nonthaburi

My favourite at the moment is the Swissotel on Wireless Road , purely for the garden and pool which is amazing . A lot of 4-5 star hotels do 3 nights for the price of 2 deals . Having said that I have stayed in places for 2 quid a night .

As to Thai food being cheap , it can be cheap . Street food might only be 60-80 pence for a meal but the quality might not be that great and the portions may be small as well . You always find people saying you can live for 2 pounds a day etc but what kind of food are you eating . A lot of street food is very unhealthy and it may have been sitting out on the street for hours ( if it's a curry ) in pollution . How hygienic are some of these stalls as well ?

Shard

Are people still saying things like that (£2/day) stuck in some kind of 1980s time warp ? The great thing about travel in Thailand these days is that you get fantastic restaurant food for about half the price of the Europe or NA. It's a false economy to travel half way around the world and try and spend as little as you can on food. A bit like going to the US and scouring the country for the cheapest hot dog.

nonthaburi

Didn't say I was doing that , I said I have stayed in places for 2 quid a night . I was a lot younger then and I didn't have a wife and kids . Swissotel right now is about 5000 a night so my 2 quid a night days are long gone .

As for food , I'm a bit biased because my wife is a trained chef . We don't eat out much . I eat far better at home than I ever would in a restaurant . Guess it depends what kinds of restaurants you go to . A lot of places are hit and miss . Personally I wouldn't travel halfway around the world to spend as little as possible on food . I just gave some example prices of how much street food costs . As I said in my post I try to avoid street food ( the cheapest food available in Thailand ) for various reasons .

wwinit

Street food stalls are actually part of Thai culture. If you like to explore 'true' Bangkok and Thailand, you should try some street food, especially around Yaowarat and Sukhumvit areas, and observe people's communication, i.e. body language, smiles, etc. Apply your universal precaution though. When you see a stall with lots of customers, that means the food is good and clean enough to eat, but also beware of food poisoning. All Thais have some microbes in their guts and developed appropriate immunity over a period of time, which is different from farangs. You can certainly live on £3-6 a day with street food. Bon appetit!

Shard

Live for £3 per day on street food? That's 135B at current rates, you must have a very small appetite!

HannahJ38

May have been mistaken with £10, that is just what they told us, it is definitely possible to stay in Hotels still about 4* for around £30.00, mind you, with that being the case, when there were three of us staying in the room, we were able to split the price down the middle, so we were only paying around £10.00..that's how i think it appears cheaper.

Shard

That makes a bit more sense!

Alan2005

I used to live near silom and ate on soi convent quite a bit. Not every day, but at least once or twice a week. There was a place right outside molly mallones (or whatever it's called now) that did good khao man ghai; it was still there a year ago and was 40 baht or so per portion.

As for the bolded bit, it's actually not true. The stuff living in your gut adjusts to the local cuisine after a week or so and Thai's are not immune to getting food poisoning. (Luckily during my 3 years in bangkok I was never sick once and I ate pretty much anything except insects and that dancing prawn dish)

wwinit actually suggests £3 to £6 and I think that is doable quite easily. There are also lots of places that straddle the line between street food and food courts; the sort of places that office workers (like I was) use every day for lunch. You can easily be full on around 100 baht.

bakedbean

oh please.......

nonthaburi

I think that most of my issues with street food come down to a few points :

1) Location - if you're in a busy area then the chances are that there is going to be a lot of traffic about . If that food has been sitting around for a while ( curries , chicken for Kao Man Gai , Kao Moo Deng , Kao Ka Moo etc ) then it will have been in all those fumes for a long time . Even if the food is freshly cooked , if you are sitting down in that place you are going to be in all those fumes . Not very peaceful either . Maybe it's because I'm older now but I would rather sit down somewhere and have bit of peace .

2) Health - people often say how healthy Thai food is . Well some of it is if it uses fresh vegetables and things are boiled or steamed . But the vast majority of street food is going to be deep fried and obviously this is not going to be healthy . You also notice with a lot of the curries that the meat has a lot of fat on it ( sometimes as much as half ) . I don't like that . Many people will also load things with MSG . If it is being cooked there and then you can tell them not to put it in but a lot of things are ready made already so you have no choice .

3) Size - I find the portions can be a bit on the small side .

4) Noodles - totally personal but I don't like noodles and a lot of street food is noodle based .

5) Taste - can be very hit and miss if it's actually any good or not .

The only street food I tend to eat would be a namtok or laaab where I can tell them to cut all the fat off the meat , it's not fried and the salad that comes with it is freshly washed .

Years of being in Thailand have made me quite fussy , and I've been spoiled by my wife for so long that if I'm eating street food then it will be because I have no other option .

ontwo

100k baht a month is tight, but doable.

I lived there for 4 years and spent 250k baht a month, some people see that as over the top, but I did what I wanted to do and enjoyed my time there.

I could move there on 100k baht a month, but I would not be living it large.

Shard

What kind of things did you do on your 250K/month?

ontwo

More to the point would be what kind of things you could do on far less.

Some people I know got by on 40/50k baht a month, but they did not go out much, on 100k baht a month, you could certainly go out more, but you would be budgeting.

nonthaburi

Come on , don't be shy . What were you doing ' living it large ' on 250k a month . I'm curious . Expensive house / women / drugs / holidays ? or what ?

Give us a break down of an average month .

Shard

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