At the time of writing this post we are already at Rawai, Phuket but don’t worry. There will be a lot of posts about this wonderful place since we will be staying here or 5 weeks :).
But I wanted to write about (for everyone who perhaps plans to visit Chiang Mai in near future) what were our everyday costs in Chiang Mai and what you definitely shouldn’t miss (based on our opinion) if you get there! Most if not all of them have already been mentioned in the posts before but here’s a quick summary:
Our recommendations.
- Visiting at least one of the many elephant sanctuaries near the city, If you don’t have time for anything else at least do this.
- Grand Canyon water park – you will have fun there :)!
- Doi Suthep temple and Doi Pui viewpoint
- The zoo
- Huay Kaew waterfall
- Saturday and Sunday night markets
- Beautiful temples in the old city and around
- Definitely go and have a massage. They are very affordable and just really really good!
- Nong Buak park and feeding the fishes
Of course there are many other things to do but these are the ones we did ourselves and can highly recommend!
Now, the budget. As said in some posts back we are keeping a track of our everyday expenses in order to get a better overview ourselves and also share it with you. Of course there are many ways to travel. Basically you could live with 300€ per month in Thailand and if you want also with 30,000€. It’s all up to you. Either way, here’s the overview of how much money we invested in our memories in Chiang Mai :). All the expenses are for 2 people and daily average. Naturally we didn’t visit a museum every day but in order to get a better overview I have divided everything to the 14 days we spent there.
- Groceries (everything bought from 7/11 and other similar stores – food, drink, shampoo etc.) – daily average 128 baht
- Transport (buses, tuk-tuks, songthaews, taxis etc.) – daily average 109 baht (as said before we like to walk quite a lot, so consider a bit higher costs in this area if you plan to use motorized transport more often; you can also get a scooter for 150-200 THB per day)
- Eating out (including lunches, dinners, different snacks etc. ; breakfast was included in our Hostel price) – daily average 278 baht
- Entrance fees (museums, temples, water park etc.) – daily average 316 baht (this number is rather high because of the Elephant Family Care visit fee)
- Shopping (clothes, accessories etc.) – daily average 36 baht (this is a slippery slope, if you plan to shop then there will be at least one zero behind this number 🙂 )
- Other (massages, cash withdrawal fees etc.) – 105 baht (If you take cash out of the ATM there’s a 220 baht fee + some percentage that your local bank will happily take away)
Our accommodation for the 2 week period was 7000 baht. So all in all our living cost for 2 weeks in Chiang Mai was about 20,000 baht (517€) and roughly we spent whenever we wanted to spend :). Of course Chiang Mai is one the cheapest places to live in Thailand but for such amount of money you can definitely do very well for 2 people :).
I hope you find this post useful and I will also do the same for Bangkok, Phuket and other places we’ll stay.
All the best!
Lauri
The World As It Is 