I moved to Qatar from the UK and the life is so much better

A young woman who moved out from the UK to start a new life in the Middle East believes that it is "so much better" and she plans to stay there long-term.

Yvonne Akpofure, 29, chose to move out of the UK amid the rising cost of living and the dull weather in search of a better and more fulfilling lifestyle. Ms Akpofure was living in a rented flat in Manchester and has now moved to Qatar, Doha. The lawyer and self-published author initially had planned to move to Dubai but decided it was too "saturated", she said as she expanded her search area to Qatar.

She moved in September 2024 and is loving life in the new place she calls home. She told Manchester Evening News: "I went on my first holiday to Dubai when I was 23 and I just thought 'I really love it here'. I just love being in the sun.

"It was not long after Covid happened, so no one was really thinking about moving anywhere. I then bought a house with my friend in Surrey in 2021, so I kind of thought I was over the thought of moving abroad.

"But then 18 months later I got itchy feet again. I wanted to move but I didn't know whether it was the right time to move abroad. I wanted to live in a city, so I thought I'd move to Manchester in the meantime."

She explained how she has been fed up with the UK weather. She said: "The weather is the number one thing I dislike about the UK. It rains all the time, summer lasts for about two months, and then it's back to raining again. It just makes me miserable.

"The second thing is paying tax. I feel like a lot of our money goes on taxes and as a single person in particular, life can just be very very expensive.

"The third thing is the lifestyle over there, because people just spend much more time outdoors. There's so much more that you can do when it's sunny all the time and you never have to rely on the weather."

Yvonne is renting a one-bedroom flat in Doha and finds the housing market there much calmer compared to the UK, especially in busy cities like Manchester and London.

She said: "I found the whole process much simpler compared to the UK," Yvonne explains. "There are a lot of apartments here, and they don't all go really quickly. I think there is definitely more supply than demand.

"You can often just walk into a building and say 'I'm looking for an apartment,' and somebody will probably show you around, and then you go from there.

"You have to sign all of your cheques up front for 12 months which is a bit different. So here they still use chequebooks, so you give them all to the agent or landlord and then they will cash the cheques on the first of every month, and then that's it.

"All bills are usually included. The only thing I needed to sort out was my internet but I just went to the shop and then the next day there was someone here installing it all for me."