City guides Thailand
Bangkok
Fixed broadband ranked thirteenth in the world, a full-time desk at five thousand baht a month, and a proper lunch for forty. Thailand has also built its entire visa architecture to make sure the country never becomes yours, and it is worth knowing that before you unpack.
Every figure checked 30 Sep 2026
- THB 12,000 to 38,000 Furnished one-bed condo
- THB 5,000 Coworking, a month
- THB 40 to 50 A plate of lunch
- Country Thailand
- Time zone UTC+7 08:25 there now
- Language Thai
- Currency Thai baht (THB)
- eSIM Saily
How far English gets you English gets you through the whole expat-facing layer without friction: BTS and MRT signage, immigration forms, mall staff, coworking reception, hospital front desks and Grab drivers all cope. It stops hard at three places — government offices outside the tourist-facing ones, where the queue ticket and the officer are Thai only; landlords and building juristic persons, where your lease and your maintenance complaint happen in Thai or not at all; and street food, where pointing works and questions do not.
Honestly
Is this your kind of place?
It suits you if
You want a genuinely world-class city on a mid-tier budget and you are willing to do paperwork. The DTV gives you five years, unlimited entries and 180 days a visit with one 180-day extension — nothing else in the region is that generous. If your work is asynchronous, your employer is foreign, your income is stable enough to leave half a million baht sitting in a bank for three months, and you are content to leave every six months, Bangkok is close to the best deal available anywhere.
It does not suit you if
You want any of this to be permanent, simple, or as cheap as the internet told you. The DTV leads nowhere — no residence, no citizenship, no accrual, just a renewal treadmill with a discretionary extension at the end of every 180 days. From 31 August 2026 you cannot even apply from Vientiane; you go home for it, with a police certificate. Stay 180 days and you are a Thai tax resident, and the remit-it-a-year-later trick died on 1 January 2024. Your landlord must file a form within 24 hours every time you re-enter the country or your next immigration appointment fails, and nobody will tell you this until it does. Vaping is flatly illegal. A post about the monarchy is a prison sentence.
Money
What everything else costs
| Coworking, a day | THB 393 | The Hive Thonglor, plus VAT. A week is 1,683 |
|---|---|---|
| Two sois back from the main road | THB 5,000 to 8,000 cheaper | For the same flat. The single easiest saving in the city |
| The twenty-baht train fare | Not for you | The subsidised flat fare across thirteen lines needs a thirteen-digit Thai national ID. Foreigners are not eligible |
Paperwork
Can you legally stay?
| The visa | DTV, the Destination Thailand Visa. Five years, multiple entry |
|---|---|
| How long per entry | 180 days, extendable once in country by a further 180 |
| Where it leads | Nowhere. No residence, no citizenship, and no work for any Thai employer or client |
| Visa-free instead | 30 days for British and American passports since 15 September 2026, down from 60 |
| Tax | 180 days in a calendar year makes you a Thai tax resident on foreign income you remit, at 5 to 35 per cent |
Where to live
Where to base yourself
-
Thonglor
THB 25,000 to 35,000The densest concentration of good coffee, coworking and other remote workers. The Hive is here and you can live without ever needing a car
The catch The most expensive non-luxury option on this list, the nightlife runs late directly beneath the condos, and you are paying a premium largely for other foreigners
-
Phrom Phong
THB 30,000 to 38,000Walkable to Benjasiri Park and the Emporium complex, the most convenient BTS position in the city, and the nearest thing Bangkok has to a functioning pavement
The catch The dearest area here, and the one where you will most comprehensively fail to meet any Thai people who are not serving you
-
Rama 9
THB 18,000 to 26,000Genuinely cheaper new-build stock on the MRT Blue Line, with the business district under twenty minutes away
The catch Bangkok most actively built corridor, which means dust, night work and a skyline that changes around your window. And MRT only, so BTS destinations mean an interchange
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Saphan Kwai
THB 12,000 to 18,000The cheapest of the four by a wide margin, one stop from the Ari cafe strip and still on the Sukhumvit Line
The catch Older buildings, far less English, and no international hospital or mall within walking distance. Everything convenient is a train ride, and the trains stop before your night does
Timing
The best time to come
- Jan Cool, dry, haze starting
- Feb Peak PM2.5, hot and dry
- Mar Haze plus 34.7 degrees
- Apr Hottest month, Songkran
- May Heat finally breaks
- Jun Quiet and cheapest
- Jul Afternoon rain only
- Aug Twenty rain days
- Sep Wettest, 335mm, flooding
- Oct Tapering, emptying out
- Nov Cool, clear, dry
- Dec Coolest, peak prices
Come now Fine Avoid
November to February is the dry, cool season and everybody knows it, which is why December costs what it does. June and July are the quiet counter-intuitive pick: cheap, and the rain is an intense late-afternoon hour rather than a washout.
