BANGKOK: COST OF LIVING ON THE UP

As someone faced with surveys of one kind or another on a daily basis, it's safe to say you can read pretty much anything you want into lines of data and statistics. But one report published earlier this month by the Economist Intelligence Unit is easy to understand; Bangkok is not as cheap as it once was.

The capital of Thailand in this Worldwide Cost of Living report is now ranked 66th globally and is on a par with the U.S. cities of Miami and San Francisco. Bangkok gained a score of 89 which assumes New York has a score of 100. Last year Bangkok scored 86. Ten years ago the city scored 55 - meaning costs were almost half the price of New York. Now, Bangkok is little more than 10 per cent cheaper.

The world's most expensive city in this report was Tokyo which scored 161. Bottom of the table of recorded cities was Karachi in Pakistan with 46. Just five years ago Bangkok was ranked in 100th place in this same bi-annual survey, which looked at more than 400 individual prices across 160 products and services in 140 cities in 93 countries.

My opinion is that Bangkok can be a cheap as you want it to be. Sure, you can spend a lot of money maintaining an expatriate lifestyle, but at the same time it's easy to live comfortably on 20,000 baht per month or less. Most Thais do exactly that. 

And, in contrast to this particular report, Bangkok was recently voted as 'World's Best Value City' by readers of the Sunday Times Travel magazine.

You pays your money, as the saying goes.