++

unfortunately lol69 ain't going anywhere. This thread is talking **** about Thailand are only things that give his life meaning.

It depends what type of lifestyle appeals to you.

I like to live directly in the center of a city and be able to step outside my apartment and have dozens of restaurants, bars, cafés, barber, etc. within 1 km and have solid public transport options or super cheap Uber for longer trips. I also don't want to have to own a car.

For $1k/month that's impossible in any decent American city, on top of that, owning a car is almost mandatory apart from a few prohibitively expensive cities.

So I prefer to live this type of lifestyle in Mexico City. I pay $850/month in rent for a nice 1br apartment in a great part of the city, which is close to your $1k/month price point, but I get world class amenities and public transport, so it's a great option that wouldn't be possible in the USA.

It also depends on a lot on each person's earnings. For low stakes grinders and English teachers, sure the big appeal of SEA will probably be being able to find a decent apartment in a decent spot for a few hundred a month. I make mid 5 figures with the occasional 6 figure year and find that my money goes way farther in Latin America ($50k is very little in appealing American cities).

I'm currently living in Bangkok with my wife and two kids for almost a year now. We thought long and hard before we pulled the trigger. These were some of our decision factors.

Even though I was making around 150k/year in IT we barely could afford a decent living in the Bay Area since my wife does not work and stayed home to take care of the kids. We were considering moving to Houston where costs of living is lower but my salary would drop to 100-120k. And it just seem like my life would be over, that I failed and settled, living in a boring suburb.

We looked into healthcare, Bangkok's healthcare is top notch. The hospital we go to here is world class and is unbelievably cheap, so cheap we don't even feel the need to buy insurance. Service is amazing here. I feel like I want to scream at everyone in the US at how much they are getting ****ed in the ass by the healthcare industry.

Schools was also important to us. Public schools could be bad depending on neighborhood. Private schools costs around 10k usd per year which is quite expensive compare to other Thai costs but isn't more than US.

Food is amazing. It's one of the top features of Bangkok. The variety, quality, and costs are best in the world. It would take too many words for me to do it justice.

We rent a condo that is on top of a mall that is connected to another mall that is connected to one of the main train lines here for 50k baht/month. I just take the elevator downstairs when I want food, groceries, movies, dentists, shopping, or to the resort like swimming pools. Or take a quick train ride to any part of Bangkok. Or use Grab (asian Uber) which is 1/10n the costs of Uber in US.

We can take short flghts (obv pre covid) to many neighboring countries for fun. In US, we got quite bored and felt very limited on long weekends.

We live, to me a luxury life here, for about 50k usd/year.

The only catch is how to make 50k/year in Bangkok? I thought I could do it with poker. Why not give it a shot? If fail, I can always go back to US and settle in the suburbs.

To your point, family and friends is a problem, but it's a problem with moving anywhere, to any other city. It's definitely harder to make new friends here with the language barrier though. I planned to take Thai language classes to learn and socialize with other students but didnt get around to it.

There's a lot more room for personal growth when you step out of your comfort zone.
It's been quite a year of self learning for me.

One thing I find that I dont like here is the heat, Bangkok probably won't be a long term stay. We're now thinking Hua Hin since the beach/ocean wind helps cool things a bit.

Thank you for the thoughtful reply.

Yes I suppose that's true and age plays a big role in this. Perhaps at your age, healthcare is not a concern but for others of us it might be. One of the good posts I read on here - I believe it was in reference to Cambodia - was "don't go broke and don't get sick". Perhaps as a young man you don't care about that, but others might make that a priority.


I disagree with your premise. What if I told you that I pay less than you and I am in one the nicest & safest parts of all of Las Vegas? I assume the entertainment opportunities in Las Vegas would be acceptable to you

You could take the money you save and buy yourself $100 of uber cash to get you started - or health insurance - and you'd probably end up the same since uber is "cheap" in Mexico, not "free". So budget-wise, you're just about where you'd be but you're in a much better situation for any number of opportunities and life events.

Again, I'm not here saying that the cultural experience isn't worth it - I love my trips to Mexico - but the math of it just doesn't seem to pencil when, at the end of the day, you're still a guest in a third-world country.

Great post, thanks for sharing that story. So you moved but you didn't stay within IT? Why not? I also work in tech (or at least a tech-ish role) and am confident that any position I step into next will be remote (I've been remote many times before). Why not be a remote worker from Thailand? Has that made it more difficult to land a job?

I needed a break after more than a decade of work. Thinking of going back to work fills me with dread. It doesn't have to be bad if you have good coworkers but I just feel dread right now, not totally sure why. I have a masters in EE and a PMP, there are some remote jobs but not nearly as much as a developer. I plan to look more into it if I fail with poker.

Being a poker pro and traveling to tournaments has been a dream of mine since I discovered poker in college. I've been on the standard life path all my life, this year has been the first time I actually took a serious risk to pursue something I wanted.

dont start playing poker now if you havent been a pro until now, makes no sense.

