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The down side is that if I'm going to settle somewhere for a year or more, I'd want to get out of the guesthouse situation and have an apartment, and I'd want a fairly decent one, with air-con and cable TV and internet access, and a Western bathroom. Suddenly I'm looking at a lot of money. The small studio or one-bedroom apartment is apparently almost non-existent. People live with their families until they marry, then they want enough room for a couple of kids. So apartments usually have three bedrooms. And cost $700 to $1000 per month. Now, I'm sure there are cheaper places, but I'm pretty sure that as a westerner, I'm never going to find them.
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On the other hand, if I could handle the budget hotel, hostel thing, I could live pretty cheaply. In Chiang Mai, which eventually got on my nerves, the opposite is true. Apartments can be cheaper than staying in a guesthouse.
The solution would be to share, but I don't know if I could handle having two roommates. Or how roommates would handle me.
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