Some website called Exapatistan just published a cost of living index for 193 major cities, including Bangkok and Pattaya. It's based on prices people enter into their database:

http://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/index

Bangkok is placed at the 132nd place, Chiang Mai at 175th place.

According to their data Prices in bkk are higher than Jakarta (Indonesia), Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, Mexico City, and Cape Town. Same prices as Panama City as San Jose (Costa Rica).

Chiang Mai on the other hand is really one of the Cheapest places to live, other than places like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The real surprise is Buenos Aires, which is even cheaper than Chiang Mai.

Edited January 8, 201412 yr by soomak

Bin it. Anyone who states that Buenos Aires is cheaper than Chiang Mai isn't to be taken seriously.

Bin it. Anyone who states that Buenos Aires is cheaper than Chiang Mai isn't to be taken seriously.

They don't state anything, just present the data. All prices are entered by visitors to the website, and you can see how many entries are for each city. For bkk it's 404 people, for Bounos Aires 1,358 people, seems like a large enough statistical base.

Next stop Buenos Aires then, lovely culture and temples there too. . .

Next stop Buenos Aires then, lovely culture and temples there too. . .

...and 30% inflation rate

It's easy to understand why these comparisons are largely meaningless (or very informative, depending on how you look at it).

Just go to the Buenos Aires page and set the prices to THB and it becomes evident that a lot of things included in the calculation (petrol, wine, new cars, cheese, beer, luxury condo rentals) are indeed a fraction of the price in Buenos Aires, and this is simply because they are very expensive here. So if you like driving around in new cars and going to wine and cheese parties in nice condos there is little doubt that you can save a bomb by doing it in Buenos Aires. If I liked that sort of thing I would probably live in Buenos Aires too.