites (ranked by traffic). [5]According to numbeo, the data used in its indices was last updated May 2015 and came from the previous 18 months. Here is Numbeo's own summation of the cost of living difference between the two countries based on its indices:Criticism[edit]
Numbeo is considered a good site for comparing everyday prices. But columnist Alistair Walsh suggested in an article written for the website Property Observer, that Numbeo's information is based on what people say and should be taken with grain of salt. [6] However, Walsh does not cite evidence that aggregated self reports on the scale made possible by Numbeo, are less accurate estimates of prices than sponsored price research.
This is my own rankings comparison, including quality of life and pollution:Indices Difference
Consumer Prices in Ecuador are 3.37% higher than in Thailand
Consumer Prices Including Rent in Ecuador are 0.34% higher than in Thailand
Rent Prices in Ecuador are 9.26% lower than in Thailand
Restaurant Prices in Ecuador are 18.96% higher than in Thailand
Groceries Prices in Ecuador are 6.38% lower than in Thailand
Local Purchasing Power in Ecuador is 17.80% lower than in Thailand
On the quality of life index, Thailand ranks 2 places higher than Ecuador.
On the purchasing power index, Ecuador ranks 11 places higher than Thailand.
On the safety index, Ecuador ranks 16th overall, 36 places higher than Thailand.
On the health care index, Ecuador ranks 43 places higher than Thailand (82 of 86)
On the consumer price index, Ecuador ranks 3 places higher than Thailand
On the property price to income ratio, Ecuador ranks 12 places higher than Thailand.
On traffic commute time index, Thailand ranks 5 places higher than Ecuador (74th)
On the pollution index, Ecuador ranks 25 places higher than Thailand.
This is what I found on Wiki's site re: Ecuador's climate:
Ecuador does not have its own currency. Since 2000, the currency has been the USD.The climate of Ecuador varies by region, due to differences in altitude and, to a degree, in proximity to the equator.[1]
The coastal lowlands to the west of Ecuador are typically warm with temperatures in the region of 25 °C (77 °F).[2] Coastal areas are affected by ocean currents and between January and April are hot and rainy.[3]
The weather in Quito is consistent to that of a subtropical highland climate. The city has a fairly constant cool climate due to its elevation. The average temperature during the day is 66 °F (18.9 °C), which generally falls to an average of 50 °F (10 °C) at night. The average temperature annually is 64 °F (17.8 °C) There are only really two obvious seasons in the city: dry and wet. The dry season (summer) runs from June to Sept. and the wet season (winter) is from October to May. As most of Ecuador is in the southern hemisphere, June to Sept. is considered to be winter, and winter is generally the dry season in warm climates. spring, winter, and fall are generally the "wet seasons" while summer is the dry {with exception of the first month of fall being dry.}
Ecuador lies directly on the equator, so the entire country enjoys 12 hours of direct equatorial daylight 365 days a year. However, the climate you will experience depends largely on where you are in Ecuador, since there are four distinct geographical areas—the Sierra (mountains), the Oriente (eastern rainforests), the Costa (Pacific coastal plains), and the Galapagos Islands.
For example, Ecuador’s capital, Quito, lies in the Central Valley between the Andean Mountains’ eastern and western ridges. The equator is less than 20 miles north of the city, yet at an altitude of 9,350 feet (2,900 meters), Quito’s climate is spring-like year around: about 50° F (10° C) at night and as high as 76° F (25° C) during the day. The sun makes the difference. You can comfortably stroll out on a glorious Quito afternoon in shorts and a T-shirt, but you’ll need to take your wool sweater in case the clouds roll in. The equatorial sun is intense, but when it’s obscured by clouds, you realize how high in the Andes you really are. In fact, cold weather gear is needed for high altitude hiking and mountain climbing.
The beaches and rainforests, on the other hand, are characterized by the tropical temperatures that one would expect from equatorial lowlands, with highs ranging between 80º F and 90º F. Between these two extremes, just about any type of weather can be found in Ecuador.
This is just a personal observation based on 3 visits to Ecuador, the last being in 2008. The girls are beautiful, love to party and are very easy going, no matter the very prevalent Catholicism everybody professes to. The internet has some very beautiful pix of Quito which I will try to post some time soon.