Watching the pennies in Thailand

Keeping a tight hold of those purse-strings

Before coming to Thailand, I never thought it would be expensive here. After traveling in Vietnam, we arrived and I was aghast at our first night's attempts to find a cheap place to stay and all the while comparing the room prices here to what you would get in Vietnam.

Partying will keep you poor

Postbox letter from Jonathan

Life is what you make it here. If you need to party and live a lavish life style then you need a big wage. I think you can live very well on 30,000 a month and you don't need to splash out on western food. It really is not that expensive if you shop sensibly

The market is flooded

How have the floods affected Bangkok's property market?

Tens of thousands of townhouses and detached houses - most no more than three storeys high - have been inundated by up to two metres of flood water. And it's even deeper in some areas!

How did salaries drop so much?

Postbox letter from Ronald

What in the blazes has happened to the salaries in the Thailand teaching profession?

A dream lifestyle in Thailand

Does Chiang Mai offer the perfect place to live and work? Well, live anyway

I'll put my hands up and admit I've been somewhat unkind to Chiang Mai in past blogs. On past visits, I've usually had the job of playing tour guide to my ageing parents and a couple of their friends. It's never easy to move a group of elderly folk around a sizeable Asian city without having every tout and unofficial tour operator descending on you from miles around

How expensive has Bangkok got?

Have you noticed how much more we have to pay for things?

I’m not coming at these price differentials from the angle of an expert economist. I’m just an average Joe consumer who looks at the prices on menus and clothes tags and wonders what’s wrong with this picture.

Four times the salary of a local Thai?

What a load of bullshit!

Nothing irks me more than reading that statement and you see it all over the web wherever the topic of teaching in Thailand is discussed or promoted. It’s a statement that’s both grossly misleading and wildly inaccurate.

Thailand on 30K a month

Is it feast or famine?

With many teaching positions on the ajarn jobs page paying 30,000 baht a month (some even less) forum member Hollow has decided to put things to the test and record his daily spend. Many employers tell us that 30,000 baht a month is enough to live a very comfortable lifestyle - even in Bangkok. I've heard Thai people describe that kind of dough as 'luxury' Then again perhaps that's a load of old tosh. So does 30K a month enable you to lord it up right until the last day of the month or are you going to be stumbling through the final week on a diet of pot noodles and tap water? OK Hollow. Pencil? Notebook? Let's begin.

Low teacher salaries

Is ajarn.com partly to blame?

No, ajarn.com isn't responsible for low teacher salaries - at least not according to Louis Minson. Louis says that not presenting a realistic picture of the overall job situation would be sweeping things under the carpet.