Cost Of Living

[st11x]

G'day,

My wife (Thai) and I just moved here from San Francisco to Chiang Mai recently. We had been in Bangkok briefly too.

As we were shopping to fill the rental house, we found that it isn't as cheap to live in Thailand as we have originally thought (we must have been away for a long time). Of course, if you want to buy fish sauce, it is cheap here, but not by very much from say the Asian supermarket back in California.

For most other things, it's usually quite a lot more expensive; we are not even talking about luxury items like wine and cheese etc which is by the way too costly.

For some things like bath towels, there are always cheaper lookalikes which is of very poor quality. For the price we pay for the cheap ones, we can usually get the good ones in the US.

Do you agreed? Or did we just go to the wrong place to shop? We went to the regular places like Lotus, Big C, Carrefour, etc.

Regards

Matt

[girlx]

if you live like a thai, it's much cheaper. but if you expect a farang lifestyle, you'll have to pay for it!

[1000baht]

I agree with GirlX. If you want the LCD TV, or nice furniture, you will pay the same as back home.

[pauls2979]

hi matt

yes agree with you ,

but think of the plus side , not eating cheese and imported food , i have lost 20lbs in weight , nice

[st11x]

if you live like a thai, it's much cheaper. but if you expect a farang lifestyle, you'll have to pay for it!

True. We expected that farang things will be dearer. What we did not expect was that some basic things will be dearer. For example, things like foods (bread spread, milk), laundry detergent, etc.

I compared a small tub of Nutella I bought at 150 THB, versus a pack of 2 gigantic tubs of it for around USD 8.

I agree with GirlX. If you want the LCD TV, or nice furniture, you will pay the same as back home.

Agreed. As for the LCD TV, I don't even know why I bought it now. The broadcasters don't even support it! Don't know know why they even sell it at the stores.

Matt

[st11x]

hi matt

yes agree with you ,

but think of the plus side , not eating cheese and imported food , i have lost 20lbs in weight , nice

Ha, not exactly. With all the sugar they pound into the tempting Thai desserts and even regular dishes, you are bound to gain it back. I always have to tell them to hold back the sugar in the iced coffee, and even then, it's still sweet!

I have actually gained some pounds since I arrived!

[pauls2979]

i came prepared this time brought a sausage machine with the skins to make my own , proper english sausage cost me about 5baht to make, seen some in places like food land , work out to be about 20 baht each , bread maker , o yes make my own bacon too,

i try and not eat out to often as my tummy cannot handle sweety things or to much spice.

[MeetJohnDoe]

What you report is most certainly true. There have been good reports in the past comparing living costs of Thailand and Farangland. For many items, Thailand comes out more expensive, expecially for consumer items as the market is so much smaller than the US especially and the dealer/distribution networks less efficient. Costs/expenses/profits have to be spread over a much smaller market therefore the higher prices.

Even items like Toyota and Honda cars that are manufactured in Thailand using Thai labor and substantial local content cost 30-40% more than Stateside!

The way I look at it is you can (not always mind you) save quite a bit on housing costs...but again you spend more on so many other things that you basically come out even or with some slight savings. Eating at decent restaurants is still quite reasonable as well.

Anything involving labour services you save allot on too.

[Soutpeel]

What we did not expect was that some basic things will be dearer.

I compared a small tub of Nutella I bought at 150 THB, versus a pack of 2 gigantic tubs of it for around USD 8.

[Theyreallrubbish]

I agree.

The only things here that are cheaper are the things that poor people buy. Street food and tiny concrete boxes as apartments. You can get cheap clothes and furniture but the quality is dreadful. To get what would be normal standard of quality in the west you have to pay higher than western prices.

Everything else is more expensive. Even things made in Thailand. Even accommodation isn't cheap if you want decent quality. Only the really primitive units are cheaper. Restaurants aren't cheap either unless you're eating street food or a shophouse restaurant.

It didn't used to be like this. I presume the fall in the Baht made them put the price in Baht of everything up and now the Baht has strengthened it looks more expensive when you translate back in to a western currency.

