yes sir, no problems with that at all

big heads/faces only pls!

is your location accurate or are you just getting my hopes up ?

back to that thing about traveling with porn on your laptop, is it illegal to have such material in ones possession? :/ even the legit stuff? what about 12 on 12 interracial midget porn?

Ok I'm booking flights tonight, coming to Phuket in early June and staying for three months. I'm just wondering about how much money I'm going to need to live off per week? I'm a student so I can do things pretty cheap, I survive on around €130 a week ($200) in Ireland excluding rent, is it possible to spend the same and live an ok lifestyle in Phuket? From reading the thread the average seems to be about $1500 a month which seems pretty expensive to me, from what I've heard about Thailand from friends that have visited. Is it just the fact that you are all living a baller lifestyle that it seems so expensive?

It's not illegal to have porn, just embarrasing, save child porn / snuff / bestiality?

It's certainly possible to live there cheap. Although phuket is the most expensive city in thailand, so its less possible. The 1500$ to me seems quite low, if you are living life there as a tourist id imagine it would be closer to 4k (with rent) a month. If ur not going out and partying everynight, then you could live pretty cheap, but not a 2+2 life style.

If ur not going to be getting tons of girls, and scuba diving ect.. and want to live cheap I would suggest going to Chiang mai. It has a small 2+2 following there, and everything is dirt cheap. You can get a nice hotel room for a month for 300$. Food, booze, activities, rent are probably 40+% cheaper then phuket/bkk.

It's low season so that is in your benefit.
I'm gonna run off some #s making some assumptions.
Some of them could go up or down depending upon your prefs.


OK, a quick and dirty appraisal. (all in THB)

Housing: 15K/mo Stick you in the Kata Beach Studio (In low season they do some pretty decent monthly deals) This is excellent location in heart of 2p2 land and <300m from nice beach. Walking distance to a bunch of restaurants.

Transpo: 5K/mo. You gots to rent a motorbike if you want to stay in teh Phuket. (4K/mo for rental ~1K/mo on petrol) The petrol estimate is purposely VHigh becuase you are not coming here to sit in your room all day. You want to ride around and see paradise, like everyday)

Interwebz: 9K all in for up to 6mo. The KBS has free wifi but since you be grinding you'll want to lay out the 9K for the aircard plus its 6mo prepay.

Foods: 10K/mo. This assumes ~330/day which is tight but doable. If you only ate at "Red Chair"(formerly "Guay Jab") which is a fast, good Thai restaurant like 100m walk from KBS, you'd be full of delicious Thai food at around 90THB/meal. The slack in the 330/day assumes your gonna want an occasional Farang meal like a Burger or pizza or pasta or whatnot. So you could prob splurge on that like 2-3 times a week at ~300/meal(farang food).

Going Out ~10K-30K. This really depends upon you and how often. GOing to the kata Night bazaar which a few of us for a few drinks/beers can bee 300-1K. GOing out in Patong can get expensive depending upon where you hit. Prob a decent assumption to expect to spend around _500/night on a low key chill some drinks night and at least 1K/night on a clubbing crushing Patong night. The best way to get value on big nights is to go with a group and bring your own bottles. Most clubs let you bring in your own bottles and charge a ridiculously small corkage fee that also includes mixers. Doing it this way is ridic cheaper than just buying single drinks.

Womenz No estimate available. Totally depends upon you.

Seeing stuff If you are here, you might as well do some one off trips like Phi Phi Island. 1 day trip there ~1.5K. Maybe a Full Moon Party if you are young and into beach raves with scandis and aussies. A 3 day trip there on the cheap would prob be ~10K.


So adding up:
15K housing
5K Transpo
10K Food
10K going out (using low end of range)
---------------------------------
Monthly nut = 40KTHB ~ $1200

BUT you still have the 1 off aircard cost + any 1 off trips (which i hae to assume you'll make at least the Phi Phi one)


You could squeeze on the housing with a concerted house hunt but at the 3mo and less stay time it's hard to get too much discount. Perhaps you could find a significantly less nice place for 12K/mo.

