Move here for Affordable Healthcare and Walkable Old World Charm

Some people can't take the heat at the beach in Southeast Asia. We just spent a month in a city in Thailand at a slightly higher elevation. In this video, we'll talk about that city, what the weather's like, the cost of living, and why many people move here when they come to Southeast Asia. >> We were here last 7 years ago, and we want to talk about what have changed. >> My name is Dan. I'm with Vagabond Awake. I left the United States in 2007 and I've been to 78 countries so far. >> My name is Chang and I'm from Hovo Venture. I've been traveling with them for almost 10 year and I've been to 54 country. >> So the city we're talking about today is Changai Thailand and it's not really a first impression because it's our second visit. I've noticed some things. Probably the most soft landing or or tourist or expat area of Chiang Mai is called Nean and it's more developed now.

There's more malls, more western food, there's coffee shops and I've noticed the prices have come up a little. It's have a local charm inside the W area. Still the same, very beautiful and also have a very international feeling. If you go to Neiman area and more younger crop, >> if you hunt like Chung and I do, you're still going to find reasonably priced local food. It's just not in areas like Nean. And we'll talk about that in a minute. The food that we ate while we were there. So, first up we'll talk about is weather. So, I mentioned it's a little higher elevation. It's around 300 m above sea level, which is around 1,000 ft. And it has a I would say a cool season, not super cool, but November through February it can get down to the 60s and once in a while even the 50s in the mornings and the evenings. And there's also hot season which is March through May. And the days there can still exceed 95 Fahrenheit. So it's more seasonal than cool year round. And they do have a burn season in Mai that's February to Marchish. and they burn the crops there instead of tilling them. I recommend heading to the beach during the smoke season. And if that's still not cool enough for you, at this end of this video, I'll share some places that are even cooler than Chiang Mai.

>> We was there on September. In the morning, it's got um a little bit cooling. We open our door, turn off AC. Very nice feeling. This time we are renting a hotel room in Chiang Mai. It's not our usual style. Usually we take fully furnished apartment with kitchen, washing machines, you know, and everything. But this time we want something different because then want to live inside the wall. So we get a room uh is $466 US per month and with a weekly cleaning service. >> And by inside the wall, what Chung's talking about is Chiang Mai is a very ancient city >> and it had a it still has the walls. In fact, on the outside of the walls, there's still a moat filled with water. >> One tips for renting the room, rent the renting the room or renting a apartment in their low season. So, you will get a better rate >> to rent an Airbnb there for 30 days in Neon, which is a more typical expat area outside the wall, but close by. They start around 600 a month. Now, that's an apartment with a kitchen and furnished and a uh bathroom and many have swimming pools and gyms, >> washing machines, >> washing machine, all that kind of stuff.

Airbnbs more because it's shortterm. In fact, I'll show you on screen now. One of our friends rented a nice place for 350 a month, but that's not Airbnb. He got that because he was on a 12-month lease. And now, down the street from our apartment, there was a really nice gym. I don't normally pay this much for a gym, but I love to work out and it was so convenient. Uh, it was 39 bucks a month for a really nice gym facility. At the end of this video, we're going to summarize all these costs for you. So, we tell you what it was for the two of us on the ground in Chiang Mai for a month. And the next one is my favorite topic is about food and restaurants. So, we have a Mexican fruits and we have pizza. We have other western food and also we enjoy so much about the local food choices as well. And one thing you have to know is I'm the meat eater and then is a vegetarian. So in our video we cover uh different kind of restaurants. >> Yeah. And in our reports we put the links to all the restaurants, what we ate and what we paid. So >> our cost for a month uh about the restaurants is for two people that we eat out all the time is >> if you'd like my free ebook about how I fired my boss and traveled the world for 17 years and how I pay for things, come to Vagabond Buddha and grab the free ebook. is for two people that we eat out all the time is $256 US. And for the extra thing like snack, coffee and nut kind of thing is about $53.

That is our actual spending but not promised that everyone will spend the same. You know how much you eat out and where you choose to eat and what you order will make all difference. Let me show you my favorite one. My favorite is a grandma food is cooked by the you know family. They have vegetarian as well. My favorite one is a pot basing rice. It's about $2.40. And also I love weekends breakfast place is a western breakfast is cheesy eight with toast and salads for $4.40. So delicious. >> And that's a western style restaurant. And man, that would have cost way more in the west. >> So it's a great deal. >> And that's restaurant is inside the wall. >> I'm the vegetarian guy. Uh, and so one of my favorite restaurants, uh, vegetarian restaurants, uh, was a $1.20. That's with one dish and rice. And for two dishes and rice is $1.50. And another one we really love is called JD.

