Bangkok has gotten a lot more expensive in the past 4 years
I don't know how this is, whether or not it is sustainable, or why people tolerate it but on a recent visit to the capitol of this country I was a bit alarmed about how much more expensive it has become in the past few years.
I don't have a lot of things to use as examples here but I was merely traveling to visit a friend who lives downtown and booked a moderately priced hotel. The fact that I couldn't find really anything under $30 that didn't make me want to commit suicide just because of the pictures was a bad start.
This might seem like a silly thing to people who have never enjoyed the affordability of South East Asia, but not that long ago spending 1000 Thai Baht a night (around 33 dollars) would get you the equivalent of something that would cost more than $100 is western countries. These days, you can't really get anything for that price outside of garbage hotels that are falling apart and the ownership simply doesn't care anymore.
src
I have a couple of theories as to how it started to be more expensive and they all start with the Covid massacre of the economy here and basically everywhere else in the world. Thailand, like a lot of other places, depends very heavily on tourism for their overall economy. When that was basically eliminated over the course of 18 months or so, there were a ton of people put out of work and almost all the small businesses that catered to tourism went under. Therefore, when the world opened back up, there were far fewer budget options available because they all closed. Therefore, the only hotels and accommodation that remained faced less competition and were able to charge more for their services. It's simple supply and demand.
Also there was the addition of legal weed in this country
src
I love freedom and never understood why marijuana was illegal not just here but everywhere. But when they made the decision to make it legal for recreational use in this country the shops just went absolutely mental with it. There is an overabundance of shops selling weed in this country and nowhere is this more noticeable than Bangkok where you are never more than 20 meters from a place that is legally selling weed.
This is a very unique aspect in this country and while they have been quite quiet about the impact that it has had on tourism, you only need to walk down the street and use your nose to realize that there are a ton of people here specifically because of the fact that weed is legal. According to the law you cannot smoke in public but just like a lot of laws in this country, virtually nobody enforces this and Bangkok smells like a hippie's dorm room in most parts of the city.
I haven't ever been much of a fan of the devil's lettuce but I know people that love the stuff and they have informed me that the weed at the specialty shops is actually quite expensive. Some of them preferred when weed was illegal because it was cheaper. I have no idea if this is true but i'll take their word for it.
The next reason why I think that the prices have gone up in Bangkok is because it is still one of the most popular places in all of SE Asia for people to travel to. To me, I don't understand that allure but it is what it is. When Bangkok was open again, there was a sort of campaign to encourage people to come here and much of this was a sympathy campaign aimed at how much the country's workers depend on tourism for their livelihoods. The promise was of low prices in a beautiful country and at first at least there were some level of promotion and good deals to be had. Thailand has a bit of a tendency to run wild with this sort of thing just like everything else so when the tourism numbers started to stack up, they quietly introduced higher prices and more taxes on things that tourists really like such as booze.
According to a bar owner that I know, the tax on alcohol has risen by more than 30% since Covid was declared over and he has no choice but to charge more for drinks than he was before. Even the cheap charlie places are now charging $3-4 a beer and again, while this might sound cheap if you are from San Francisco, this is a much higher price than we had just a few years ago.
Street food and things that are used by locals are very cheap and the tax on the booze might even be regional... I'm not sure about this. I do know that in my suburb of Chiang Mai that if someone started charging $4 for a small beer they would quickly find themselves without any customers so it very well may be a tax purely intended to hit tourists.
On one particularly stupid blowout night I went to go visit a friend of mine on the fancy Sukhumvit areas and I was only there for about an hour or two when I realized that we had spent several hundred dollars. When I first moved to this country about 8 years ago it was nigh on impossible to spend $200 in a night outside of procuring a hooker and some illegal drugs, now you can accomplish this feat sitting outdoors under a fan just order beers and a couple rounds of shots.
I think that Bangkok is operating off the ignorance of newcomers who still see it as a value compared to the western world and who knows, the government people that are making these choices might be very aware of this and are fixing the price to their breaking point.
For me, and especially since I don't really care for Bangkok anyway, I likely will not be spending much time there in the future even if it is my friend's birthday. I just can't justify spending that sort of money on stock standard lagers and a run of the mill hotel room.
I'll just see you up north where the prices are reasonable instead :)