Budget in Bangkok
A visual guide from the Bangkok travel guide — see all posters in Visual Guides.
Bangkok is one of the few big cities where a good day out costs less than a taxi ride home in Europe. A plate of pad kaphrao with a fried egg from a street kitchen costs very little; the same dish in a mall food court is roughly double, and in a hotel restaurant many times that. Transport is similarly stratified: BTS and MRT hops are cheap, and a metered taxi across town is still budget-friendly. Where budgets tend to break is drinks, because imported alcohol is taxed hard.
Rough daily numbers
As a working guide, a backpacker in a hostel dorm, eating from markets and using the BTS, can get by on a small daily budget. A comfortable mid-range trip, meaning a decent three- or four-star room, a mix of street food and restaurants, a couple of taxis and one rooftop drink, costs several times as much. Hostel beds are cheap by world standards, and solid mid-range hotels cost far less than in most big Western cities. Prices change, so treat this as a guide: rates roughly double over Christmas and New Year and soften noticeably during the September and October rains.
Where to save
Use a Rabbit card on the BTS, or tap a contactless bank card on the MRT, to skip the ticket queues, and use the Chao Phraya express boat, where the orange-flag service costs about the price of a bottle of water and doubles as a river tour. From Suvarnabhumi, the Airport Rail Link to Phaya Thai is a fraction of a taxi fare, though a metered taxi plus tolls stays reasonable for two or more people. Mall food courts such as Terminal 21's Pier 21 are cheap, cool and paid by stored-value card. Convenience-store beer costs a fraction of bar prices, and the parks and the BACC galleries are generally free.