Had the best northern Thailand cow soy for about two bucks and it was delicious. >> They use a vegan meat, which is soy meat. So when the soy meat is mixed with the the creamy curry, it tastes so delicious. I would recommend for even a meat eater to go there to try in their food. It is so delicious. It's my favorite restaurant in the city. >> And finally, there's Sizzler and and it was the US style Sizzler with the all like that amazing salad bar and all the pastas and ice creams and soups and everything. >> Yes, >> we totally got stuff. >> It's about 249 B per person, which is is $7.40. I love to eat over there. So fresh thing, fresh vegetable and everything, you know. I love it. We also go for grocery shopping, a local market and night market as well. You know, you need to buy shampoo also. We also buy coffee bean in the grocery store. And what I love in Chiang Mai is a local morning market. They have one also inside the wall area. When we walking into it, it's like, wow, I already see my breakfast, lunch, and dinner over there.

They're selling like Okay. They have like a food sections that you can buy your breakfast and lunch. It's about like five B starting for BBQ uh pork or chicken is five B and then some like a meal is about 20 to 25 B. You can buy the the meal box and the dessert and and the fresh fruit and fresh uh vegetable. I love that in Chiang Mai they have a lot of night market but my favorite one in Sunday night market there are not a lot of smoking and vaping and also >> you said raping. They do not allow smoking. Vape vape. >> That's so funny. They hear I say rape. >> You can't rape there. >> Okay. But go there around 5 to 6:30 to avoid crowd. You need to try the Thai snack. It's called Ming. Okay. It's about 20 B. It's a very delicious uh the snack. >> Next up is transportation. We took the Grab, which is like Uber in the US, from the airport to our accommodations. It was $4.50, about 20 minutes. And Grab will take you anywhere in the city you want. It's a very walkable city. We walked almost everywhere. Uh we we took uh Grab a few times when we went to the mall in the middle of the day when it was warmer outside. Uh but mostly we just walked everywhere.

>> Our grab uh food because some we don't have kitchen. So we order the food by grabb delivery as well. So for this for month grab food and a grab transportation grab car is cost us $13. >> Next up is night life. Chiangg Mai is well known for the diversity of the different kinds of night life it has. >> We have asperenced almost all the night life in Chiang Mai. We went for the galba. We go to uh playing the games in the bar and then buy them a lady drinks. Also we went for pop, we went for knife music like uh in the Sunday night market area as well and listen to the jazz uh performance as well. So it's a very nice place. Also when we walk around the war area that time we also discover some hidden bar or pub and they serving like very nice beer co beer co m and a co beer is is amazing. They even have a Vegas style nightife there with the biggest stage and a huge room with a thousand people and all the dancing and singing. It's everything's in Chiang Mai. Next up is safety. We walked everywhere day and night while we're in Mai and we felt safe.

>> I don't feel any dangerous when I walking doing my laundry. We travel the world and whenever we go to a new country, we always read what the US State Department says about areas of countries uh that are safe and and more troubled areas. But Thailand is generally so safe, I don't even bother to read those anymore. Next up is language. I don't speak Thai. Uh most businesses that we wander into, they have someone there that's speaking English. I've been going to Thailand for 20 years and it's never really been an issue for me. language. >> I would say that Chai is serving a international crowd. So, uh, everyone know the simple English to order the food. Everyone knows. So, it is very easy to be using uh just English over there. But I also learn about a little bit of a Thai. So, it will make uh me to go to local market to buying things is much better. But everyone speak English even in local market. >> Next up is healthcare. Now, Thailand's always ranked in the top five in the world for medical uh countries for tourism, medical tourism. And Shiang Mai within Thailand is often ranked as one of the highest medical cities in Thailand. And if you look at cost comparisons online, you'll see that you'll save like 70 to 90% compared to US healthcare prices in Thailand.

