Not So Cheap To Live In Bangkok

[Gary A]

If you must live on lower Sukhumvit you can expect to pay high rent or pay 4 or 5 million baht for a shoe box sized condo. Get away from Sukhumvit and other areas like that you can find decent condos that rent for less than 10,000 baht and can be bought for less than 2 million baht. Go to the farang joints to eat and the prices are three or four times what it costs in a normal Thai neighborhood. Buy your food in a Thai fresh market versus Villa and you will also save a lot of money. It all depends what you want.

[Rionoir]

Jeez there really are some aholes on this forum...

[Jingthing]

Jeez there really are some aholes on this forum...

You don't say?

[jetjock]

Jeez there really are some aholes on this forum...

You don't say?

You guys should have the courtesy of waiting until after I make a post before making comments like that !

[wasabi]

with humble respect...

i wasn't trying to hint at anything to do with Thailand or Thai culture.

I didn't try to suggest that i was looking for the cheapest place on Earth.

I can't own my own place as we are a non-thai family

we are only here for a couple of years

I simply and honestly wondered if for Expat employees of companies had been suprised at the "real" cost of living when they arrived here compared to what ever they may have been told at interview. nothing more, nothing less.

Welcome to TV; where you will find a hard core cadre of people who firmly believe Thailand is perfect, complainers should be shot and life in general in Thailand is so perfect we should bow down and scrape every time we see a Thai.

I think this quote by Furbie really captures the usual suspects. I personally didn't find anything troll like about the OPs question and opened this thread with interest as I'm planning to move to Thailand early next year and appreciate any tips on budgeting. I've found Furbie's summary of the two camps seems to recur on all Thailand themed websites. I actually deleted my membership to Thailandfriends.com because I was being constantly hit by sarcasm and antagonism after every post I made. I guess I could have grew a thicker skin but I'd rather not deal with it. However in spite of the problem of being flammed over seemingly innocuous posts existing here, there is also a wealth of information and knowledgeable people that make a membership here very worthwhile.

[Briggsy]

Caramello never did say what he or she thought was expensive, just went off in a strange huff about something.

[narawit]

In Rome live like the Romans do. Then I say in Thai live like the Thais do!!

[stub]

My rent for a condo in Bangkok is 75% of what my apartment in Melbourne is being rented out for. My Melbourne apartment is inner-city Melbourne, about a 10 min train ride or 20 min tram ride to the CBD. My condo in Bangkok is smaller, but high up the tallest building in probably the most expensive part of the city (lower Suk), and I know people renting 3 or 4 bedroom houses in Ratchada 10 mins walk from the subway for less than I pay for this one bedroom condo. I could never afford this in Melbourne - I imagine for a similar place in Melbourne I would be looking at paying 2x or 3x the Bangkok price.

Western food in lower suk is a little cheaper than Melbourne prices. Beer is cheaper across the board. Wine more expensive. However, I couldn't imagine eating western food in lower suk restaurants 2 meals a day - I would explode! Ingredients for cooking at home range from similar to Melbourne prices to ridiculously cheap, but if you like Thai food you don't need to cook yourself because you get a great normal day's lunch or dinner for between $AU 1.50 and $AU 11, again in one of the most expensive parts of the city. You can even get normal sized western food portions in that price range if you know where too look (most western main courses in lower suk are large enough to do both me and my wife).

And we can have a maid here. I just used the service available in my expensive condo in this expensive part of town with no haggling - $AU 56 per months for 2 maids three hours per week. I would never even dream of picking up the phone back home to see how much that would cost. If I didn't want to eat out I could hire maids-who-can-cook, or just do a deal with a local restaurant I like, and get three meals a day delivered to my door for around the same cost as when I cooked everything at home.

We are right on the Skytrain and close to the subway so I don't need a car (and if don't need to commute out of Bangkok regularly taxi is fine for everything else).

English language books cost the same as they seem to everywhere in the world, maybe a little cheaper than countries with higher VAT. Computer equipment roughly the same as anywhere else they are not locally manufactured when comparing same brands. In cases where the cost is 'what the market can bear', things can cost significantly less.

So I'd say yes - Bangkok is cheap. We can live a pampered lifestyle here we could never dream of back home, and we don't have to budget - I know everything we want we can afford. I know I could live elsewhere cheaper, but Bangkok has everything I want out of a place to call home unlike the cheaper options - it seems ideally placed in the price/facilities range for what we want. I have yet to find a place I could live cheaper where I would actually want to live.

Perhaps offspring changes this - I'll leave costs of good schooling etc. to those who know.

Ex-pat lifestyle is an interesting phrase. I don't think this is an internationally constant standard, but simply what is affordable where you are. Try living the same lifestyle you do in Bangkok in, say, Tokyo, London, New York, Melbourne - you just can't unless you are being subsidized by an incredibly generous company offshore allowance. Yet there are people happily living 'the expat lifestyle' in a shoe box in Tokyo, a 20 min metro ride to the night life scene and an expensive taxi ride home if you miss the midnight train home. I find it absolutely hilarious that some people get paid a hardship allowance for living here instead of there being bidding wars for who gets the Bangkok posting! Also, many of the stories of 'the expat lifestyle' come from the people who have been doing this for the longest time. Senior people. People who have been living 'the expat lifestyle' for 20 years now. Compare your western salary package with someone 20 years your senior back in the west. Now try doing the same with someone here. Of course they can afford a 150sqm apartment, live in maid, rent-a-wife or three, car + driver, weekends in Pattaya, fine wines, fine cigars and a reserved suite at Bumrungrad for when their liver or heart finally gives out. And some people just like to brag.

I am quite happy living here with the same household income as we had back in Melbourne. At first I was surprised at home much money we where going through, but it only took a few moments reflection to realize how much our lifestyle had improved here and that we where still doing better than we would be at home.