Anatoly Karlin 🧲💯@akarlin
I have been in Bangkok for a week now. Doing touristy things aren't a priority, because I plan to be here and in SEA broadly for a long haul. I am mostly focused on just observing and vibing with the place, so here are my impressions so far.
* Thailand, and SEA broadly, likely have the best price to quality ratio on the planet. This is the primary reason why I decided to relocate here. In Bangkok, you have a relatively clean, well-functioning, and low crime megapolis with near Third World prices for rent and food.
- Street food - healthy, delicious, and optionally spicy - costs nothing by developed world standards. That chicken and rice dish with broth on the side in the photo below? $1.85 (60 baht). A dozen prawn shumai for like 100 baht. Three small satay skewers for $1 (30 baht).
- The 7-11s stock those Japanese crustless egg sandwiches for $0.75 or 27 baht (I like them a lot, bread crusts are a federal psyop). Incidentally, these 7-11s are everywhere, they are like the Zabkas in Poland, there's apparently more of them in Thailand than anywhere else outside Japan. Cappuccinos can range from $1 to $3.5. The cheapest (drinkable) cappuccino I know of in SF is at the Capital One cafe for $2.87 and that's if you have their card. Singha 0.5l beer can is $1.7 (55 baht) and they have some nice local IPAs which are only modestly more expensive.
- Obviously, there are more upscale places. Sit down indoor restaurants are pricier. Still, I had a blue crab curry for 620 baht at a relatively upscale restaurant.
- Not that I care about this, I am mostly just interested in the food itself. But the quality of service at restaurants is way above anything you see in the US and Europe. (The US itself having plummeted to European levels over the past decade). At least for foreigners life is frictionless, much lower risk of career ending cortisol spikes.
- Very nice Airbnb condos in serviced highrises with rooftop pool and gym for $1200/month. (I understand these can go as low as $800/month if on a yearly lease... I will look more into this in a few months). I can live in comfort here for prices I was paying for rooms in crowded group houses (in between occasionally bumming around offices) in SF.
- You can get a 5 star hotel room for as low as $120-150/day. (This is budget inn tier in the US).
- Cuisines. The cheapest food is (obviously) Thai, Chinese, and (surprisingly?) Japanese, if we're talking of street food and basic holes in the wall. Indian food is (surprisingly?) quite a lot more expensive. I guess it never really caught on with the locals so it caters to Indian expats and tourists. Thanks to the expat population, European staples are very easily available, if modestly more expensive than the local cuisines. This changes when some cuisine pretty much exclusively caters to expats (e.g. Mexican), as well as steakhouses. These are one of the rare categories that are more expensive than in the US.
* You get a two months visa on arrival, which can be extended to three months. However, the real draw is the DTV (Destination Thailand Visa), which gives you pseudo-residency rights for 5 years, the only requirement being to cross the border once every 6 months. To qualify, you need to maintain $15,000+ in your checking or savings account for >3 months, as well as to satisfy one of the following conditions: (a) Be a freelancer or content creator with a portfolio that you can present as proof; (b) Have a remote job; (c) Learning or promoting Thai culture, such as attending Muay Thai or Thai language classes. This seems relatively easy for anyone in the First World with some minimal degree of agency to satisfy, and the DTV strikes me as OP relative to other such nomad visas such as the ones in Portugal and Mexico. Standard practice is to go to Vietnam and apply for the DTV from there, and that's what I intend to do in a couple months' time.
* There is a large Chinese minority, about 10% of the population. The Thai Chinese, unlike Malaysian Chinese, are integrated into Thai society, and as in the rest of SEA, own some ridiculous proportion of the economy. Unsurprisingly they seem to be overrepresented in central Bangkok.
* Bangkok is a massive expat hub. There are plenty of Americans and Russians (I heard close to 100k), many Europeans, large numbers of recently arrived Indians (goes to show that this Indian wave is truly global), and a lot of mainland Chinese and Japanese (who are less visually noticeable for obvious reasons but are similar to Russians, Americans, and Indians numbers wise). I would estimate 5% of the population are expats in the central areas, and I assume similar percentages in the resort cities. While many of these expats are probably not exactly "Elite Human Capital" types (basically various kinds of "content creators" and people who claim they are "building" things on their Macs and are "into crypto" which tbf describes myself to a good degree as well) I do think they're a notch or three above the Dubai set.
* Unsurprisingly, crime appears to be very low. Funnily enough, a young Arab man pretending to be from Dubai did try to scam me by requesting to take a look at my Thai banknotes (this is the so-called "Dubai family" scam where they discretely pocket some of those notes if you're foolish enough to give it to them). I am quite skeptical by nature and very alert to scams so it was never likely to work on me, but I suppose they must catch some fish from time to time if there are actual immigrant gangs who specialize in this in Bangkok. The other slightly unpleasant experience was with a boorish and I suspect mentally ill Russian man who loudly pestered me and other randoms with strange conversational approaches. So 2 negative encounters, both with foreigners, but nonetheless a refreshing change from America's street-shitting hobos and problematic groups that are impolitic to mention.
