I'm replying to myself because I just managed to get a IONOS instance running in Kansas City (same distance from east/west-coasts) for low-and-behold 1€/month with unlimited data (18GB SSD and 512MB RAM). How is AWS/GCE going to compete with that?

One gotcha is that if you come from the EU you need to register via ionos.eu and there is a registration fee of 10€ for each instance!

Also looking at VPS in china now, Shanghai is pretty well placed in the Asia region: Edit: VPS is crazy expensive in China (10x-30x more expensive than IONOS and that is without data which also is 20x more expensive!), I suggest using AWS as backup to GCE over there, probably want to stay outside of the firewall in Asia if you use port 80, atleast if your other Asian customers are more important than your China customers to begin with.

Something is off with the prices globally right now, the US is like on a permanent firesale when it comes to non essential goods, but to live there is impossible!?