Learn more about Living in Thailand on a Budget.

Above is me Neale at a monkey school in Surat Thani

This website came about after been in Thailand for 18 months. The original idea was to create a site about "living in Chiang Rai" where I live now. After a little research I found that the domain www.livinginthailand .net was available and decided to cover the broader topic. In June of 2010 I arrived in Thailand after 4 years of talking about doing something similar. Before arriving I had been working part time on developing a residual income from some websites I own. By the time I arrived these sites where generating around $600 per month, after 16 months in Thailand that income had grown to a little over $1000 a month with little effort on my part. $1,000 per month allows for a very comfortable life here in Northern Thailand. Then in October of 2011 one morning I woke up to a 60% decrease in earnings. Leaving me with a choice: Return to the West or stay in Asia and live with just $400 a month for a few months.

I chose to stay, and then decided to document a month’s daily activities and expenses on the fly with this website, hopefully allowing others a peek into what really living in Thailand on a budget is like. As most days don’t involve much out of the ordinary I decided to use the 31 days to break down all I have learnt and experienced during my 1st 18 months in Thailand, adding a short article daily documenting the whole process in a logical fashion, "Day one what to do before leaving etc." The 31-day exercise is geared primarily to people who are thinking of quitting the 9-5 and who would like to work remotely in Asia where costs of living are 85% cheaper than in the west.

Everything that is written during the 31 days is based on my own experiences. During the 18 months I was able to live in many different towns experiencing many standards of living, renting a 2-bedroom house in Phuket for 6 months, then living out of $6 a night hotels, with no hot water for a few weeks at a time. 4 months where spent covering over 23,000 kilometers on a small motorbike as far south as Malacca in southern Malaysia to the most northern point in Thailand where I found 5-6 places that I could have stayed, including two in Malaysia.

Hopefully after reading through the 31 days you can find a few things that will enable you to save some money and or time. I document the mistakes I made and how they can be avoided. I can also be found over on facebook, Neale Where I have documented much of my travels the 1st 12 months in Thailand

Start Reading Day 1: What to do now, before leaving.