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If you dont like sex tourism it is ur mental problem. Feel free to agitate in your europez but please leave my thailand as is. Every girl has a right to do anything and its not your business.
> ur mental problem Lol. It's "mental" to see whores, pimps, and johns and recoil. On the contrary, a malfunctioning disgust reaction to these things is more clearly a symptom of mental illness.
Thanks for the post, I now feel like I want to do similar thing sometime in my life. Is there any other interesting, safe, cheap place where you could live comfortably using at most $1000/month?
Turkey. It's cheap, the variety and kinds of food is incredible and there is no racism at all since all western and asian cultures are mixed there. And the universities are completely free in Turkey, which leads the middle class grow faster and provide the companies dozen amount of engineers every year
1. Bangkok is not cheap. If you want to have a life that resembles anything you're used to coming from a Western country, you're going to live in Bangkok and you're going to live in a relatively expensive part of the city.
Yes, you can live in a concrete block with plastic furniture and eat noodles on the street every day. You can probably get by for not much more than $1k doing so. When you can no longer stomach that, you'll find the city is quite expensive.
A decent apartment in a favorable part of town will cost you $1300 - $2000 per month. I don't mean a family-sized place, I mean a 1 bedroom with a "livable" amount of room and furniture that doesn't give you the willies.
Once you're sick of your local noodle vendor you'll find food prices quite high as well. My wife and I spend more on groceries than we did when we lived in SF (we shopped at the Safeway in the financial district). As for restaurants: We grabbed two meals outside yesterday. One was dim sum that came to about $30 for the two of us. The other was a tonkatsu place and the bill came to about $25. While that's probably cheaper than the US (for the same quality) that's hardly a meal for $1. We spend over $100 for a meal often. I don't know anyone (Thai or foreign) that would consider that overly expensive.
Wine and imported beer are expensive and the taxes are going up. American craft beer is going to go up to $10/bottle direct from the distributor. If you can stomach the local swill (think Budweiser without the quality control) knock yourself out.
When you're sick of taking taxis and the BTS/MRT, have fun buying a car at 50% - 300% above US prices.
2. Visas are not easy. If you really want to fake it here it means constantly traveling in and out of the country. The problem with that (beyond the fact that it usually means traveling to the least interesting parts of the surrounding countries) is that they limit it to a certain number of tourist visas for every six month period or something similar (I can't remember the actual rules, sorry).
The common way around this is to use a "visa service" which basically means you're paying someone to bribe someone to look the other way. It's not only illegal, the rules for it change seemingly month to month, based on whoever ends up in a position of power in what embassy.
To do it properly: a) register a business with the requisite capital and Thai shareholders, b) get the appropriate visa c) get a work permit. I've been through it. It's not cheap or easy.
To not do it properly means breaking the law in a country where you most likely don't speak the language. Have fun with that.
3. Sex isn't everywhere. My wife and I go out for drinks 1.5 times a month and I can't remember the last time I saw a prostitute. If you're going somewhere with a free flow of hookers then you're probably seeking that out. I see young people do this quite often -- the only difference between these young people and so-called "sexpats" is that young people often go "ironically". They're all equally as stupid.
4. The local talent pool is mixed. The entrepreneurs here are generally managers, not doers, so you're probably never going to find a technical co-founder. Programming/technical ability on the whole is quite low. Try browsing the website of any publicly traded Thai company and you'll see what I mean. It is possible to find good graphic designers, administrative types, etc. Salaries are low here so that could possibly be an advantage. Having said that, I know people who have built large tech companies (100+ employees) and the consensus is that the disadvantages here outweigh the advantages. Most people I know in tech here outsource to Eastern Europe or somewhere else.
Investors are hard to find and mostly unsophisticated in relation to tech. Tech-savvy ones do exist, but they generally buy companies outright and keep you on as a glorified project manager.
5. When you're ready to put down roots, you'll find doing things legally is an expensive pain in the ass and -- here's the kicker -- you'll have to give up 51% of your company to one or more Thai people. If it's not someone you've known for a decade then, well, good luck with that. Yes, there are ways around this but they require you to put your company in a legal gray area.
6. Inflation isn't rampant. Cost of living has gone up considerably on the scale of decades but it's pretty hard to notice in a few months.
I've lived and built two companies in Thailand over the last 14 years. Before your pop your Macbook Air in a backpack, read my points. 1. Bangkok is not cheap. If you want to have a life that resembles anything you're used to coming from a Western country, you're going to live in Bangkok and you're going to live in a relatively expensive part of the city. Yes, you can live in a concrete block with plastic furniture a…
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> I heard it's the same in China. Not in this case: they specifically target foreigners working without permits here, though mostly English teachers. China isn't really a cheap place for bootstrapping a startup, so the random foreigner coding in starbucks isn't going to attract any attention. Kai Fu's Innovation Works, a YC-style incubator, can help get foreigners working visas for incubated projects, I think.
or you can take university classes, a win for both the visa and language situations. the random foreigner who replies to a couple of job listings, has industry experience, and can crank out more than php or javascript spaghetti (because there are plenty of good developers here who will work for much less than sv wages) can definitely find startup-like situations. or maybe i just lucked out, dunno.
The low end tech scene is quite vibrant but wages for competent dev's keeps going up. China really just isn't that poor anymore; though you still have plenty of kids who are poorly trained but willingly to work hard on the cheap.
Most foreigners outside of the few American tech companies are entrepreneurs and/or managers. I'm quite unusual as a researcher.
Be careful about that cultural isolation. I'm an arch-introvert with mostly online friendships. I lived in a small mountain community alone for a year and was happy enough. But I tried working from Ukraine for 3 months, and although it was fascinating, the cultural isolation made me leave. It's a strange feeling, almost like you aren't on the same plane as the society you're in, or as if you're watching from a bubble…
Cultural isolation defines me as a person. So no problems there. How did you like Ukraine? Where were you based? Was it cheap and comparable to Thailand for a place to bootstrap in?
I was in Luhans'k, an industrial city with a college district, located near the eastern border with Russia. I worked remotely from a euro-style ($1200/mo) flat. It was 4 years ago.
I loved walking around the city in the snow, looking at shops and markets. The local tech scene was pretty much dead, at least for a foreigner who didn't speak the language. It might be as cheap as Thailand, but probably less accessible and fun. I have yet to visit Asia. I couldn't handle continuing to bootstrap there because of my isolation.
Edit: I think you'd have MUCH better luck in Kiev.
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And that is great if you are a US-citizen, but otherwise not so much. Even coming from rich Scandinavia and the EU, we are not welcome.
I think it's possible to live quite cheaply in most of the eastern members of the EU.
Thanks for the post, I now feel like I want to do similar thing sometime in my life. Is there any other interesting, safe, cheap place where you could live comfortably using at most $1000/month?
That's certainly more than enough money to live pretty well in Berlin, though a tourist visa will only give you 90 days in the Schengen Area.
You can do well with 1000 eur/m per person tho.
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This has been discussed often, some web sites keep cost statistics. For example, Google: living costs london cluj (I was outsourced to Cluj, Transylvania in Romania. I recommend it. 250 Euro/month for a nice, central 50 m2 apartment. People are nice, it is safe. Different. Beautiful women. Mountains, but no sea. University city. The food is very good, but could be more international -- a few sushi places and one(!) I…
If I had a choice personally, I'd go for Japan. For culture/food. Isn't that too expensive? I have no first hand knowledge, just what I read sometimes about it