I think you couldn't really go much lower on the food w/o cooking a ****on of your own meals which is silly when a great Thai meal is only 90THB.

Also, you need to add some more discretionary THBs on there esp for the unknownz like womenz.

Hope that helps.

EDIT: Thinking about it. You can def do better on price but not necesarily on value on the housing. I could prob find you a 6KTHB/mo place in Phuket Town, but is that extra 9K worth it to be much, much farther from beaches/nightlife/2p2 community?

That same bike you are paying 4k per month to rent, you could buy a used one for 12-15k, and sell it again when you leave. Seems silly to rent if you know you are going to be staying 6 months. Even if you resell it for 30% less than what you paid for it that works out to around 5k baht for 6 months.

I bought a used Honda Wave in samui for 10k, there are plenty around that price and unlike in the west if something goes wrong they are ridic cheap to fix.

sticky this! (newteabag works for kata beach studio obv)

nice post. can't wait to get out there

I understand what your saying. But, there are a few BUTs.

This specific dude is only coming for 3mos.

Also, I don't reccomend inexperienced drivers try a manual motorbike until 1st getting some safe road experience in on an easier automatic.

Also, the hills/mountains of Phuket are prob a bit more challenging than the Samui ones. 100cc manual MBs just are going to have a lot of trouble putt putting a big farang up and around these hills.

For Phuket, our concensus, is that 6mo is basiclly the break point on buy or rent. >6mos it's worth the buying reselling hassle for the savings. <6mos it's not a whole lot of difference. Oh, but that's what you just said. SO we agree.

I prob should get some affiliate payments from them, but, alas I don't.

BTW, schreech/ kap arai, discovered KBS some 2 years ago when they 1st opened. Being the renting fish he was, he paid 30K/mo but I saw the place was nice, had cooking facilities, rooftop pool, and is a pretty damn good location.

I know the low season prices are much lower from both their website and driving by last low season many times seeing a blackboard out front advertising monthly rates of 15K.

Well, waves aren't really manuals. They have an automatic clutch which is much easier to ride than a truly manual bike with a clutch.

Actually the opposite is true, which is one of the big advantages of non-automatic bikes. You can stay in low gear and get up and down steep hills with no ploblem, where an automatic would struggle because the gearbox would keep shifting up and down. I weigh over 100kg and never had any problems getting up hills in Samui, granted I wouldn't have won any races doing so but that's not the point. Thais drive these bikes up hills with their entire family on board lol.

Plus there are other bikes than waves which you can buy cheap.

Quick Search for bikes under 20k baht in Phuket yielded 5 results: http://www.bahtsold.com/index.php?re...ory=44&price=1. Most of them are automatics.

The reason I always mention Honda Waves is that they are a good bike to buy used since everyone is familiar with them and pretty much any Thai male knows how to fix them and will do it for 100 baht + parts.

Hey guys... I keep reading (in the faq and other places) about the need to stay in lower sukhumvit if you're staying long-term. Well.. how low is this exactly? 15, 20, 50, 100? Thanks guys... sorry for the noob question

Ladprao Rd.

30 sqm, A/C and hot water obviously, really nice building and grounds, free (and reliable) 8mb internet. 5.2k/mo.

That's pretty standard for this area.

Does your apartment have a web link Walker?

I have no idea. I'm not sure exactly what a web link Walker is...

What are the pro's/cons of Chiang Mai vs Phuket? The price difference thing is quite a big pro for Chiang Mai, all I've really heard from are people from Phuket, what is Chiang Mai like?

I sent you a PM.

By the way, my number one tip is to learn how to read. It is actually much easier than it seems at first. Make that the first thing that you do, as it will help immensely in pronouncing properly.

