One Month Living in Bangkok for $980

I am not doing very well at reaching my $1,500 a month allowed budget but I guess that is OK. Pattaya came in $350ish under and now Bangkok comes in $500 under.

terminal-21-chicken-cashew-nut-cheap-food-in-bangkok

37 baht ($1) Chicken cashew nut & rice meal @ Terminal 21 food court

A few notes, once again I do not count any travel costs in this so no plane ticket, no taxi to the airport, this is a budget for what I would spend if I lived there. I did include a 500 baht ($14) fan I bought, of course I wouldn’t have to buy one each month, but I still included it.

Also I had a UTI that basically took me out of action for 2 weeks. So maybe I would have spent more had I not gotten that. On the other hand I did pay 3200 baht ($90) for a soapy massage which I wouldn’t do again, and I got way more bj’s then I needed when I was clear of the UTI.

I am quite surprised at how little I spent, and while I have ripped on Thailand pretty hard throughout my stay I must say that being able to live walking distance from the nicest malls in the capital city for this little is a huge plus.

Condo In Bangkok For $361

My rent was 12,000 baht ($337) and I was walking distance from Soi Cowboy, Emporium Mall, and Terminal 21 mall. Boom! Thanks jspill for that tip. It was a serviced apartment called Liberty Place on Sukhumvit Soi 22.  Just watch out for the crazy front desk lady.

My electric and water combined was only 850 baht ($24), and even though there were signs up saying 500 baht room clean charge on check out they didn’t do it. Buying a fan is a great way to save on AC, even if only in town for a month it is far more worth it to buy one and throw it out then to just use extra AC.

Food – $267

This is the one that really surprises me because it definitely felt like I was spending a lot more. Particularly once I got the UTI a week in I started to spend more on food since I wasn’t spending anything on entertainment.

There were some things I found really good about the food in Bangkok, and others that I didn’t like as much. Starting with the good the pastries are so much better in Pattaya and Bangkok then they are in Phils.

I probably had 20 danishes from the Tops bakery and they were excellent. They would go on 2 for the price of 1 around 7pm and I took MAJOR advantage of this.

duck-noodles-coconut-pier-21-food-court-cheap

Coconut, duck and noodles for $2

Tops is located under the Robinsons department store that is right next to Terminal 21. There is a really good cheap foodcourt down there where I ate for around $3. You can get a shrimp omelet and rice for 40 baht ($1.10), and then some random chicken dish to go with it. Great value.

The main place I ate was probably at Palm Restaurant on Soi 18. Once I realized that the lunch menu was a bit cheaper then the day menu I was going there for lunch and getting take out often. Their 90 baht pad thai is the best pad thai I had in Thailand (but not as good as a pad thai in Angeles City hehe.)

Another great deal I took advantage of was that Pizza Connection on Soi 20 right near Sukhumvit had buy 1 take 1 pizza’s all through the month I stayed there. I think the promotion is done now but I am not sure. At 290 baht ($8) for one 13inch it was decent value. But 2 for 290 baht was excellent value.

There was also a place in Terminal 21 where I got spaghetti and meatballs and was able to get 2 meals out of it, though there really weren’t enough noodles for 2 so I had to get a big ciabatta from Tops Bakery.

Then on floor 5 of Terminal 21 there’s a big food court with cheap dishes, perfect for cheap ThaiCupid dates.

Overall the food was good but not great, finding good places to eat was pretty hard, and lots of the places near Sukumvhit were quite expensive for Asia. Granted I was looking in the biggest touristy area in the capital city…..

If I lived there long term this would probably be closer to $250 as I hope I wouldn’t eat danishes and desserts so often. But while I was around some good ones I wanted to take advantage.

Entertainment – $304

That 3200 baht soapie was by far the most I have paid in Asia. It was actually more than twice as much as I have ever paid before. Considering that the hot girls at Nataree don’t do body to body massage before the bang I would not repeat. Also Nataree got shut down shortly after, but jspill had a good time at MITU nuru massage on soi 33.

Outside of that the only things I paid for were 700 baht ($20) BJ’s at the various blowjob bars or massage shops around town. I got a 3 my first week, then did the soapie and realized I had a UTI.

After 2 more weeks I had about 9 days left and went and got 6 more BJ’s. Also in the mix were 1 freebie girl off ThaiFriendly and 1 freebie girl I met on the BTS.

Long term if I lived there I would probably get maybe 12 BJ’s from the bars a month and then hopefully have a few freebie dates that would cost in the $5-$10 range. So $300 a month is pretty representative of what it would be.

Then again I was quite bored there with nothing to do and the BJ bars were quite tempting, might be hard to only head there 12 times a month :).  Of course many guys that go here will spend a lot more in the Gogos and freelancer bars but I don’t usually go into them.