Things like computer components used to be cheaper but they are now more expensive than the west and I buy them in the UK and bring in with me in a suitcase! Astonishing as many of the factories are here and the UK has 17.5% VAT

Saw in Tesco the Nintendo Wii. Thought about buying one and saw the price was 12,000 Baht. About 50% more expensive than in the west! Just one more example

[Chaimai]

If you want to re-create Farangland in Thailand - why bother. Stay in your home country.

If you are doing a cost of living analysis don't forget to take into account water, electric, Council Tax (oops don't have that here), public transport costs, fuel costs.

Who the <deleted> cares what a tub of Nutella costs !!

After that, consider the wider issues like climate, culture etc.

If you want to live like a Farang and stay in Amari, Duisit hotels or rent for 20k p.m. and eat at westernised restaurants then you have to expect your budget to be higher.

I rent in a decent sized town for 2,500 baht p.m. fuel costs 200 baht p.w. food and drink (including eating out 5 times a week and visiting the local bar 5 times a week) 5,000 baht, haircut 40 Baht etc, etc

[Theyreallrubbish]

If you want to re-create Farangland in Thailand - why bother. Stay in your home country.

If you are doing a cost of living analysis don't forget to take into account water, electric, Council Tax (oops don't have that here), public transport costs, fuel costs.

Who the <deleted> cares what a tub of Nutella costs !!

After that, consider the wider issues like climate, culture etc.

If you want to live like a Farang and stay in Amari, Duisit hotels or rent for 20k p.m. and eat at westernised restaurants then you have to expect your budget to be higher.

I rent in a decent sized town for 2,500 baht p.m. fuel costs 200 baht p.w. food and drink (including eating out 5 times a week and visiting the local bar 5 times a week) 5,000 baht, haircut 40 Baht etc, etc

So you are happy to live like a poor Thai. Many of the rest of us are happy to live like upper middle class Thais. Your promoting your particular lifestyle makes no difference whatsoever to the reality of the cost of decent quality goods, but carry on with your inverse snobbery if it makes you feel better

[imaneggspurt]

If you want to re-create Farangland in Thailand - why bother. Stay in your home country.

If you are doing a cost of living analysis don't forget to take into account water, electric, Council Tax (oops don't have that here), public transport costs, fuel costs.

Who the <deleted> cares what a tub of Nutella costs !!

After that, consider the wider issues like climate, culture etc.

If you want to live like a Farang and stay in Amari, Duisit hotels or rent for 20k p.m. and eat at westernised restaurants then you have to expect your budget to be higher.

I rent in a decent sized town for 2,500 baht p.m. fuel costs 200 baht p.w. food and drink (including eating out 5 times a week and visiting the local bar 5 times a week) 5,000 baht, haircut 40 Baht etc, etc

So you are happy to live like a poor Thai. Many of the rest of us are happy to live like upper middle class Thais. Your promoting your particular lifestyle makes no difference whatsoever to the reality of the cost of decent quality goods, but carry on with your inverse snobbery if it makes you feel better

Seems if you want to live like a thai peasant you can save ,....but in general i dont find thailand cheap overall if living 'normally",. if you want to chase baloons and live in a shed on sticks im sure you can live cheaply, i never did in the uk and dont want to here thanks ,.

[st11x]

So you are happy to live like a poor Thai. Many of the rest of us are happy to live like upper middle class Thais. Your promoting your particular lifestyle makes no difference whatsoever to the reality of the cost of decent quality goods, but carry on with your inverse snobbery if it makes you feel better

Seems if you want to live like a thai peasant you can save ,....but in general i dont find thailand cheap overall if living 'normally",. if you want to chase baloons and live in a shed on sticks im sure you can live cheaply, i never did in the uk and dont want to here thanks ,.

Spot on. We are not trying to emulate the higher echelons of Thai society, but we have no desire to live like a low wage earner either.

I have never seen a place for rent at 2,500 THB p.m., and I have seen some of the 7-8K and they are not pretty. I'm renting a 12K place which I think is nice and fair given that the market is around 15K.

