Kara and Nate Buchanan describe their first month living in Chiang Mai as digital nomads, showing a tour of their one-month rental (large window wall, kitchen, bedroom with walk-in closet, balcony, rooftop pool and gym) and explaining how they extended their Thailand tourist visas at the immigration office near the airport (they prepared ~4,000 THB, passport photos, photocopies; the extension was completed in ~30 minutes). They discuss neighborhood choices (Old Town vs. Nimman), how they searched (Airbnb and perfecthomes.co.uk), negotiating shorter stays (paying a modest premium), and costs/requirements: they paid US$750 for one month, utilities (water/electricity) are extra, and landlords require first month plus a second-month deposit in cash. The video was uploaded Dec 17, 2018.
Questions this video answers
US$750 for one month.
4,000 Thai Baht (they brought this amount to the immigration office).
About 30 minutes.
9,000 Thai Baht per month (friend living year-round).
Pay first month up front in cash plus a second-month deposit (returned later).
Chapters
This is our bedroom. It's. I don't know what to say about this.
Sawadika from Thailand. I didn't even close my eyes. Are you supposed to close your eyes?
I don't know. Seem more reverent.
We've officially been in Chiang Mai for a whole month now, which feels absolutely crazy, but we've been loving the digital nomad life.
How you doing, Nate?
I think she's trying to hurt.
We have accumulated a lot of things since we started traveling. Way too many hard drives, two cameras, rooftop pool. How weird does it feel unpacking your stuff knowing you don't have to pack it back up for five weeks?
I love that form.
The crazier thing is we have spent one month somewhere and we haven't filmed a single video because we were actually supposed to be here catching up on videos. Because if we never stopped filming, we were just gonna get further and further.
Editing constantly for a month.
So hopefully you haven't noticed our month break until today.
We couldn't help ourselves.
We had to film another video even.
Though we haven't been filming. I have been doing a lot of Instagram storying, and a lot of people have asked pretty much these same two questions over and over. So we thought that we would make this video to help anybody who wants to come to Chiang Mai for a long period of time or doing the digital nomad thing, because it's really fun and we were clueless.
So in today's video, we're going to be tackling two questions, the two that we get the most, which is what happens if you're a tourist and you want to stay for longer than 30 days? Because when you come to Thailand, you get a 30 day tourist visa, and if you want to stay longer, you have to figure something out.
The second thing people keep asking about is how we found this apartment and the process of renting an apartment long term instead of Airbnb, which we were also pretty clueless about. So we'll walk you through that too.
If this is your first time to our channel, this video is very out of character for us. We're trying to travel to 100 countries by 2020, so we're normally moving, like, really quickly. And we normally don't do how to videos, but we thought we'd mix things up today.
We promised we're gonna make some fun Chiang Mai videos after this one.
But first we have to head to the immigration office and renew our visas because they expire in two days. Two days from now is Saturday. So today is actually the Last day. We can renew them and the office closes in a couple hours.
How are you?
I'm fine, thank you.
And you? Good.
There's a lot of steps to this process from everything that I've read online. But I think we have everything together that we're going to need. We have 4,000 Thai Baht. We have two passport photos which are the wrong size, but we're hoping they will accept. We have our form for the temporary visa extension which we haven't filled out yet because we're running later than we wanted to. We have a photocopy of our passport with the immigration card that you get when you come in. And last but not least, we also have our passport and the immigration card. I've read like a lot of differing information online. I'm expecting to have to wait a long time and maybe not even be able to get in today to actually get our visa extended. And if that's the case, then we have to go back tomorrow because tomorrow is the last day that we have on our visa. Otherwise we're going to overstay our visa and see what happens.
Okay, we have just arrived at the Thailand immigration office. It's out right beside the airport and we have about an hour and a half till it closes. And we're hoping we're going to be able to get our visas today. And then you have to put your.
Reasons, for example.
We'Re trying to be prepared. We printed these out at our apartment and had them filled out when we got here, but it was the wrong form. We didn't have a back on our form. So refilling everything out.
The immigration office is a government building, which is why there was no filming inside. But 30 minutes later we have our visas extended.
That was so easy. I can't believe how fast it was.
I'd read all these horror stories about people spending their whole day there waiting in line, people showing up an hour and a half early to get a.
Ticket for the queue at like 6:30am and we walked in on a Friday at 3pm and only had to wait 30 minutes.
We just got back to our apartment and we've really, really loved what living here. So we're going to give you a quick little tour and then we'll sit down and tell you all the details of how we found it and stuff, starting with the best part, this entire window wall. So the point of us being here was to work and to sit on our computers. So having a nice workspace was like top of our list. And when we walked into this Apartment and this entire wall was a window.
We knew we had to have it. So this table is actually the kitchen table and it was against the wall over here. And we drug it over to this window and two steps away is the kitchen. It's pretty basic, but it has everything that we need. There's a fridge, kettle. We bought a Chemex for the month so we can have real coffee every day. And then all of your normal kitchen stuff like silverware, mugs, plates, bowls and a stove. Did I say fridge? And now I'm in the living room.