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jspill snapped this pic in Crazy House gogo, Soi Cowboy

Taking a dancer home to bang from a gogo bar will set you back about 700 baht barfine, 2500 short time, and a 170 lady drink to butter her up. Total $95. I prefer the BJ bars.

Random Stuff I Bought In Bangkok

I spent about 500 baht on internet, 400 for my month of mobile 4G, then I had to add on an extra 2GB once my 4.5GB ran out. I had Wifi at my place but it sucked half the time so I had to use the mobile data to work.

I also went to an internet cafe to download some stuff because my Wifi was crap that day and I really wanted to watch it. Internet cafe was 50 baht an hour, in Philippines it is generally 20 pesos ($0.4) an hour (again baht is stronger then peso, so that is an even bigger difference then it appears.)

The fan was $14, and I had to buy some small stuff like soap and a toothbrush. The soap was 27 baht and that was the cheapest bar! In the Philippines you can get bars for 12 pesos :(.

The UTI meds cost me $12, another small annoyance about Thailand is you have to buy a full box of pills even if you only need a few. I know this is how it works in most places around the world, but in the Philippines you can buy by the pill.

Total cost of living in Bangkok about $980 for the month.

As much as I dislike about Thailand I can’t complain about living in a place where I could spend under $1,000 in my first month while being as centrally located as I was.

Particularly when there are many BJ bars I can walk to in 15 minutes and get a very good BJ for $20ish. If you would have told me that was possible before I left the western world I would have snap hopped on a plane.

I still don’t think I will ever live in Thailand because certain parts about it annoy me, but I am sure I could enjoy my time there if I did.

34 Responses

  1. jspill says:

    Internet cafes are 15 baht/hour in On Nut. Ones you looked at are the equivalent of Burgos Street ones, which are about the same price

    Bar of soap is 50 pesos at the Ministop by Fields Avenue Angeles 🙁

    • kick2dante says:

      lol cool just spend 45 baht and 30 minutes to bts out to on nut any time i want to print something

      bar of soap is 11 pesos at SM across the street

      • jspill says:

        And I’d have to go quite far from burgos street to find a cheap net cafe

        And soap cheap if you go to foodland over the road

        • jspill says:

          Next time what you can do is put what you need to print onto a usb and hand it to the guy, costs 5-10 baht per sheet of paper that way, no need to use the net cafe’s computers

          Anyway pretty sure there are cheap places you just didn’t find yet

  2. RumandCokeMan says:

    Wow it sounds like the Phils are more expensive than Thailand.

    • kick2dante says:

      it depends on the life you want to live, condos and food are cheaper in thailand if you are going to eat a bunch of thai food

      freebies from girls are easier than thailand, if you are going to go to manila and pay burgos girls then thailand will be a lot cheaper

      in the end for me it all just about evens out, can live anywhere in SEA for 1k give or take a couple hundred bucks

      • jspill says:

        Debatably easier freebies in Thailand because online dating is way bigger, more girls on the dating sites and apps

        More discos, more everything. A better girls to guys ratio and low competition cos so many Thai guys go into military service, monkhood, are gay/trans, or are picky about dark skin girls. Thailand basically has a caste system.

        And pinays are hard to get round, flaky, texts get delayed, poor 3g coverage, worse traffic and infrastructure

        Also most guys seem to think Thais are hotter, to me about 1 in 50 Pinays is decently hot walking around a mall, whereas in Thailand my head is turning every 5 mins. So if a guy is picky it might take more searching

        If a guy is any of these though – old, fat, poor hygiene, poor dress, kuripot, doesnt do nightlife, prefers the Pinay look over Thais, doesn’t use clear pics on dating sites/apps out of paranoia, or doesnt really pay for dating sites in general, then all that is cancelled out and the Philippines becomes easier

        (I’ll be moving to Phils when I’m old and out of shape)

        • SouthernAdventurer says:

          I’m already out of shape and still young 🙁 but I’m still told daily I’m very guapo (handsome) in the Phils. Walking around here makes you think your a model. It can go to your head.

    • jspill says:

      If you’re staying for years you’ll save a lot of money not needing to do visa runs in the Philippines. Ideally 3 years to get the most out of it.

