Details here. Excerpt: “Cell phones, satellite TV, running water, gas cooker, all the modern amenities, and their income is around $10 per day……. but could you live here?”
I especially like the picture of the 5-foot lizard. Yes, it’s true, Thais do consider them bad luck, but then the lizards themselves seem to consider humans bad luck. I like the little fellas myself.
Some good information here and all pretty accurate. I’m too old to live like that anymore myself. There is indeed a variety of farang (Westerner) who “goes native” eary on. They’ll live in a hovel and eat the most basic of fare. More power to them is what I say, if that’s what they want. In fact, I personally know a 60-year-old American upcountry who pretty much lives like that. Oddly too, he has four wives. Well, only one is the current wife, a couple are previous wives and the fourth one just something on the side. But they often all stay under the same roof together. And he has no money, so it’s not the usual case of the girl taking the farang to the cleaners. He ekes out a meager paycheck by working illegally, performing basic IT services for an international company. No one’s quite sure how he’s managed to attract such a harem, but he has.
In my younger days up in the North, in Mae Hong Son province, I rented what was a very nice two-bedroom teakwood house for the equivalent of US$40 a month. I had to pay water and electricity, which amounted to a couple more dollars. This was in the 1980s, and I think it’s gone up considerably since then, but still a bargain. (There were no cellphones or satellite TV back then.) So I’ve never had to live like the poorest of the locals. But I did often find myself in areas with no roads, electricity, etc, and did have to stay in this sort of accommodation for stretches at a time. Not bad, really. Quite an adventure for a young man. Too old and cantankerous now.
I lived in Israel for year on $5000 in the mid-1980’s. At that time $14 a day wasn’t considered austerity living, even though the shekel had been devalued and a bunch of zeros knocked off the end, and Let’s Go! complained bitterly about how expensive Israel was at the time. Considering that in Egypt you could get several pitas for a penny, I understand why. Nonetheless, I had an apartment in a nice neighborhood., took bus trips to see friends in other cities, bought a camera, ate well, got haircuts and bought clothes, and generally lived about how I do now, albeit in a smaller space and without costs like cable.
While I was living there in 2005, the average pay for the Thai workers I knew in the service industry was 300 baht a day - about $8.50 - without tips. This is apparently similar to someone in construction etc. The accommodation they lived in was pretty squalid, and they did their own washing at a pump, which is where they washed themselves too. But they all had cellphones and were on them constantly, and were also generous to a fault, within their means.
“Freedom from desire” must help; and if I had to find somewhere to live in poverty, Thailand’s where I’d do it.
One strange incident on Phi Phi was when a guy was given money to replace water-damaged stock, but instead he went and bought himself a fancy bicycle. This caused resentment among the Western donors, but admiration from the Thais. Different priorities I guess.
In 2001, I lived in Spain for a year for about $3000, including vacations I took to other countries. I had my own bedroom in a four bedroom apartment for $125 a month. Groceries were about $9 a week. Drinks at any bar cost about $1.25 and came with free tapas. If you knew which bars to hop, you could easily get a generous meal for about three drinks.
My pay in Bulgaria worked out to about US$8.50/day. I did fine. I bought two TVs while I was there (one broke after a year), had cable, only dipped into my (meager) American savings when I left the country for more than a few days.
Plenty of Bulgarians live on less - the pay for new teachers is 200 leva a month. That’s…$4.30/day.
ETA: But I also didn’t have to pay rent, my school paid it for me. My rent was 100 leva/month, which is equal to 50 euro.
Cheap rice whiskey plays a big role, too. Seriously. The wife has been involved in at least one major research project involving construction workers, and many of them will stay blotto their every waking hour, without bothering to sober up for their shift. Those “Safety First” posters stuck up everywhere are just empty slogans. Construction in Thailand is a hellish job.
Myself, if I had to live in poverty, I’d pick New Zealand, based on stories from Kiwis I know of the government’s largesse. Dunno if that’s dried up in the present economic climate.