No criticism towards you, you're a mak mak good poster

Same, but euro imports are ridic overpriced here and I prefer to have quality food so what can I do

mai kao jai

level itt? (there, i said it)

I agree that moving without any money is a bad bad bad idea, but do you know if playing 100nl in thailand 50 hours a month is realistic to be able to live on ONLY poker money? (I get $500 a month in rakeback at that rate, plus winnings..) or should I also supplement the rakeback with teaching english?

I will bring with me enough to pay 6 months bills up front.. plus 150k to get me settled.. is this a good amount to start with or still too unrealistic?

TY, I will be in touch

I'll never understand people who constantly want others to make life decisions for them.

Get to know the costs of your kind of lifestyle and decide wether your poker winnings are enough to support it or not and if not wether you want to live on your savings or try to get some busto english teacher job that surely won't pay more than 1k USD.

Also nobody wants any money upfront aside from the usual 2 months deposit + first month rent.

Also why do you talk about rakeback but not winnings unless you're a break even player.

Why would you repeat the question again? I've already laid out what living in Thailand will cost you, and less you can live on the $500 in rakeback you make. However if you want to go out drinking and stuff like that you will need more.

The Average thai office worker makes about $500 us a month so it definitely possible to live on that amount of money. You won't live like a rock star for that though.

If you can make 2BB/100 hands playing 100nl then you are better off doing that than teaching english. Language schools don't pay much. However if you want to do it for the experience and to meet local people then it might be worthwhile if you think you will enjoy it.

Acombfosho,

I think the question you want to ask yourself is how much have you made money from poker (incl. rakeback) in the last 12 months per month on average and then think if that is enough for you here

I think you missed the point of my post which is that you can live better on the same amount of money in Thailand than you can live at home.

If you make $500 a month in the US you are living on food stamps. If you make that in Thailand you can live a reasonably comfortable life. So for someone who is grinding low limits and making 1k a month they will probably actually have a much better time in Thailand than they would at home.

The average Thai lives on 200 baht per day. That's less than $200 US a month. $500 US is more than double that, you can live quite comfortably on that amount of money in Thailand, end of story.

Hourly winnings at 20NL have been $10 USD per hour over a 50k sample, at 50NL, small sample but about $14 an hour, rakeback is about $5.50 an hour on top of this..

The reason I think only relying on rakeback is better is because it is always consistent, and is always proportional to the stakes you play and hours you put in.. so its more like a reliable hourly wage.. where as some months I have just beaten break even over 20k hand stretches, and others won 30bb/100 over 20k stretches.. so poker winnings is not a good thing to have to rely on.. as its so much more swingy, so I tend to look at it more as a bonus than as an income!

thanks for all the responses..

I will hopefully meet a few of you guys and have a few beers

I don't live here permanently, I spend 6 months a year in Thailand and 6 months a year at home. Basically I follow the summer. I live in Koh Samui and grind $22-$33 sitngos on Party.


You can get any meal you like for 120 baht. I guess you mean snacks in between and stuff like that? Truth be told I usually only eat 2 meals a day. The heat ruins my appetite. One of the reasons I like coming here is because I always lose weight.

I'm not at all. I'm more referring to the guys in the chatter thread who quote crazy prices for everything.

That's not much more than what I quoted really.

I think he could, yes. Of course it depends what he wants. But plenty of people come over here for the first time, teach English and survive, and they'd be making less money than a 100nl player.

If anything it would cost less to stay here long-term.

Even if you aren't staying forever it's still better to buy. If you buy one for 10k and sell it 2 months later for 8k, you've still saved yourself 4-6k on rental. And that's assuming you sell it at a loss which might not be the case. Because I think you can get 10k for a wave anywhere.

This is what a lot of people do when travelling through more expensive countries. I did it myself when I lived in the US. I bought a cheap car, cost me about $1200, and then I sold it when I left for $1400. If I had have rented a car for the 3 months I was there it would have cost me about $5,000 usd. Now that might be nothing for some people but as far as I'm concerned it's a ridiculous, unjustifiable expense.

Like I said it depends entirely on the person, but plenty of backpackers, english teachers and retirees live here on the kind of figures I'm quoting, and they are hardly starving in the street. Really my point is that you don't have to live like a rock star in Thailand if you don't want to. But some people (like Journeyman above) can't seem to understand that not everyone needs to have a budget 20x that of what is required in order to enjoy themselves.

If someone asked how much the cost of living was in your own country would you give them a figure that included living in an executive apartment block in the CBD, eating at a 4-5 star restaurant every night, and attending the most fashionable clubs in town 3-4 nights per week? Of course you wouldn't. You'd quote them the cost of living in the suburbs, cooking most of their own meals and going out maybe 1-2 times per week. Because that is what the average person does.

If you wanted to live like the Thailand chatter thread in Australia you would be looking at about $10-12000 a month. Needless to say the vast majority of people here live on much less than that and are hardly "busto".

what? At least 90% of the western population is not going be comfortable living on 500/mo. that gets you a small apt usually w/o ac, street food every meal, and almost no money to spend at your leisure. sounds pretty ****ing horrible.

