Familiar rituals, comfort foods and like-minded people can transform a foreign city into a home away from home. Here’s how to find them.
Leaving home to live and work abroad is as much about meeting new people as it is about getting to know a place. For those in industries with an office or classroom to report to, colleagues are often the first port of call. For others, shared hobbies, home countries, life stages and levels of homesickness bring fresh arrivals together, steering them towards five-a-side football teams, cold plunge clubs, conscious dance evenings and Whatsapp groups. Expat-friendly bubbles are a way to make friends in a new city, to let off steam and reinvent yourself in the absence of family nearby. They exist in most major international cities but the presence of these tribes is exaggerated in expat hubs such as Hong Kong. There can be no other city in the world where pilots and cabin crew are such a visible part of the social fabric. Thinking about taking a job in Asia? Here are just a few of the networks that have shaped my time in Hong Kong and Bangkok over the past decade:
General managers
Hotel head honchos must be one of the most popular subjects on the pages of Monocle and for good reason. There are few other positions that involve keeping an eye and an ear on the business world, travel trends and the latest hospitality openings all at once. Pre-Monocle, I knew zero general managers. Now, I know plenty all over Asia and I find that they are a bit like ambassadors or journalists – but more fun, gossipy and better dressed. The word from the hotel lobby is that the modern general manager’s job has evolved from greeting guests and walking the floor to crunching numbers and running a significant operation in the back office – they know even more than they let on.
The French (and Germans)
Some nationalities tend to live in clusters overseas – perhaps none more so than the French, who arrived in Hong Kong in large numbers during the François Hollande presidency and visibly transformed entire neighbourhoods into a bubble within a bubble with cheese, wine and bread. Germans, by contrast, tend to be virtually invisible, preferring to avoid each other when abroad. A Munich entrepreneur now residing in Hong Kong, for instance, shared a revealing supermarket-queue experience from last Christmas with me as I researched this trend. Overhearing the couple in front speaking German, she shared some yuletide cheer. Nein! They shot her a death stare and left without saying a word. So if you’re in need of some European familiarity, conversation or bread, head to the unofficial French quarter.
English teachers
Posting London-based bankers to Hong Kong is on the up again but not every expat works in finance. Asia is a popular destination for English teachers and they are among my closest friends, both on and off the football pitch. They come to teach in international schools for higher wages, fewer hours and better-behaved classrooms – it is this attractive wage-to-work ratio that is why I keep telling my sister to leave her teaching job in the UK. Plenty are Brits but not all, with people from countries such as South Africa and the US also making up the ranks. Hong Kong’s private schools have had a tough decade but business in Thailand is booming. Highgate International, Wycombe Abbey and Dulwich College are among the British outposts opening this year. Note: teachers have a canny ability to gauge the mood of local communities, much like those financiers have with markets.
UN families
Bangkok is an Asian hub for charities and other third-sector organisations. The UN’s regional headquarters is the sun in this not-for-profit solar system. My own enclave in the Thai capital is a popular home for UN families from all over the world. Chitchat at parties and kids’ football practice has provided a crash course in UN acronyms (UNDP, ADB, FAO, IOM) and a glimpse into the organisation’s bureaucracy – all very inside baseball and off-putting. It has been a brutal year for this community with Donald Trump’s cuts to aid budgets costing countless jobs and departures. But Australia gets the plaudits for stepping in to cover some of the shortfall.
Foreign correspondents
Then, of course, there are us creased and crumpled bureau chiefs, stringers and overseas reporters propping up the bar at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. Jaded, know-it-all news junkies. The worst! Hong Kong’s troubles this decade have seen a fair few of us swap a perch at the main bar on Ice House Street for a spot at a penthouse in Chit Lom, Bangkok – but there’s still plenty of lively conversation to be had on a bustling Friday evening. Join me.
James Chambers is Monocle’s Bangkok-based Asia editor. For more from James, click here.