I would have thought that with the influx of foreigners, the market will grow and things would come down. Seems like the reverse is true.

Though we arrived from the US, I am not a US citizen. We can't live there for good, so some people like me have valid reasons to recreate a little farang-land.

Matt

[Gary A]

Some people talk about living normally. Define normally. I live in an area where the nearest super store is 150 kilometers away. Driving 300 kilometers round trip for some farang items that I no longer even miss is NOT living normally for me. My home here in Thailand is as plush or as cheap as I want to make it. All our food is purchased from the local fresh market or grown right at home. My blood pressure has dropped back to normal and I too have lost more than 20 pounds. I choose to live out of the cities and enjoy my life style in the peace and quiet of the country.

My condo in Jomtien is MUCH larger and nicer than the $1,200 per month shoebox sized apartment I had in the Los Angeles area. My car insurance for a Honda Civic cost $1,600 per year in Kalifornia. Political correctness alone would have eventually made me totally crazy.

Once you acclimate to Thailand, you'll find that you can be perfectly happy doing without items that are only available imported from your home country.

[thaimiller]

What we did not expect was that some basic things will be dearer.

I compared a small tub of Nutella I bought at 150 THB, versus a pack of 2 gigantic tubs of it for around USD 8.

:D

[BEENTHEREDONETHAT]

If you go to outdoor market you will find that fresh foods are very reasonable. That includes fruit vegies and meat. Thais typically don't eat bread so you will find it expensive same for things like peanut butter, jam and paper products. You can eat quite well by changing your diet a bit.

We eat mostly fresh but still have some farang items like bread, bakery goods. If we lived essentially the same lifestyle in the US that we live here just paying the property tax health insurance and house and car insurance in the US would cost more than our total annual budget here.

[h90]

G'day,

My wife (Thai) and I just moved here from San Francisco to Chiang Mai recently. We had been in Bangkok briefly too.

As we were shopping to fill the rental house, we found that it isn't as cheap to live in Thailand as we have originally thought (we must have been away for a long time). Of course, if you want to buy fish sauce, it is cheap here, but not by very much from say the Asian supermarket back in California.

For most other things, it's usually quite a lot more expensive; we are not even talking about luxury items like wine and cheese etc which is by the way too costly.

For some things like bath towels, there are always cheaper lookalikes which is of very poor quality. For the price we pay for the cheap ones, we can usually get the good ones in the US.

Do you agreed? Or did we just go to the wrong place to shop? We went to the regular places like Lotus, Big C, Carrefour, etc.

Regards

Matt

Yes things changed in the last years. People don't earn much more but the prices went up.

Consider that the USD is now pretty good against Baht in compare to a few month ago.

[Jingthing]

Once you acclimate to Thailand, you'll find that you can be perfectly happy doing without items that are only available imported from your home country.

Speak for yourself. I buy many imported items and there is no shame in it. I never met a Thai in the US who doesn't still eat a lot of Thai food. I grew up with a third generation Chinese whose family meals were still mostly Chinese food, using many imported Chinese products. Of course, I use mostly Thai products here, but there are some western things I will always want, such as pasta, and this is totally normal. Yes, imported items are expensive here. Cut them to help your budget if you need to, but not to satisfy some going native ideal.

Edited December 4, 2008 by Jingthing

[Patriciachas]

we have been here a year and it is a lot cheaper than the uk in general and the weather is great to go with it.

G'day,

My wife (Thai) and I just moved here from San Francisco to Chiang Mai recently. We had been in Bangkok briefly too.

As we were shopping to fill the rental house, we found that it isn't as cheap to live in Thailand as we have originally thought (we must have been away for a long time). Of course, if you want to buy fish sauce, it is cheap here, but not by very much from say the Asian supermarket back in California.

For most other things, it's usually quite a lot more expensive; we are not even talking about luxury items like wine and cheese etc which is by the way too costly.

