squirrel oh my gosh she just jumped from true to tree okay so i wanted to have a video where i just
kind of tell you about the upfront costs or what it costs to live in chiang mai right now in 2022
so i want to make clear that not everyone's going to pay the same price or similar things you might
prioritize things that i don't prioritize i might prioritize paying more for things that you
wouldn't so every person's price and what their monthly cost is going to come down to what they
like to do where they like to live what they like to spend their money on how much they're willing
to spend how much they want to save everything's different everything's different for everyone
so make sure that you remember that everyone's different first of all so i'm going to be focusing
on these sort of categories for this video there's obviously things that i have missed there's
obviously things that aren't included uh there's a whole bunch of things that are just extra costs
along the way but basically this is what we'll be talking about i would like to also say that i'm
not on a like a backpackers budget or anything like that i personally don't like to backpack i
like to spend a little bit more money where i get something that is a little bit more comfortable
for me we don't go lavish we don't go extra we might for a night or two in an extra hotel for
uh anniversaries or birthdays we have gone away to a couple of places and spent some money on some
really nice hotels but for basically usually one night um but for the rest of the time we get an
apartment or somewhere to live or an airbnb that isn't maybe the cheapest thing but is it the most
expensive by any means so we like to sit somewhere sort of in the middle we aren't skimpy on the
budget but we don't spend a lot either so there's that to think about so i think first things first
is living so there's a couple of ways to do it here and i am by no means an expert in living in
thailand this is my first trip and i've only been here for four months so take what i say with a
grain of salt and if you have any more suggestions or advice for anyone else watching this video
leave them in the comments below and maybe they can take your advice on board as well as mine
we have done airbnb and we have also leased this place for the next three months as well because
we haven't really done hostels we've done airbnb apartments or leasing apartments we're in niman so
niman is probably i would say the most expensive area we prefer to spend the money on living
somewhere where we can walk to everything maya mall is right around the corner basically we have
coffee shops cafes street food restaurants all within a very short walking distance of us and
our neighborhood is so homely we liked that feel and we liked being sort of right in the center of
everything so if you wanted to save some money you could definitely look at places outside of
newman like santa and places a little bit further away and i've seen places that go for like 200 ish
dollars a month 200 australian dollars so that's u.s and thai baht at the top or on the screen
but that is so cheap and so affordable but uh you are obviously further away from most things that
people would want to do in chiang mai so a bike rental would probably be essential because there's
not really any public transport here besides song towers and grabs but since we've come back here
we've decided to lease this place to work through perfect homes and this is what we have for now
this is how much this is per month but that's divided between michael and myself so for two
people it was that but for me personally and for him halved it was that so that's a monthly price
again it could probably be cheaper so i'm happy with the price and that's okay obviously not
every apartment is going to have this view every apartment is different but this is what we got and
the view of this place pretty much sealed the deal for us the day that i took this footage
the mountain is very smoky it's about to end smoky season but we're still in smoky season and rainy
as well it's also rainy um in chiang mai right now coming in some wet weather season or rainy season
so the mountain was pretty much covered but i'll see if i can find an instagram a photo i did or
something instagram story where you could see the mountain from these windows because the ceiling
to floor windows and seeing that mountain right in front of us is is crazy i think it's only 35
square meters i'm pretty sure so we did sacrifice the space for pretty much this view sometimes
usually once a day go out onto the balcony we don't have a table and chairs set up there so i
basically sit on the floor usually with my phone and just sit in the heat and enjoy the mountain
and sometimes i sit out there with a cup of tea and i just enjoy life here for
a little bit so i do love that about this place now transport uh we don't really take
song towels we do take grabs the exact cost i'm not sure depending on where you're going about
100 baht is which is about three or four dollars to go generally where we have gone every time
obviously on average sometimes it's a little less i'm sure sometimes it's a little bit more but if
you're taking a grab it's about four dollars but if you don't want to get a bike yourself
factor that into the cost that you'll probably be spending that every time you want to go somewhere
we rent a bike so this is how much that cost per month and then between the two of us it's
this much each and we got a discount for being returning customers so it might be a
little bit more the other thing as well is when we came to chiang mai last time a few months ago
because me and michael have um packed on some extra kilos we are a little bit heavier than we
normally are at the moment uh we actually got told to get the biggest bike possible which is
a forza which was the most expensive bike so we paid for that last time but halfway through
we had a little accident with the bike and it went back to get fixed good one it goes like this
and the whole like bike had fallen on its side the hill was like this
and we parked it like this and it just like fell on its own went and got a replacement bike which
was the smaller bike that we would have sort of we normally have gone for and it was okay for us and
it's obviously a cheaper price because it's not as big of a bike the size of the bike you need
obviously matters and how long you're renting a fall there's probably day prices and stuff
okay so the other thing that comes with an apartment or living somewhere is the
utilities and water and electricity and whatnot so this is roughly how much we spend on that um
i'll put something for on the screen there for you so remember you have to pay that as well