Bedroom's over here. This is our bedroom. It has its own ac, which made us really happy. And there are two other things that we really like about this room. It has a walk in closet which I don't think that we've had ever in our travels. All of these cabinets and a vanity where I put my makeup on and have all my girl things. So I actually took all my toiletries out of my toiletry bag and put it in the cabinets and the drawers. Plus.
We have another window wall in the bedroom with the balcony.
We don't spend too much time out here because it's been about 100 degrees in Chiang Mai, but there is a wash and our clothes dry really nicely in about two seconds out here. Now the bathroom, which you can access from the kitchen or the bedroom, it's your standard bathroom. And that wraps up the tour of our room. But I don't even think this is the most exciting part.
There's a rooftop pool and a gym which we have tried to use daily.
Now let's talk about how we found this place for those of you who are interested in staying here long term.
So the first decision that we had to make when we knew that we were coming here was which neighborhood we wanted to stay in. The first time we came to Chiang Mai, we stayed in the old town and we completely fell in love with the city. It's why we wanted to come back. But we had heard that all the digital nomads stay in this place called Neiman and we had never even been here before. And we booked an Airbn for a few nights when we first got here to feel out the area and totally fall in love with this place too.
So that's like the first big tip is don't book a place before you come. You should book like an Airbnb or a hotel for a few nights in the area where you want to stay. Check it out and make sure it's where you really want to be for the next month or two or three, or however long you plan on staying here.
Everybody tells you that once you decide what area you want to stay in, you should just walk around, go in random apartment buildings, ask them for their rates. But we found a few problems with this strategy because, One, it's really hot outside and it takes a really long time and it's kind of hard.
So our advice would be like, yes, still go, walk around, check out the apartments that you want to stay in, but come up with a plan before you just go out wandering the streets. And there's two good ways that we found to do that. One, look around on Airbnb, because a lot of the apartments on Airbnb are actually in some of the same buildings where you can rent an apartment for a month or two or three. The second resource you should check out is a website called perfect homes. Co.uk Our friend Patty, who lives here is the one that told us about it. It has a ton of apartments for rent. I think they're like real estate agents and you can actually rent through the website, but I don't think it's worth going through all that trouble. Instead, make a list of like five or six places that you want to go see, then walk around and go check those places.
When we made our little list and went out to go check them out in real life, it's super easy to just walk in, like everybody told us, ask for a rate. She asked to see a room. We would go in there and check the WI fi speed, see what stuff is in the cabinets. But one of the problems we kept running into is they would say, oh, we only rent rooms for two months minimum or three months minimum, when we were only going to need one for one month. And actually this place only rented out for three months. And we just said, please.
I said, well, what if we pay a little bit more and just stay for one month? And that was all you had to ask. She made a quick phone call. I think we're paying an extra like 50 to $100 to stay here for one month instead of three. But, like, going back, we probably could have done that to all the ones that we rolled out in the beginning because they said we could only stay for three months.
So that was our experience with renting an apartment in Chiang Mai. Hopefully it was helpful to someone. I don't know if it was the best strategy, but it worked for us. And we're paying 750 to stay here for a month, which we're pretty happy with.
At the same time, you can Definitely pay a lot less. Our friend who lives here full time, like year round only pays 9,000 Baht per month, which is way less than what we're paying. But for a month in this nice place we have, we are very happy. And what we found is pretty standard, is that that rate is going to include your room, like the dishes and the TV and the furniture and like all of the stuff you kind of like need to live. And it's going to include Internet. At least it did at all of the apartments we went around and looked at. The two things that it's not going to include are water and electricity.
And we have no idea how much we've used.
By the time we published this video, we will have probably gotten our bill. So if we have that, we'll put it on the screen. And just for some context, we've kept the AC running ever since we've checked into the apartment. So in both rooms it'll be like your max level of what you would pay. It's hot.
One thing that we almost forgot, that almost was a huge problem for us, is you have to pay for the room up front in cash and you have to put down half of whatever the monthly cost is on the spot to hold your place or something like that.
So you have to pay for the first month up front and then you also have to pay for a second month. You have to put a deposit for a second month, I guess in case you try to squat in here and never leave. At least have your payment for the second month and then you get that back.
But it also has to be in cash and Nate lost his bank card at the airport when we got here. It's been a mess and so we didn't have enough cash to exchange and we didn't know what to do. Thankfully, we have really nice friends.
So that about wraps up this video. I know it was a little different, but hopefully you found it helpful. The next two or three videos that you see here in Chiang Mai will be a lot more of our normal style that I to do a lot with food you don't eat the wings.
And the big lantern festival that's coming up.
Oh, my gosh. All of which we're very excited about and we hope you are too.
Now we're going to get mango sticky rice.
Just like this.
Okay.
Ow.
I punched the wall. I punched and I got really excited.
Katie should key to get out of the building.
Choked one of these eyes.
Ow.
I punched the door handle.
Don't jump, little kitty. Don't do it. Good decision.