555

the average thai is used to living in much worse living conditions than the average american. the average thai is used to the tropical heat and does not need ac. the average thai loves street food. the average thai never gets charged farang prices on anything.

i agree that in most cases, you can live better in thailand for the same amount of money. but $500 is just ridiculous. and most people that come to thailand are going to want tiny western comforts such as a decent apartment with ac, occasional western meal, and, if it's their first time here, they're going to want to go out at night quite a lot. so while some of the prices in the chatter thread are 'crazy', you're going in the complete opposite direction by telling people who haven't been here how well you can live on basically nothing, which simply isn't true. as an absolute minimum, i would want at least a budget of 1 - 1.5k/mo.

The price I quoted $500, as I said many times, doesn't include spending money. Just accommodation and food. As I've said before there's no point trying to estimate someone's entertainment budget because it depends entirely on the person.

And you can definitely stay in an air conditioned apartment, and eat western food every day for $500 a month.

In the US it might get you a bed in a dormitory at the YMCA.

I know someone who does that in BKK.

His apartment is waaay out, no BTS or MRT and if you pay 3k for your apartment you surely don't want to pay 1k+ for electricity.

All the western style 50-100 baht meal restaurants here I've seen so far have crappy quality food, same goes for most hawkers.

Won't kill you, but definately not healthy.

I would rather live in europe on welfare than in thailand on microstakes amounts without insurance etc.

I'm guessing some places in Thailand are cheaper than others?

Out of the 4 main places, Bkk, CM, KS and PK, is there a big difference in what you get for your money?

How big a sport is basketball in Thailand? Are there public courts everywhere?

How much does a Finnish Sauna cost (dry heat)?

Can you get mobile broadband usb sticks over there?

so as a winning (but swingy) NL100 player with 1k+ rb every month (have also another poker "business" that makes me about the same atm)
that mainly wants to save money and have time to grind Im cool?

fwiw Im half indonesian and have been to indonesia many times,
so food/climate etc is no problem for me

edit: oh and Im a heavy weed smoker, I guess I could live with like 2 joints a day tho,
is it easy to get and not get caught?
have read alot of stories about undercover cops and dealers ratting out their customers

I don't think baskeetball is big in Thailand. Not many Thais playing in the NBA

there aren't any Thais in any of the major european football leagues but they still love the sport.

basketball seems pretty big here, second only to football i'd say. you see tons of BBall courts around BKK.

Bangkok is about twice as expensive as everywhere else in Thailand.

Not to mention the hardest place to get around in. Also there's no beach.

So I guess Bangkok is ok if your primary reason for going to Thailand is for hitting up nightclubs and trying to hang with celebrities. But there's a reason most expats live outside Bangkok.

Pattaya is 1 hour drive from Bangkok, has better internet access, has a beach, and everything costs about half what it does in Bangkok. Samui/KPG are about the same cost as Pattaya, the internet isn't quite as good but it's more relaxed to make up for it.

Northern Thailand is ridiculously cheap, but there's not much nightlife to speak of.

BTW I take insurance when i go to Thailand, it costs about $50 a month and covers you against injury/indemnity/theft.

Thailand is a little bit more expensive than Indonesia but not a great deal.

If you must buy weed in Thailand, don't buy it from Thais. Buy it from expats, very few of them work for the Thai police.

phuket is quite a bit more expensive

not really. the skytrain or mrt can get you most places pretty quickly. and if you live in a good area there's really no need to leave your street all that often.
you're right! but there are beaches close by and an international airport that has direct flights to most places in the region. it's not hard to get yourself to a beach if you want that.

lol celebrities.

usually because they're old and poor. there's a reason a majority of young people (that i've met anyway) prefer bkk to anywhere else in thailand.

i can't imagine living in pattaya. that would be awful. samui would be nice though.

I think the nightlife in Chiang Mai is better than Phuket and Samui. I wouldn't really consider living somewhere else.

Does Chiang Mai have beaches? or at least beaches near by, like within 40-30mins?

Also, to stay fit, aside from basketball, I'd like to train in Muay Thai Kickboxing.. but, I've never done kickboxing myself, only Judo, are they pretty fine with having foreigners who are clueless about the nuances of Muay Thai around?

Pretty hard to compare like with like in this case. There are cheap places in Phuket too, most of the 2+2ers live in Kata though which is the most expensive place on the Island.

In Phuket, Samui or Pattaya you can walk to the beach every day. If you are a person who likes the beach (and there are quite a few of us) having to drive for an hour or fly to one is a pretty poor comparison.

Quite a few young people live on Samui and KPG. Big cities just aren't everyone's thing. Samui and KPG are backpacker meccas.

There's a lot more to Pattaya than just walking street. It is actually a very popular place with expat families due to cheap rents, beach and proximity to BKK airport.

Nah, there is far more nightlife in Phuket and Samui than in Chiang Mai.

Samui is home to Thailand's rave scene and Phuket has more bars in clubs just in Bangla Road than in all of Chiang Mai.

The nearest beach to Chiang Mai is in Myanmar (Burma).

You can do Muay Thai just about anywhere in Thailand. They also have Muay Thai camps where you pay a fee for everything including accommodation/food for 2 weeks-1 month and get drilled like boot camp or fat camp.

They have one of those joints just near where I live in Samui

http://www.wmcmuaythaicamp.com/home.html

I'd actually like to know what that reason is. I've been to Bangkok about 5 times and it never really impressed me. What can you do in Bangkok that you can't do anywhere else in Thailand?

hotter selection of chicks. that's basically it.