baht

The purchasing power of the Baht means that that is about equivalent to ~10k USD.

Here in Thailand, instant bank transfers at any ATMs cost about 25 baht— roughly $0.75 USD per transaction.

A trip to my hotel at that meter rate would easily have been 3000 - 5000 baht.

A hospital visit a little outside of Bangkok cost me about 1500 baht ($40), including medication.

I'd pay 20 baht (USD 0.60 or EUR 0.40) for 4 bananas from a street vendor or market.

Normal office worker salaries in Bangkok are about 20-25k baht without any language skills and they live hand to mouth on that money.

Around 300 baht for a meal (presumably for two or more people) is hardly out of reach for anybody but the poorest in Bangkok.

Everything in that article is dated 2008, but even then the minimum salary requirements for japanese people were 35k baht to get a work permit.

Starting your own company in order to get a work permit requires 2,000,000 baht ($62,000) of registered capital and social security payments 4 Thai employees.

Thais, on the other hand, treat the law (and road markings) as suggestions, with penalties that have flexible and often on-the-spot enforcement denominated in baht.

Especially since I imagine lots of people go to the BTS/MRT which is 100 baht give or take + the extra 50.

Living in BKK is another story, you can buy a decent house in a decent neighborhood for about 4 mil baht, which is cheap in my book.

No-one says "$100 is meaningless because its conversion to Thai Baht varies so wildly".

> No-one says "$100 is meaningless because its conversion to Thai Baht varies so wildly".

In the late 1990s/early 2000s, people used to go on "baht runs", buying a cheap Thai Airways airpass that allowed many segments of intra-Thailand travel for a very low price, and earning many "qualifying segments" on TG's partner carriers, allowing people to make top-tier United status for under $1000 (by getting 100+ qualifying segments).

To state that $30-$200 (~1000 - ~7000 Baht) to eat out is "normal" but that "you can get cheaper food on the streets, you may or may not want to" is like saying "there are cheaper toilets than this solid gold one, you may or may not want to use them".

The minimum wage for (western) foreigners is 50K Baht/month, compared to 9K Baht/month for locals.

Graduate salary starts at around 30K Baht/month so you need to be worth it for them to even bother.

When you travel to, say, Thailand for a holiday, you don't walk into Wallstreet to trade some Dollars for Baht.