How much does it cost to live in Thailand?
Well, that depends. Living in the islands is much more expensive than living in the north, we spent the last month in the north, few days in Chiang Mai and a month in Pai, so the prices I’ll write are the ones in the north and actually, out of season (the high season starts at October)
Accommodation:
Let’s start with the basics, how much will cost to rent a house in Chiang Mai / Pai?
You can look for a house or an apartment in AirBnb / Booking.com / Agoda, we would recommend to do it if you are arriving to a short visit as a tourist or, if you plan to look for a house while you are here.
It is important to see and feel the area of the house, it can be noisy or quiet, maybe the area smells and maybe it is actually heaven on Earth, either way, the best way to know it is to be there.
In Pai, we reserved a hotel room for the first 3-4 days, then we took our motorcycle and start riding in the area looking for a nice home for a longer term. You can also look for a house in facebook market or in the relevant facebook groups (Pai familiy, House for rent in Pai) but there are not many rooms there.
Bottom line, prices are vary from 5000 baht/month for a house/room with shared bathroom/kitchen and a fan and may go up to 60000 baht/month for a 3 beds room /bath in the Lamon area.
We found a nice apartment in an apartments hotel, price was 15000 baht / month. (room with A/C, bath and a little kitchen), On October the prices are double than that…
Transportation:
You can either use taxis or better than that, “Bolt” which is the most common transportation app around here (especially in the cities, less in Pai), prices are pretty cheap and the service is usually good and fast. If you’ll try to order longer rides (outside the city) it might be a little harder to get although you’ll receive cheap offers in the app, the drivers will send you a message asking for more money or simply cancel the rides.
The other option is to rent a car or a motorcycle. The prices start at 800 baht/day for a small car or 100 baht/day for a 100-110cc scooter and go up as the car/motorcycle get newer/bigger.
In most cases you will be asked to leave a cash deposit or your passport, we never leave our passports anywhere, so the deposit is our preferred option. For the car we had to deposit 5000 baht, for the motorcycle 2000 baht.
Monthly rates start with 13000 baht/month for a car at the local agencies and 3000 baht/month for a scooter.
Food & Drinks :
If you were looking for a house in Thailand you probably noticed that the kitchens are usually outside the house and with almost no cabinets, the Thai people hardly cook while they are at home, they will usually buy their food as “take away”. The local food is very cheap, you can buy Pad-Thai from 20 Baht (although most of the places will sell it for 50-70 baht) and a Papaya salad from 40 baht.
Western food, on the other hand, is more expensive. a woods oven baked pizza will cost ~170-290 baht (depends on the toppings and the place) , Pasta will start at 250 baht and I guess you got the idea… 🙂
We found out that we spend around 400-600 bahts/day for food , for the both of us (we usually eat 2 meals in our home and one in a restaurant)
The fun stuff 🙂
Ok then, we understood how much it will cost us to drive/ live in a house/ eat, Is that it?
The answer is no. now we got to the fun stuff 🙂
You can be in Thailand without doing a massage, foot massage will start at 150 baht for 45 minutes and may go up to 200-250 for an hour.
Thai massage will cost something between 300 to 500 baht for an hour.
Would you like a rafting adventure in the Pai river? get ready to pay 2200 baht for a full day experience.
Would you like a private boat for few hours tour (5-6-7 islands)? no problem, 2500 baht.
We can go on and on, there are so many attractions here that we can fill the blog’s disk…
So how much does it cost to live a month in Thailand???
Actually, today we are exactly 1 month here. we are humble people 🙂 , we didn’t do any massage or tourist attractions (yet), we live here, in Pai, spending few hours every day writing our blogs/working and traveling during the other part of the day. so far, we spent ~1000 usd. We eat the local food (which is great), we eat in the walking street, it costs ~200 baht for a couple of people and we are happy 🙂