For open source take on the numbers, study these Numbeo.com* links... apparently the raw data. They show Bangkok to be very affordable. Note that the affordability/cost indexes do not relate in any way to currency values, nor especially expat expectations of lifestyle!!!

House sales price-to-income ratio: http://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings.jsp

Rents in US$, one bedroom, outside the CBD: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/prices_by_city.jsp?currency=USD&itemId=27

Cost of living index: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings.jsp

*From their apparently commercially-nonaligned, open-source website:

Numbeo is the largest free Internet database about cost of living worldwide.

Numbeo is the largest free Internet database about worldwide housing indicators!

Numbeo is a collection of Web pages containing numerical data, designed to enable anyone to contribute or modify content.

Numbeo provides statistical analysis of collected data, calculates various indexes using aggregate data and periodically publishes analysis of collected data.

As of 2010-12-13 Numbeo database contains information for 1057 cities from 5263 different contributors.

Numbeo.com is a independent software project by Mladen Adamovic [ed: an ex-Google software engineer] launched in May 2009. The research and available data at Numbeo.com is not influenced by any governmental organization.

Well from my perspective I can keep my two maids, the mortgage, the cars, my kids and wife and the office and all the overheads to run them all and still be at USD500 a week. Can't do that in any US, European or Australian city. I doubt you could do that in Mumbai either. Bangers has a thumbs up in my eyes.

Holy sh*t really?? Thats only $2k USD a month! I have no wife, or kids or car or mortgage and pay the maid just to clean the condo once a month and I burn through the same amount without even blinking!

whoes this guy with all these u.s. dollers mortgage, office, --what a snob--full of all his material bull/s--I have 4 maids-who have a car each,--Ha Ha --a nice guy with money -never braggs about it

It would be interesting to know how they chose their 32 cities.

Also to know how they arrived at the prices. There is parts of Bangkok where you can pay considerably more than in other parts of Bangkok.I would imagine that would hold true for all cities.

Kind of a pointless poll.

1 Pick only 32 cities and

2 Shop where high end low end middle they don't say.

It would not surprise me one bit if they only shopped in the areas foreigners shop at in Bangkok.

It IS a bit bizarre- there must be ANY NUMBER of large cities in Japan which are ALMOST as expensive as TOKYO- but NONE of them show up higher than Bangkok?

This ranking can't be very accurate. Ever been to Luanda, capital of Angola (oil oil oil!!)? Insane prices! Remembered it was over 100Bt for a medium-sized bag of potato chips (Lays..). And yes, I was with locals so no -exploit-the-foreigner-prices!

Bangers has a thumbs up in my eyes.

That ought to hurt :-)

Better than thumbs up in your banger.

Ho about the ISS (International Space Center)?

In the survey on finfacts.ie/costofliving.htm, Luanda,Angola comes in #1 and Ndjamena,Chad comes in #3 (Tokyo in between). It may also reflect the criteria for the pollsters. Some products are just about impossible to find in some locations. So if the price of Big Mac were tallied for a city which didn't have a McD's, then it would be nuts. Same for the rental cost of a 2 bdrm condo in a city which didn't have such things.

More directly on topic: Of course Bkk is not cheap - not by a long shot. Not compared to world cities and not compared to other Thai cities. Compare the cost of a condo in Bkk with the same item in my city of Chiang Rai - and you'll find it's 10 to one more expensive, and C.Rai doesn't have the bad air, gridlock, dearth of parks, and rude people that Bkk has.

Now if you compare cost of raw property btwn Bkk and rural areas (ok, maybe not a fair comparison), the price difference is exponential, except none of the hyper-expensive properties in Bkk have the views, the easy access to airport, the clean air, the birds singing, lack of vehicle smoke & roar - that property in some Thai rural areas have.