Real numbers. What a month costs, what a year costs, and what is cheaper than advertised.
Slow Travel
The difference between a 6,000 baht month in Nimman and a 25,000 baht month in the old city is not the room, it is the air conditioning, the water pressure and whether the street is quiet at midnight.
Money & Costs
Nobody at immigration cares how many days you have spent here, and the tax authority does not care what your visa says. On day 180 you become a different taxpayer, and the count resets every January.
Money & Costs
Thailand is not a tip-optional country and it is not a tip-expected one. Service charge exists, cash tips land in a specific place, and round-ups are read as an insult.
Money & Costs
Thailand charges for plastic bags by law, the minimum is a fifth of a baht, and the actual reason the cashier asks is that the plastic has to go in a bin you now have to find.
Money & Costs
The exchange rate you get is not the number on the screen, the bank will ask what the money is for, and there is a limit on what you can walk out of the country with that almost nobody mentions.
Practicalities
There are three ways to wash clothes in Thailand and one of them costs a quarter of what the hotel charges. The other two take fifteen minutes of your life each.
Money & Costs
Kasikorn's own published rules exclude tourist visas, visa-free entries and the DTV by name. Almost every blog round-up on the internet gets this wrong.
Practicalities
The hospital bill is the smallest part. The part that ruins trips is a claim your insurer refuses, and that is decided by what you signed in a shop on a side street.
Money & Costs
Two suits in nine days for about four thousand baht each, made by somebody who has fitted fifty a day for thirty years. And four ways it goes wrong.
Money & Costs
A Supreme Court ruling in March 2025 killed pre-agreed lease renewals, and a crackdown on nominee companies followed. What a foreigner can actually buy now.
Money & Costs
Joh, song, sao, and the small silver coins nobody has used in fifteen years. The price system is not complicated, it is just not English.
Money & Costs
Thailand is one of the few countries on earth where the silk is genuinely handmade and genuinely worth buying, and the tourist price for it is about four times what it costs.