even if we got airbnbs and we still have to pay for that so keep that in mind now the other thing
is a phone bill but we prefer to go with a plan it only cost 300 and something bar per month and we
get unlimited data i don't really know how many minutes because we don't really use the minutes
we just use the wi-fi and we just message each other over like instagram or something
we have to facetime with wi-fi so we don't really use the call minutes or anything like that but you
get unlimited you can use that whenever and it's month to month so we can cancel out whenever we
want to as well if you're staying here for a long period of time i would suggest getting your phone
obviously rather than just using wi-fi and things just to be safe and sure but that's what we do
okay so food now this is really hard because it depends on what you eat or what you like or what
you want to do where you want to get your food from we like a mix of thai food and western food i
prefer more thai food most of the time but michael does go through these phases where he prefers some
western food so western food in thailand cost more it doesn't honestly cost as much as actually
at home it is still almost half the price but it's still a lot more expensive than the other
food options you can get here in thailand we do a mix of we mainly eat out so we basically will
eat out for almost every meal of the day i don't like to cook i can't cook very well and eating
out here is so cheap and the food is so good you honestly would almost be a little bit crazy not to
but for reference you can get a dish made and you can get food from anywhere from about 40
baht to maybe 80 baht lunch and dinner so times that by two you can sort of work it out from
there how often you'd like to eat a meal out and that's the average price on how much it will cost
i generally find a meal is about 60 bucks ish now shopping i filmed a shop for you now this keep
in mind is a shop that we did when we moved into this apartment and we needed everything we needed
shower gel we needed salt and pepper garbage bags things like that that you don't really think about
when you have an airbnb because it's usually there for you but this is all the things that we had
to get so this is basically a starting up your life shop not like a general shop at the shops
so that costs us this amount now we both walked away from that being like how did that cost so
much money we went back through it and we both got deodorant that we didn't need we got like three of
them we probably only should have got one things like that so there's a couple of things that added
up so there was a thing a few things in there that you would not need if you weren't setting up a
house like this we didn't need to buy like pots and pans thankfully the house had them here for
us the owner is really cool like that so keep that in mind that you won't need half of those things a
day-to-day shop is cheaper than home way cheaper that was the most expensive shop we've ever done
here in thailand usually if we go for a top-up of things it cost me about 20 to 30 that was more
than double that also michael got some vitamins that were like 20 each so it's just it wasn't a
very expensive shop and you probably wouldn't need to do that again and we probably wouldn't need to
do that again so the other thing is co-working the whole time we've been in thailand so far
we haven't gone to a co-working space we have sat at home we have a few desks here we generally have
always had a place that if it doesn't have a desk it has a dining table and we've just used that
from there we've gone to cafes niman is amazing i feel like so many people work online here that
cafes are totally cool if you buy a coffee or two like me and sit there and work for a little bit
and that's how we've gotten all of our work done here so far this time we decided to go
with a kirking space this was probably the most expensive thing that i didn't even really want
to pay for but this one is right on our street and then it's 24 7. um but it is super expensive
you definitely don't need to do this you can work enough especially because it's our full-time jobs
if it's not your full-time job you don't need this at all so cut that out of your costs we
don't normally do it it was this much so it was quite expensive like i said it's definitely not
necessary so keep that in mind now the next thing is coffee coffee is an essential for me i spend
probably the most amount of money i do on anything on coffee so you can get a coffee
from anywhere from 20 to 30 baht on the side of the street all the way up to about 100 120
bucks for the most expensive coffees i've seen so the middle ground for that i think is about
50 to 70 baht that's probably a really good price for a cup of coffee here in niman now i like to
prioritize a good tasting a good barista made coffee but you can get some really nice coffee
here for any price actually but my point is is that i buy about three to four coffees a day
but if you're having just one you can honestly splurge you can save you can do whatever you
want with your coffee budget but i think it's essential because i spend so much on it
so the last thing that i have is the gym so again if you're not even into health or fitness you
don't even need this cost don't worry about it but for the people who are looking to keep up their
fitness levels i love go gym in santa nam i wanted to come back to chiang mai to be able to train in
that gym to work more on my health and fitness this is how much we paid for three months they
had a promotion on those so it might be a little bit more might be less who knows and that's just
for me so affordable for such an amazing gym so i think that's just about everything there's
obviously miscellaneous things like if we go get medication or band-aids if i buy five coffees one
day and one coffee the other day price obviously always depends on what you want to spend it on
right basically that's it i hope you enjoyed this kind of cost of living in chiang mai in 2022 it's
been a really amazing journey in thailand so far and i hope that you would like and subscribe i do
different kinds of videos as well this is sort of a different video for me but let me know if
you like this information in the comments below and let me know if there's anything else that
you want me to sort of go through with you again i'm an open book and i'm happy to help anyone if
you have any questions for me leave them in the comments as well and i think that's about it but
make sure you like and subscribe like i said we have all of these amazing trips coming up to pai
and other provinces and uh some more food and some more street food and some more adventures put the
notification bell on so you can see when they're coming up and i'll see you in the next one bye