Mission Statement and History
To foster knowledge and understanding about all things Asian for the expatriate community and all who have an interest in the region... To be an interesting and knowledgeable community with up to date and pertinent information on all matters relevant to foreigners living in Asia...
To be the first place an expatriate would look when seeking specific information and to answer any question quickly and accurately.
History
I launched Orient Expat™ at the end of 2004. It served the dual purpose of being a platform to grow my webmaster skills and an outlet for my interest in the Asia region. Initially, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to achieve with the website and it was more of an experiment than anything else.
I was surprised to see that a small group of forum members quickly took to the website and started posting their comments regularly and seemed to enjoy returning to the website on an almost daily basis. As these were the early days, we received almost no search engine traffic and new registrations came by word of mouth only. While I was grateful of this, I wanted to foster my own search engine traffic and eventually, the search engines started taking an interest in us.
It became clear to me that the regular members had a very high standard of knowledge about expatriate life in Asia. In fact, the standard of information being exchanged and discussed was (and still is) very high indeed. I made up my mind that this is what I wanted for the website... to be a high quality expatriate community with an emphasis on fostering cross cultural understanding and discussion, with plenty of information on regional current affairs.
We now have a superb team of moderators at Orient Expat, who's dedication to the website makes me very proud to be a part of this community. I have learned so much about Asia from my moderators and the forum members. This website has been built from nothing and has become a warm, friendly meeting place for anyone who wants to know about any aspect of Asian life, thanks to the input from some of the nicest people on the net.
Join Us
What makes us different? Well, we certainly do not suffer fools or trouble makers on the forum. Generally speaking, if you are polite, willing to learn and share your knowledge, and can formulate intelligent posts and arguments, you will be very welcome here, whatever your point of view. No one will ever be excluded for their opinions.
If you are prepared to invest a little time and effort in our forum, you will be rewarded with friendship and the respect of a very knowledgeable community that is quite addictive.
Your Privacy
It is a requirement of registration that you supply us with your real email address. This is simply to prevent abuse of the forum and you have our sincerest promise that your privacy is safe with us. You email will remain secure within our database and it will never been passed on to any third party. You may opt in or opt out of receiving forum news letters at any time and we will never spam you... that's a promise. You may also remain completely anonymous on the forum if you wish. The staff of this website will never reveal any of your details to anyone, ever.
We encourage you to read our full Privacy Policy