Using the Thai/English transliteration to learn you can gain a passing knowledge of Thai that will get you around with Thais that are used to being around farangs (therefore used to hearing horrible Thai), but you will notice that your skill breaks down significantly when speaking to most other Thais. English speakers have to realize that Thai words cannot be expressed properly with English characters, because the sounds just are not the same. Once you manage to forget about what you've learned in English and start learning Thai from scratch, you'll be several steps ahead.

The NEED? I'd much rather not live on Suk. I like to go there to drink, ship girls, degen, etc... but it is nice to go home to a quiet area when I want to. You can easily find any amenities that you need elsewhere, and still be within a 10 minute cab ride away from Suk. Or a ride on the MRT.

I think ur reccos for a used, manual (gear vice clutch) is a good recco for someone like you or me. Been here for a long time lot of experience driving. But these youngins, are not wuite ready for a manual of any sort.

Also the used autos tend to hae a lot of performance degrade.. Heck, even a newish Honda Click is struggling with 2 people going up a steep hill.

125 Wave would work but once again, not for the newbs. I have hard enuff time getting them to be safe on the autos.

The other day I took 4 dudes house hunting around Phuket. Me +1 on a step 125, 2 newbs on a new click, and 1 guy alone on a click. The dbled up click stalled multiple times going up a hill (and these were 2 young thin Finns, not fatty boombaladdies like me and you). On the 1st stall I was very concerned that the stall would result in a spill/roll downhill. If that had been a manual almost guaranteed a nasty spill was going to happen with a too quick downshift.

I was interested in going to a 125 wae reently but my deiding factor in staying with the rocket (Step 125) was the Mrs "DO NOT LIKE MANUAL." (Even though the 2 MBs at her home are both manual. There's a fun story for another time. Me driving myself her and 2 young sons on a manual clutch bike thru the wilds of Issan)

Also, I'm a bit spoiled by the raw power of the "accelerating upill" Step 125.

I think the advice is to stay in lower sukhumvit upto Soi 21, if you're staying short term. This area is full of hookers/tuktuks/market stalls and would be really annoying to stay there long term for most ppl.

If you're staying long-term living in Sukhumvit higher Soi's up to 49/38 is probably better or Silom. This is area most 2+2ers live. Although these are the most expensive areas and you can live in a nice area/apartment for abit cheaper in towards Ratchada.

That sounds like a great idea i didnt know they were cheap to buy. But whats the license situation there? Can you drive around carefree without a license?

You can use an IDL or Merican License or presumably other western countries if you have one. If you don't, there is a viciously harsh and large fine for driving w/o license....

Can you take people on the back of the motorbikes? Whats the situation with taxis in Phuket? Like to get from Kata to Pa Tong $wise?

You don't need a special licence to ride them (you can use your driver's licence from home if it has a photo), but if you buy one you have to register it with a Thai address.

I just got one of my mates who lives here to put it in his name, and I leave it at his place when I'm back in Australia.

Who said I was fat? lol.

re:motorbikes rent/buy

i gotta agree with ntb here. buying one when you are staying under 6 months is not a very good idea for the reasons mentioned. pokerspiv, you are giving good advice but you need to put yourself into a thailand virgin's shoes and the picture is all different.

re:license

you can get an international driver's license to be covered officially. any ID with a picture gets you through checkpoints (atleast in phuket) but if you have an accident you don't have much leverage (not that you do anyways but when you are legally covered you have more)

you can also get a thai driver's license. takes one day. total cost under 1000 baht and it's a nice experience.

here is my TR about getting one in phuket

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...postcount=9072

QFawesomeness


chiang mai is cheaper and less touristy which are all big + but for me having beaches/nice scenery(i think phuket's scenery is much much nicer than CM) weighs too much. also the weather in phuket is much less variant than in chiang mai. there it actually gets cold even for foreigners in the cold season and in hot season it's much hotter than phuket. phuket's temperature is always the same during the day (30-33C). only thing that changes is the amount of clouds/rain and this is more the way i like it