* Nobody is going to write home about the architecture. Bangkok is not a beautiful city. There's only one and a half proper parks in the center. But on the plus side, housing policy is full YIMBY and rent is extremely cheap. You can get a cheap studio in the suburbs for less than a trailer park spot in the US. Public transport infrastructure is good, though it is way too car centric and hot/humid to be comfortably walkable. I can easily do 25,000+ steps a day in SF or other temperate cities, but here I am knackered after 10,000. Perhaps that will change as I get acclimatized to the tropical hothouse, but nonetheless, so far as I personally am concerned, the climate is the single biggest negative. I am not a fan of the tropics. YMMV.
* Surprisingly few Thais speak English (big contrast from Morocco, a curious nation of polyglots). Younger people, and employees at more exclusive restaurants and hotels, do speak English, but real fluency is otherwise quite rare. (I can only imagine what it is like in the small towns and rural areas outside Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and the coastal resorts). If I end up staying here, I will probably have to brute force learn some basic Thai, if only to make everyday interactions less awkward. Most Thai Chinese do not know Chinese (unlike Malaysian Chinese). This is probably good for Thailand, as its society is not ethnically fissured like Malaysia's as a result, but it is less convenient for me personally as I know some basic Chinese.
* Another unsurprising observation, Thais are placid and quite orderly. They understand queueing. Polite (they call their country the "land of smiles"). Very clean relative to its GDP per capita - more so than the Balkans or Turkey; way more so than Morocco. (I hear they differ a lot from Vietnamese). The streets are often gridlocked, but drivers are not aggressive. Crossing the street is reasonably safe and stop signs and lights are respected. Very different from Arab countries where they are a suggestion at best (I lived some time in Casablanca).
* Many establishments advertise themselves as LGBT friendly. (Thailand was the 3rd country in Asia after Taiwan and Nepal to legalize gay marriage). I saw color coded recycling bins for different kinds of rubbish. Quite curious and endearing to see an $8000 GDPpc country aspire to $40,000+ GDPpc cultural practices.
Overall, a very curious mix of First World (boutique establishments; SAPL/SWPL culture; the gay stuff), Second World (solid infrastructure; nationalism and lese-majeste laws; 0.8 children per woman TFR), and Third World (ubiquitous street food; cash heavy economy) attributes "with Asian characteristics" (malls as centers of community life; love of cold sugary drinks; animal cafes).
* Thailand vs. Vietnam? So far as I'm concerned these are your core two options in SEA. Cambodia is too poor and outright Third World. Laos and Myanmar? LOL, gl. Malaysia perhaps okay for conservative family types, excellent infrastructure, KL is even marginally cheaper than Bangkok despite Malaysia being quite a lot richer ($14k GDPpc), but ultimately, it's a pretty rigid Muslim society that most Westerners will have trouble adapting to. It's more conservative than Turkey, and I suspect even Morocco. I am mostly only interested in visiting it to see Balaji's Network School. (Why is Thailand poorer than Malaysia? I have some extensive thoughts on this, but this post is too long already. May revisit at the blog.).
So returning to Thailand vs. Vietnam. Thailand is richer ($8k vs. $5k GDPpc); infrastructure is more developed - Bangkok has an extensive light rail system, while Saigon is just beginning to construct its equivalent; digital nomad infrastructure is way more developed; Thais are reputed to be more orderly, quieter, and cleanlier. Vietnam is considerably cheaper - I suspect it's the cheapest country anywhere that is not blatantly "Third World"-coded - and Da Nang in particular appears to be what Bali was 15 years ago (though it has been "discovered" by influencers in the past 2 years). Worse, in Vietnam, you are still dependent on the vagaries of immigration control tolerating your visa runs, whereas the Thai DTV has made digital nomadism safe and predictable.
Personally, I don't think the cost savings in Vietnam relative to Thailand (Thailand being very cheap anyway relative to Western baselines) are worth the extra hassle of Vietnam's more visible "Third Worldish" vibes, undefined legal regime for digital nomads, and lesser political freedoms (it being an actual Communist state). Nonetheless, I will likely be in Vietnam this May, which will give me an opportunity to refine these thoughts.
* Obviously, there is no comparison between Bangkok and SF, or other major world cities like NYC, London, even Berlin, for "Elite Human Capital" concentrations. Tokyo overshadows it in East Asia. OTOH, a question that some may consider asking themselves - how often and frequently do you NEED to commune with EHC? We live in an age of extremely cheap, almost free, air travel. US - SEA return flights can be found for as little as $700 (and potentially much lower if you invest some time into researching how to stack credit card benefits).
But even $700 is the monthly rent differential between a very nice high-rise condo in Bangkok and a cramped group house in SF! Obviously, this doesn't apply to startup founders and the like who actually have to constantly network with VCs and researchers and lawyers and so forth (or very wealthy people, or people whose jobs require physical presence). However, if you're at the level of personal wealth where staying in group houses is advisable in SF, but would likewise having appreciate having your own apartment and time-saving amenities in order to be more productive - again, cooked food, cleaning, taxis, transport, clubbing, weekend getaways to other cheap SEA and East Asian destinations - are all massively cheaper than where you live, then SEA is wildly competitive.
This is ultimately the main reason why I moved here, even though I expect to fly back to SF 1-2x a year since I am still involved with various events and organizations there. Only time will tell whether this will be sustainable, or a failed experiment.