For some things like bath towels, there are always cheaper lookalikes which is of very poor quality. For the price we pay for the cheap ones, we can usually get the good ones in the US.

Do you agreed? Or did we just go to the wrong place to shop? We went to the regular places like Lotus, Big C, Carrefour, etc.

Regards

Matt

[siamkiwi]

I Agree. Things arn't so cheep here any more. And all the termoil here doesn't seem to affect the strenght of the baht. I can buy some dive gear cheaper retail in NZ than I get it for wholesale in LOS.

And I also don't want to live like a poor Thai. Alot of the Thais I Know would'nt live in a 2500 pm appartment!

[JCDentonMale]

Some people talk about living normally. Define normally. I live in an area where the nearest super store is 150 kilometers away. Driving 300 kilometers round trip for some farang items that I no longer even miss is NOT living normally for me. My home here in Thailand is as plush or as cheap as I want to make it. All our food is purchased from the local fresh market or grown right at home. My blood pressure has dropped back to normal and I too have lost more than 20 pounds. I choose to live out of the cities and enjoy my life style in the peace and quiet of the country.

My condo in Jomtien is MUCH larger and nicer than the $1,200 per month shoebox sized apartment I had in the Los Angeles area. My car insurance for a Honda Civic cost $1,600 per year in Kalifornia. Political correctness alone would have eventually made me totally crazy.

Once you acclimate to Thailand, you'll find that you can be perfectly happy doing without items that are only available imported from your home country.

I 100% agree with Gary. I also live outside of city, in a calm little village, in a very cute and new wood house for 2500bahts/months, far of supermarket. I also buy my food at local market, also lost about 15 kg, and I don't even think about buying a pot of Nutella, because I don't even miss it. When I see some farang here who try to recreate their life style as they used to live in their homeland, I just would like to know <deleted> are they doing in thailand.

And guess what, I like to live like this, I needn't all those expensive TVs, Nutella pot, expensive ugly appartments. I just need a computer because I have to communicate with my home country. I need fresh air, nature, green arround me, simple life is always the happier life.

[Pakeha]

What we did not expect was that some basic things will be dearer.

I compared a small tub of Nutella I bought at 150 THB, versus a pack of 2 gigantic tubs of it for around USD 8.

:jerk:

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.....

[MeetJohnDoe]

You know you have settled-in when you stop comparing (and you can't even remenber) what something cost "back home" and what it costs in Thailand. For except for the small high-value items that it makes sense to bring back with you on those trips home, if you want a particular item, you have to pay the local price. All you can do is adjust the amount or frequency of your purchases.

[wasabi]

Housing is markedly cheaper than in the USA, Thai food is cheap too. However the low cost of living stops there. It seems just about everything else is equal or more expensive than it is in Farang land. It is true if I want to live like a Thai than I could cut out these costs but I think life here would be pretty dull if I did which in itself is a cost. All in All living here I don't find Thailand to be as good as a value as I expected given the environment I live in is filthy, the air is polluted and the infrastructure crumbling. I'd rather pay about the same I am paying now and live in a first world country for the most part and come to Thailand for holiday for it's exotic charm and exciting periods of civil unrest.

[citizen33]

Some people talk about living normally. Define normally. I live in an area where the nearest super store is 150 kilometers away. Driving 300 kilometers round trip for some farang items that I no longer even miss is NOT living normally for me. My home here in Thailand is as plush or as cheap as I want to make it. All our food is purchased from the local fresh market or grown right at home. My blood pressure has dropped back to normal and I too have lost more than 20 pounds. I choose to live out of the cities and enjoy my life style in the peace and quiet of the country.

My condo in Jomtien is MUCH larger and nicer than the $1,200 per month shoebox sized apartment I had in the Los Angeles area. My car insurance for a Honda Civic cost $1,600 per year in Kalifornia. Political correctness alone would have eventually made me totally crazy.

Once you acclimate to Thailand, you'll find that you can be perfectly happy doing without items that are only available imported from your home country.