I don't get it... why?

i'm guessing that he assumes you don't have much of a sample size to justify being able to put in that much volume profitably and also enjoy it

i totally get why he says this as it's often the case

but i think he's ignoring that you likely do have that sample size considering you're a true OG here with 2004 registration date and just never committed to poker full time previously

also, the way you post about it is very reasonable and humbling, you accept that there's a possibility of failure as well, which few of the "oh i want to be a poker pro" bros fail to recognize

I went in opposite direction of you from poker to pm, did you find a pmp helpful for your career? would it be helpful if you had a liberal arts education ie the dreaded non-technical pm? feel free to pm me if this constitutes a derail

I live in Thailand 3-5 years on and off. Chiang mai and Patong. I stayed 5 months in vegas in two different years. I would take Thailand over this shithole called Vegas any day. Weather is better, partying is much better experience, you have access to beach and sea within 5 minute drive Patong and every time i needed medical treatment i was very pleased without paying a fortune. There is no single aspect Vegas is better than Patong. With 50k in Thailand you get a modern villa or a super luxurius appartment and you need 4x the money at least to get the same quality of villa in Vegas in much worse location

I lived in England, Usa, Curacao, Malta, Thailand, Greece, Bulgaria and other different places. For me Vegas and Usa is the third world country

and just laughing out loud people taking this ILIA guy seriously. Come one guys, he is just a miserable human being. I always had fun with anyone i met in Thailand. Thai people and ''farangs''. I never went out and had a bad experience. I am training muay thai with trainers who dont speak english at all and they call me to play football with them. I met aussies, irish, french, arabs everyone was nice to me but i dont really care what they are thinking to be honest. Everyone has some dark thoughts. I met people who were nice to me but think thai people are monkeys and garbage and i just dropped them from my life. If you think less for a person because they had a worse education or because they werent fortunate enough to have a better job then you arent that much better at all

Thanks for the confidence and kind words! Yeh, I've played for a long time and understand the difficulty of poker, especially the long downswings that will humble you. This can only be learned thru experience/volume.

I'm confident in my skills but at the same time I can appreciate the value of luck. Someone out there is or could be the greatest poker player but just happen to land on the left end of the luck bell curve.

I believe PMP helped me with getting interviews. But I don't think it helps much in IT unless it's like a consulting firm that have contracts with government entities. I recently signed up at Upwork to check out remote freelance and already got invited for interviews (they reached out to me first) because they require PMP for a gov contract. (I declined bc Im not looking for job at the moment)

Lots of truth here!

One small qualification re Vegas being third world. Most of it is, but the strip is quite nice. A condo on top of one of the casinos is good living but it would cost you many times more than something comparable in Thailand.

ILIA has gone off the deep end. I have nothing but good experiences with Thais.

The only thing you should be managing the temperature of my coffee when it gets here. A PMP is not for you.

Where in the heck did y'all visit in Vegas??? The Strip is like 5% of the real estate in Las Vegas and in no way representative of anything in the suburbs.

To be sure, there are some horrible parts of Las Vegas, parts where you think you ARE in a third world country.

But there's also plenty of beautiful parts that are some of the best and safest neighborhoods you could pick in the entire country. If I dropped you in the middle of my neighborhood, you would never guess you're in Las Vegas and you wouldn't think twice about walking alone at night. I pay an extremely reasonable rent, have the world's quietest neighbors and have left my place empty for multiple months (for when I work in other parts of the country) and have always come back to safe home with nothing even remotely in danger.

To say that you would pick a third-world country over Las Vegas is not even a remote possibility.

Lol @ comparing 50k baht villas in the 3rd world surrounded by abject poverty in a country where you have zero rights and are considered barely tolerated to suburban parts of Las Vegas.

Last time I checked zillow you can rent a pretty nice house for that in Vegas which is not exactly in the ghetto.

Yes Vegas has shady parts and people living in storm drainage tunnels and whatnot but that comes along with gambling addicts and the usual homelessness that you have in larger cities.

Now you have all the riots going on but that's not how the US used to be.

I'd take Thailand over Vegas in a second.
If the choice was nakhon nowhere vs Vegas or San Diego vs Thailand it would be a little closer but Vegas specifically vs anywhere of my choice in Thailand ainec?

because it is the hardest it has ever been, and it will keep getting worse. With your level of expenses it will be almost impossible to sustain it with poker if you arent already a top level player or dont have access to great games.

Probs wont have to organize a carpool to get places in third world also

totally agree. there are still good games out there on apps or whatever but they aren't easy to access and you have to deal with questionable agents.

These days unless you are quite good, your options are grinding hard on a major site and barely getting by or risking your money on a app.

That said, if your in your 20s and single I think its still ok to go for it as long as you have a backup plan. But with a family to support no way I'd recommend it.

Nakhon nowhere can be a great experience as they are much friendlier toward farangs because they don't see as many...a genuine friendliness.

been no money in poker for 10 years.

No money in poker everyone's solid

Time to pimp out your Isan GFs on Onlyfans boyos!

She is way to lazy

Like I said, it wouldn't be a snap call to Vegas, I'd have to weigh the pros and cons. If I need to drive 30min just to buy a bottle of olive oil and some form of fermented fish is on the daily menu it's going to be tough to pull the trigger.