>> The next one is the local SIM card. So, we use two different uh local company. Then one is unlimited 20 Mbps internet is cost $15 US per month and my one is 10 Mbps per uh uh data is $9 US. So I suggest to buy your SIM card in the telecommunication store. You have a better rate and better data. Internet is great in Thailand. Just get the speed you need for your lifestyle. Now, if you're getting a hotel room like we did for 30 days, just get a fast internet connection like I did for 15 bucks a month and you can use it as a hot spot. Use your phone as a hot spot if the hotel router is not as quick as you need or you're having a phone call or something like that. Now, apartment once you have your own router and you're going longterm or an Airbnb apartment, your router would should work fine. You shouldn't have any trouble at all. >> The next one is visa. So most of the tourists come to Thailand will get the 30 days tourist exemption on arrival. If you want to extend it, it cost 1,900 but which is 56 US for one month extension and it will done in 30 minutes. We done it before. Now there's 10 different kinds of visas you can get to stay long-term in Thailand. I'll talk about two of them. Retirement visas. If you can prove you have about a $2,500 a month pension or you can put $25,000 US

in a Thai bank, then you can get a retirement visa. Now, if you do the 25,000 in a Thai bank while you're in Thailand, you don't have to buy health insurance. And there's visa agents on every corner, so you can go in there and ask about all the different options you have. Now, real estate, you can't own land in Thailand. You can only buy condos. And there's a limitation on what percentage of the floor space foreigners can own in a condo complex. So don't mess around with that. Get a really good lawyer who understands. Condos start around 60,000, but it's highly dependent on what part of Thailand and how big the condo is. Never buy real estate overseas until you've lived in a place for 2 to 3 years. People change their mind and move to new places all the time. You don't want to leave a condo somewhere if the market's down or it's the market's weak and you have to sell it. Next up, we'll share our cost of living that we spent on the ground in Chiang Mai. And after that, we'll summarize the pros and cons of living there. So, rent 466 for the month that included Wi-Fi, electricity, water, and a weekly cleaning.

>> And then grab caps and a food is cost $13. Restaurants, we spent $256 for the two of us. >> Snack, coffee, and cash is about $53. >> Groceries, we spent $181 for water, delivery, snacks, and we went to 7-Eleven a lot because we didn't have a kitchen. So, it's not all just groceries. >> Shampoo, coffee, you know, this milk stuff, >> all that stuff. >> Mostly it's about some junk food. >> That's a lot of junk food. And then local SIM card is about $24 for both of us. >> So if you add up those items, it's $1,083. We call those basic living costs >> for two people >> and that's on the ground for two people in Shiang Mai for 30 days. >> So the next one is optional. Alcohol for a month for us is $92. Personal item is about $170 US. It's about like cosmetic. I bought a lot like face mask and also we don't have a washing machine so I send my laundry out is you know and also gym and we buy something online you know like clothes um fruit and everything you know a lot of stuff so that is the thing the next is tour ticket world item that's $87 so total of this uh optional is $349

>> so if you add the basics of1 $1,083 and an optional of $349. Then our on the ground cost in Mai, Thailand for 30 days sum to $1,432. Now, this is not your cost of living. You have to put your feet on the ground and do an exploratory visit here. What you spend on the ground here will be based on where you choose to rent, where you choose to eat, and how you choose to entertain yourself. what anyone else spends doesn't really matter. >> So the last one is we want to share with you the pro and a con. >> So my pros it's a little higher elevation the beach as I mentioned and so it's a little cooler than the beach which is nice. You have those a few months of the year where the evenings and the mornings is cooler. It's also a culturally rich city. It used to be one of the capitals of Thailand. So you have all those temples and history and it's it's a it's a beautiful charming place to walk around. And finally, it has great medical and great medical prices and a lot of choices. So, it's a great place for retirees.

>> Yeah, it's a very green area over there. And it have a old town and a modern city. It's very hippie, a younger crowd. You feel very young. And you also can take the train to go to the nearby uh neighborhood like Changai, Pi or the La Pang area. A lot of people going there as well. So, it's a very uh if you like green and mountain area, this is your place. >> And as far as cons go, there's no beach there. You're in Thailand. And so, during that smoky season we talked about, fly down to the beach and enjoy that. >> Yeah. >> I promise to give you some cooler places if this isn't quite cool enough for you. And so, I'll put a video about that right here. >> Thank you so much for watching and we will see you in the next video. Bye-bye. And brother