Two things to plan around. The burning season runs November to early March, and over that window in 2025-26 the city averaged 28 micrograms of PM2.5 and exceeded the national standard on 29 days — an improvement of 15 and 55 per cent on the year before, so roughly a month of genuinely bad air rather than four. And September is the one month where the rain is the reason not to come: 335mm across 21 days, coinciding with the real flooding risk.
Connectivity
The internet, honestly
That is Thailand on the Ookla global index, thirteenth in the world. It is a national figure from early 2025 and a Bangkok median does not exist publicly, but the point stands: a condo fibre line will not be your problem.
Your problems are the ones bandwidth does not fix. Cafe wifi is shared, unmanaged and behind a captive portal you re-authenticate through every ninety minutes — fine for email, unreliable for a call you cannot drop. The air conditioning is aggressive and the tables are built for a forty-minute coffee, so at lunchtime you will be the person with a laptop at a two-seater, and in the better places you will be politely moved. The Hive day pass is 393 baht, about eight cheap lunches. If you take calls, buy the desk.
Work
Remote roles open to someone in Thailand
A remote job is not in any one city. These are roles whose employer will hire someone living here, pulled from the board as you load the page.
Eating
What to eat, and what it costs
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Khao gaeng, rice with topping
THB 40 to 50Point at two or three things behind the glass and they go on rice. The default weekday lunch
-
Pad kra pao
THB 40 to 50Stir-fried holy basil with mince and a fried egg on rice. The dish Thai people order when they cannot decide
-
Guay teow, noodles
THB 40 to 50Noodle soup built to order at the stall. One of seven staples the Ministry of Commerce tracks
-
Fried rice
THB 40 to 50Same bracket, same survey. All four rose by five to ten baht in 2026
Days off
Worth a Saturday
-
Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew
THB 500The one unmissable thing in the city, and the ticket stays valid seven days. Thai nationals enter free — this is official, printed on their own site
-
Khao Yai National Park
THB 200Thailand most accessible big national park from Bangkok. Thai adults pay 40, so the foreigner price is five times the local one
-
Chatuchak Weekend Market
Free to walk inFifteen thousand stalls, and the only place in the city that is genuinely about the crowd
The rest
Things the other guides leave out
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The twenty-baht train fare is not for you
The subsidised flat fare across thirteen lines and 194 stations requires registration with a thirteen-digit Thai national ID. Every guide reports the twenty baht. Almost none reports the ID
-
The ninety-day report is your job
Stay ninety consecutive days and you file form TM47 in person. The window opens 15 days early and closes 7 days late, and filing late costs about 2,000 baht. Leave the country and the clock restarts
-
TM30 is your landlord job and your problem
The property owner must notify immigration within 24 hours of a foreigner moving in — and again after every single re-entry to Thailand, even to the same address. A missing TM30 is what stops your extension at the counter, and the person who failed to file is not the person in the queue
-
Vaping is illegal, not restricted
Possessing or using any vape, pod, e-liquid or heat-not-burn device is against the law. The FCDO states it plainly
-
Criticising the monarchy carries a long prison sentence
Including what you post. This is not a formality
-
What gets stolen
Bag-snatching from motorbikes, theft from unattended bags on buses and trains, and passports taken as rental collateral. Never hand your passport to a rental business
Work out whether you can actually afford to go
Every role on the board says which countries you can live in and still take it, so remote means remote.
Every figure on this page was checked on 30 Sep 2026. Prices move and rules change; tell us when something is wrong and we will fix it.