The Good Manner: Advice on Thailand from WoWasis’ Pa Farang
This week’s dilemma: How do I find an apartment in Bangkok for a 3 month stay? 

Hello Pa Farang, 

We live in Australia and wish to base ourselves in Bangkok for our winter. How can we rent a one room apartment, close to rail/skytrain transport. How much should we budget for the expenses. Thank you. 

–  Thomas 

Dear Thomas, 

A lot of this depends on your budget and requirements. By the latter, we’d mean that if you want to be close to an adult entertainment district, you’d want to be close to Sukhumvit line BTS Skytrain stations Nana, Asoke, or Perhaps Phrom Phong. Although you can get a nice one bedroom apartment near Skytrain for 20-25k baht, most would be 1 year plus leases and you would have to do the walking around yourself. 

In your case, if just for 3 months then serviced apartment is way to go. Check out this list: http://www.bangkok.com/hotels/serviced-apartments.htm  Prices are listed. 

In terms of overall budget, you can eat for as little as $10 per day USD in street stalls. You can also spend $100 per person on a pricy Western dinner at a fine restaurant. We’d recommend buying a cheap mobile phone for $25 USD, and load up minutes by buying phone cards at 7-11. Pa Farang goes to the Telewiz shop at the Emporium, where he buys bulk minutes which end up costing me 7 cents USD per minute for calls to the US. I spend about $5 USD per day at my corner WiFi shop for internet service. These shops are ubiquitous. My overall telecom costs are roughly $50 USD/week, but I use the internet a lot and call overseas frequently. Beers at most bars cost $3 USD. 

A couple of caveats. Our pal Neal, who himself looked recently, found real estate agents  not to be  a good resource here in Bangkok, and ended up getting house by himself, just by walking around. In your situation, Thomas, you’ll want to do it over the internet. For those of you looking for a one year rental, or perhaps (gasp) to buy a place, read the excellent WoWasis post called Building scams in Thailand: Why is my concrete structure falling apart? 

All in all, Bangkok’s pretty inexpensive if you budget correctly, and I hope the above figures have helped. Best of success, Thomas, and enjoy your stay in Bangkok! 

Mariyat-dee, 

– Pa Farang 

Read Pa Farang’s other columns for more advice on relationships and cultural matters  in Southeast Asia