Gosh Bangkok, You’re Pricey!

If you trust Thailand’s official inflation rates, you live in one of the world’s cheapest places with one of the world’s most stable prices. Cheap east, so to say.

Truth though is, prices in Thailand creep up constantly and quietly. It remains a mystery to me how the hell Thailand’s inflation rates are calculated.

Take this: Thailand’s core inflation measure excludes raw food and energy prices. So based on what they determine reliable inflation data!?

Fact is, if you want to lead a life comparable to standards in the West, official data here are highly misleading. Bangkok will hurt your purse.

Take education, rent, insurances, health care and exorbitant taxes on basic necessities such as a nice bottle of wine, cheese or – if you can’t withstand – a decent car.

One would think that especially imports would become cheaper due to the strengthening baht. No way. The opposite happens. Prices go up persistently. Salaries don’t.

It’s not just the luxury segment I’m ranting about. Take tomatoes. If I want decent tomatoes any Bangkok supermarket sets me back nearly double of the price in the West.

Milk. Milk here – before the devaluation of the baht – cost around 16 baht a liter. Now it’s nearing 40 baht – and the price just increased again.

Or the Landmark’s Sunday Brunch was 250 baht in the mid-nineties. Now a multiple of that.

Beginning December Bangkok’s taxis announced higher prices and 7-eleven will raise the retail prices of over 500 consumer products. Due to higher transportation costs.

Or take Hua Hin’s golf courses Springfield and Black Mountain: Green fees of 3,500 respectively 4,000 baht – pricing many out even of the luxury market.

Thailand’s cartel-like tax levies make it furthermore illusory for oh so many global producers to sell their stuff in Thailand.

Old friends visiting from overseas always exclaim: „Jesus, Bangkok, what a bargain!“

They must be living here according to the nightlife index.

Quite frankly: They’re out of their minds.

Maybe bar fines got cheaper. I’m no authority to tell.

The only comparable bargain in reference to other Asian capital cities remain Bangkok’s property prices.

A simple decent living in Bangkok though is at least as expensive as in a major city in the West. It remains one of those Thai mysteries to me how local people can afford to even stay alive.

Take the average monthly salary of some 10,000 baht, which is already not too bad. Assuming that the kids and other people living under the same roof provide a portion of their incomes, a household may manage to get around 30,000 to 50,000 baht a month. A small fortune here.

Most families have to come by with a few thousand baht a month. Just pick up some of the ATM slips lying around ATM machines and examine them. Most people’s account balance is a few hundred baht, especially towards the end of the month. Or around the time, when school fees have to be paid and even cheaper Thai restaurants become rather empty.

You don’t see it, but more people in Bangkok than you think live from hand to mouth. Don’t know and don’t care anymore what tomorrow will bring.

What made me look even more shocked when recently a friend visiting from Europe told me that he had asked his company overseas to post him to Bangkok.

What’s the salary he asked for, I asked my friend.

A million baht. A month. He replied. And didn’t look concerned.

Not that BangkokDan is living of rice and salt alone. There are quite a few pleasures in his life, none of them though goose liver or caviar.

But demands such as a million-baht-montly-salary (in an industry by the way where most people are replaceable), such a demand explains the often deep distrust between local Thais and flown-in expats.

As if those expats knew: There is no such thing as a cheap life in Thailand.

Addendum: Concerned about prices in Bangkok? Check out our Big Mango index.