I am often asked what it costs to live in Thailand. I would like to enclose a list of the costs in various areas. To say is that I live in the north of Pattaya and Pattaya is def. not the cheapest place to live in Thailand, but it has the big advantage that as a foreigner you can get almost everything that you need in between.
In Bangkok and other very touristy places like Phuket, Koh Samui etc. it will be about the same. If you live in the country, rent, food, electricity, etc. are even cheaper. You can also buy many products such as meat, fish and vegetables at the many different “markets” in Thailand for less. The food details below are prices from shopping centers such as Carefour, Tesco Lotus and BigC.
Warning: I know a lot of emigrants who first lived outside, somewhere in the country, where there is a town nearby but almost no tourism or, better still, almost no foreigners live. There you get almost exclusively only Thai food and that doesn’t include cheese, bread, honey and much more. Many came back to the cities sooner or later. So before you decide to emigrate, you should think hard about it and possibly live both for 2-3 months. Even if you love your “tirak” (favorite in Thai, which is usually the reason to emigrate) so much and absolutely want you to move to your village, think about it, because it won’t be long and the whole family will live at one home but do this another time;)
Here is a list of different areas. The costs listed here are guide prices and are intended to give an impression of the average cost of living in Thailand . The conversion rate is available here , basically you can currently divide the baht into €: 45 and divide it for CHF: 28.
