Thailand REAL Cost of Living in 2023？ (surviving on $500 per month)

Hello, welcome back to a new video. So

today I want to talk about cost of living

in Thailand. As someone who lives in

Thailand for quite a few months now, I

thought I'd make a video about how much it

cost me to pay for rent and food and

electricity.

So first of all, the rent of my condo or

apartment. For some reason in Thailand,

they don't call apartments apartments.

They call them condos, like condominium.

So I can't show you my condo for privacy

reasons. But I can give you a brief

description of what it looks like. First

of all, it costs about 10,000 baht per

month, which is like $300 or £237,

which is insane for what you get for the

price. I was living in Manchester and I

had an apartment which was probably less

than half the size of my current condo in

Thailand, and I kid you not, I was paying

like £900 a month for rent plus nearly

£100 on electricity and water. I really

didn't like my place in Manchester. It's

small. The bedroom— there wasn't really a

bedroom. The bed was just in the living

room with like a semi kind of half wall.

It wasn't really a proper wall because it

didn't completely go around the bedroom,

and it was just like a small narrow

corridor. It was in a very nice building,

the Beetham Tower, with a very nice view,

but the apartment was so tiny. In

comparison to that, I feel like this condo

I'm living in is huge. It is massive.

I've got a proper massive bedroom that I'm

sitting in here now, which is actually a

proper bedroom divided from the living

room with an actual wall and a door. And

there's a living room which is like 1.5

times the size of the bedroom, which is

also really nice. I don't like having the

bed in my living room. As someone who

lived in Japan for quite a few years in

one-bedroom apartments where it's

basically just one big— one room, I

wouldn't even say it's a big room, it's

just one room with a bed in it plus like a

kitchen in the corridor And I don't

like having the bed in the living room

because when I wake up, I like to close

the bedroom door, get out of the bedroom,

and not see the bed again until I go to

bed in the night. So I really cannot

stress enough how nice it is to have a

separate bedroom and a separate living

room. The living room's really nice. It's

got a big sofa and it came with a TV, and

furniture came with the place, so we

didn't really have to buy any furniture

apart from a few things like some

pillowcases, bedsheets, and the topping

for the mattress because the mattress was

pretty hard. And we've also got a separate

kitchen room which is like half the size

of the bedroom, which is also really nice

because again, I'm used to living in

Japanese apartments where they don't

really have a proper dedicated kitchen.

They just have a hallway and then like a

counter with a sink and a stove and some

space for chopping food. That's not really

a kitchen. I consider a kitchen to be a

completely isolated room where you do

cooking, which is what we have here. And

it's really nice. We also got a very nice

balcony with a great view of Bangkok, and

we live kind of central. I'm kind of

doxxing myself now.

Maybe I should cut that. We do not live

central at all. I lied. We actually live

on the outskirts of Bangkok, and still the

price is pretty good considering we're so

close to the center of the capital city of

the entire country. I mean, can you

imagine living in London, on the outskirts

of London, paying £240 for a really nice

high-rise condo? I really doubt you'll be

able to get anything like this. I mean, a

place like this in London would probably

cost you like £1,500 a month.

Easily. So we got a nice place, really

big. I'd say it's like 120 square meters.

It feels massive. Maybe you don't think

it's big if you live in like a big house

or detached house somewhere in Europe or

America, but me, as for me, someone coming

from living in a lot of small tiny

apartments in Japan, I feel like this is

easily the biggest apartment I've ever

lived in, and also at the same time the

cheapest apartment I've ever lived in.

Plus the building has its own gym and

swimming pool downstairs which you can use

for free. So yeah, that's like $300 a

month for a rent— for renting a place like

this. That's really good value for money,

I believe. So we also have electricity

bills. I mean, electricity bill is

peanuts, it's like $30. And I'd have the

air conditioning on quite a few hours

during the day because it does get very

hot. I mean, it is Thailand. And during

the nights, we usually have the air

conditioning on all night long as well.

And still the electricity bill never

really goes above $30 or $40 for the whole

month. In comparison to when I was living

in Manchester, I was paying like £60 to

£70 a month for electricity, and that was

before the whole cost of living energy

crisis began. That was back in 2021. So I

can only imagine that the electricity

bills have gone up even more in the UK.

And as for the internet, I used to pay

£40 a month for fiber optic internet in

the UK, and here I don't actually have

have internet. We don't have a wired

internet connection in this apartment

because I just bought an unlimited

SIM card at the airport which cost me

1,000 baht, which I think is probably like

£15, and you get unlimited data, 5G

connection, and it's really good. Now

coming on to the food bill, so we go to

the supermarket maybe once a week, maybe 5

times a month, and every time we go to the

supermarket we usually spend about 2,500

baht or maybe 2,000 baht because we get

some discounts in savings. Last time we

went to the supermarket was yesterday,

and I think we spent 2,070 baht, and we

got quite a lot of food. So I'd say in

total we probably spend like 9,000 baht,

10,000 baht a month on food. But that's

for 2 people. If you're living alone, you

would obviously be paying half that. So

I'd say about 4,500 baht a month for

food. 4,500 baht is about $130

or £100. So for 2 people, I would say £200

or nearly $300. So in total, we got the

rent, $300. We got the food, $130 plus

electricity, it's like $150, plus $300.

I would say my monthly expenses for the

bare basic stuff— rent, food,

electricity— is like $450, or maybe

just round up to $500 a month for the bare

basic stuff. So yeah, I really feel like I

have a good quality of life considering

how much I'm paying. It's not like I'm

living in poverty. I'm not living in the

slums or some crap hole. I've lived in a

lot of countries. I've lived in Japan,

Berlin, Rotterdam, Manchester, and this is

honestly the cheapest place I've lived in

and also the best and nicest place I've

lived in. Hello, welcome back to a new

episode of Cooking with Daniel. So since

we talked about food and shopping, I

thought I'd show you what kind of food I

bought yesterday and the dish that I made

using these ingredients. I'm gonna make

the perfect stir-fried beef pho with

vegetables. Okay, so first of all, you

want to get your slab of beef and slap it

around a bit. Maybe you want to tenderize

the beef a bit because it can be a bit

chewy, and then cut it into strips so it's

easy to put into your mouth.

For seasoning, I like to use this garlic

and herb seasoning, so I just sprinkle

some of that on top of it, and then I also

add a little bit of salt sometimes, but

today we're not going to use salt from the

beginning because I'm going to use salted

butter for the sauce. Okay, so we're going

to need onions as well, so chop those up.

And we're also going to use some Japanese

mushrooms. Going to cut the ends off and

then just put it all into the frying pan.

You want to cook the onions and the

mushrooms first. Actually, you should cook

the onions first before anything, because

something I keep doing wrong, a mistake I

keep making with my cooking, is I don't

cook the onions enough and they keep

coming out crunchy and raw even though

I've cooked them for quite a long time.

So I think I need to start adding the

onions first before anything else. So

yeah, just fry that up until it's golden

brown.

And then we're just going to drop the meat

into the frying pan too and cook that all

together until everything's golden brown.

And this is where I add my secret weapon:

salted butter. Now we don't want too much

butter. I just wanted to cut off a little

knob, but I kind of had an accident and

dropped the whole thing into the frying

pan.

And that is how you make perfect

stir-fried beef with onions and mushrooms.

Now in hindsight, it wasn't salty enough,

so I added a bit more salt. And also the

beef was kind of chewy, so I don't know if

I needed to tenderize the meat more or

maybe just get a better cut of beef. The

beef was kind of cheap. Sorry, it was like

not a very good cut of beef. Maybe

something more like a wagyu steak would be

better.