How to Live Comfortably in Thailand for $1,500 a Month (Yes, Really)

If you’re still working 60 hours a week and cooking your own dinner, this might piss you off.

Little Outdoor Cafe in Hang Dong District, Chiang Mai, Thailand | Photo by Erik Blair

It’s 6:42 am in Chiang Mai, and I’m sweating through my T-shirt while sipping a 20-baht Thai coffee on a red plastic stool outside the market. A monk walks past. A tuk-tuk sputters to life. The older woman who sells rice porridge just playfully scolded her husband, then turned and gave me the warmest smile I’ve seen in days.

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This is my morning commute. No traffic. No briefcase. No goddamn Zoom meeting. Just steam rising from woks and birds arguing in the trees. Life, as it turns out, is still possible.

I live here — comfortably, even luxuriously by my old standards — for under $1,500 a month.

Let that sink in.

While friends back in the States are choosing between rent and insulin, I’m getting monthly pedicures, never washing dishes, and paying someone to do my laundry. It’s not a fantasy. It’s Thailand. But let’s not romanticize it into a YouTube montage of elephants and beach sunsets, either.