I 100% agree with Gary. I also live outside of city, in a calm little village, in a very cute and new wood house for 2500bahts/months, far of supermarket. I also buy my food at local market, also lost about 15 kg, and I don't even think about buying a pot of Nutella, because I don't even miss it. When I see some farang here who try to recreate their life style as they used to live in their homeland, I just would like to know <deleted> are they doing in thailand.

And guess what, I like to live like this, I needn't all those expensive TVs, Nutella pot, expensive ugly appartments. I just need a computer because I have to communicate with my home country. I need fresh air, nature, green arround me, simple life is always the happier life.

I don't disagree with Gary and Gabylaster about what is possible, but isn't it interesting to just explore dispassionately what the OP is saying. If you look across the range of products one would need for what would be a reasonable middle-of-the- road lifestyle for a western expat are most things cheaper or not? I think the OP has a point. I still moan about my Thai Ford electric window switch at 12,500 baht as an especially extortionate example, and there have been a few over-priced furniture and kitchen items that I have chosen to buv. I used to think that there were bargains to be had with designer-style western clothes in the bigger centres, but having looked around UK high streets and sales recently, I'd say there are a lot more clothes bargains in Britain than Bangkok. My Thai wife - who is a beneficiary of this situation - agrees. The other side of the argument though is taxes and recurrent costs. I would say my No 1 car insurance in Thailand is only marginally cheaper than my car insurance in the UK, but not having to pay a big road fund license, TV license, house rates, high water and sewage charges (all things that must be paid even if you are abroad) is a big plus in Thailand. Fuel is also more reasonable, as is eating out in the provinces. I'm glad I am not on a Thai salary though - or everything would seem sky high!

[PeaceBlondie]

Goody, a new thread about COL. Here I am in Chiang Mai, on nearly a private guarded/gated estate, paying 7000 baht per month. Gasohol today was 17.85 per liter, or $1.899 (Americans always quote fuel prices to the tenth of a cent). I used to pay more than twice that. The dollar has risen 15% this year against the baht. SSA just announced a 5.8% COL increase.

But bar fines.....oops.

[sendbaht]

Hi Matt, this is your buddy Don.

You know as you go along things will get much less expensive. Give it like 90 days then things will drop as you learn where

and what to buy. As for the HDTV the only advantage here now in Thailand is they sure are easy to move around.

Wife and I are going to purchase one just for the convenience.

We eat mostly vegetarian and our dinning out dinners cost 50 to 60 baht for two! You know the place we lived when we first moved to CM

well, now we have a better view and our rent in 1/3 the cost. Our electric has gone to 7B per unit to 3.5. On and on. It's live and learn.

Was rented a motorbike, even though I work out a great deal we bought one and it's a lot cheaper. Back in the USA a car wash was

$1295 (b388) now we pay B30 to have the bike washed. B7 to valet the bike at the mall. Matt I could go on and on. Now for gas, well, again, you

remember the motorhome we had, cost over $200 (B7000) to fill the tank, now I have full service at B85.

Now food is food and rent is rent and a motorbike in not a motorhome, I was just pointing out that it should be much cheaper to live here then in California.

Lots of folks move here because the weather is nice or better form where they are from, I do not think we moved because of the weather, though nice, it's nice also in Southren and most of Northern California.

See you soon I hope.

Sendbaht

Edited December 4, 2008 by sendbaht

[jdinasia]

Things like towels etc can be had when on sale for a decent price. Yes the initial set-up for living here can be pricey if you don't know what you are doing, but really ...

a decent mattress or a fridge for less than $200 USD? You can learn to find things here pretty easily

[altman]

i built a very nice and comfortable house in rural thailand on land on which we grow much of our own healthy and wholesome food.

the cost of the house, about $25,000.

my current cost of day to day living? negligible.

could i have done anything like this in the states? no.

for the story of my life in a thai village see this site, EuthanasiacClinic.org/Thai Life or just click the thailand button at EuthanasiaClinic.org

thailand really is cheaper. but if you want to live like you did in 'where-ever' then maybe you should have stayed in 'where-ever'.