      • kick2dante says:

        lol

        less girls that speak english, less girls that like foreigners, and 10x as many foreigners around…. but its debatably easier in thailand…

        the fact that you had to include all the caveats of ‘if you dont’ and ‘if you aren’t’ pretty much proves that its easier in phils

      • jspill says:

        Depends on the person, take a guy who makes no effort at all, Phils is easier

        Take a guy who makes an effort, then Thailand is easier because that extra effort pays off more than it would in the Philippines

        It’s like how you left Cebu because you got tilted by really flaky pinays, and walked around malls for days but didn’t see any 7/10 or better girls for months, then said that you saw more on the Bangkok skytrain in a few days than in all that time (or whatever it was)

        There is an upper limit to how much effort can pay off in the Philippines, and you hit it in that situation. If you just can’t find the girls, or just can’t get them to come over because of flakiness/infrastructure/mobile data issues/them having less disposable income or free time to consider a hookup with a foreigner, then there’s nothing you can do

        Whereas Thailand really has a much higher upper limit and more options. It just depends how much effort you want to put in.

      • Dace says:

        if im looking for hot girls its thailand easily. not even close about the girls

        but i do think its less competition in phils. tons of good looking guys in thailand

        if i want to date then phils easily. i rarely see a young guy in phils that isnt completely busto

  3. kick2dante says:

    wouldn’t have to go far from burgos at all, five minute walk could get you to one

  4. RumandCokeMan says:

    JSpill I’ve heard tons of Americans rave about the Phillipines (in person and YouTube) while the Brits love Thailand-why is this so? It’s like the UK and Thailand are really tight, same deal with the Phils and US.

    Thailands almost like a British colony.

    • jspill says:

      My theory is Americans tend to like super bubbly, outgoing, loud smiley reactions / attention, a bit more than Brits and Euros who tend to be more reserved. The ‘Hi Sirrrrr / Good afternoon Sirrrr’ stuff annoys me a bit in the Philippines, whereas Americans with their service oriented culture might be thinking wow this is great.

      And Pinays especially like Americans, you’ll see them following US culture closely, wearing basketball vests etc. and they all want to leave the Philippines to move there so I guess it’s even easier to bang / wife up there if you’re American.

      Maybe Americans want somewhere that feels a bit closer to home / are less adventurous on average? 1 in 10 Brits don’t live in the UK, permanently. Thai girls tend to want to stay in Thailand so that suits Brits that don’t want to go home. Whereas Pinays want to get out and Americans will be happy to take them to the US, more often.

      • SouthernAdventurer says:

        This. Nothing sucks more then having a girl not laugh at your stupid jokes. In the phils you can just saying something and even if you realize half way in its actually not funny you just laugh and they’ll laugh with you like its funny as hell. I’ve always had a way of making women laugh but here you can even when its not funny. Just crack a smile and chuckle and they will too even if they hardly understand English.

        Can’t comment on Thais yet though.

        • jspill says:

          Same in Thailand, they laugh and joke a lot

          Both countries have the ‘saving face’ cultural thing where they don’t want to offend you so maybe that’s part of it, they’ll smile and laugh along even if it’s not funny or they don’t understand

      • RumandCokeMan says:

        1 in 10 Brits? Wow!

        You guys seem more adventurous on average and definitely better as communicators due to a rich culture. Brits I’ve met like to joke and talk about their life experiences without being over the top loud cheesy and dorky like mainstream Americans who are often like a Chevy Chase character.

        I read America is ranked 17th or so in developed countries for educational standing while the Brits are top for the West. America is built to make a few old sociopaths rich via their corporations and control of politics through their lobbying efforts. It seems like EU nations care more about their people than America. UK war vets aren’t homeless and denied like American ones and UK college students don’t owe 100k for a shitty degree that’ll land them a 50k corporate job if they’re lucky.

  5. Akog says:

    Question time
    Going to Phil in Jan for test run for 2 weeks them Thailand 2 weeks
    I have enough money to last a year but donti and jspill what do you guys do for jobs there

    My issue is no college ed but i have skills in building html sites and excel skills wonder if i can parlay them to online jobs while I’m there to extend my year away from states

    • jspill says:

      I write for a poker site, started off just applying to a job ad asking for freelancer writers, and eventually got a full time position with them.

      I wrote more in depth about that in a guest post on SMP blog: http://singlemansparadise.com/playing-online-poker-in-thailand/ Read the comments too

      Dante is paranoid if he tells the world what he does it’ll create competition for him, but if you read some of the Reddit forums about working online that I talk about in that post you can prob find it

      Worst comes to worst you can easily find some basic data entry jobs on Craigslist, or do freelance writing about random boring topics for low rates, just to get some experience, then find something more interesting later

  6. Dace says:

    lol shits on bkk food, and eats bakery products all day

    and pizzas

    its unbelievable to eat that shit bakery food when thai food is by far the best reason to live there

  7. guy says:

    pics of thai friendly girl or didn’t happen

  8. Anonymous says:

    How much do you guys have saved up in the bank?

  9. Anonymous says:

    Do you have contact details for the place you stayed in Sukhumvit? Price sounds amazing for that location, I might see if I can stay there next month.

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