The day I stopped booking hostels and started renting apartments

Back in 2018 I was in Bangkok for 3 weeks and stayed in 4 different hostels. Loved the social side but I was working 9 to 5 for a US client so my sleep schedule was a mess. Roommates would come in at 2am and I'd be on a call at 6am. Finally in 2021 I switched to monthly apartment rentals and my productivity jumped a ton. Now I pay about $600 a month in Chiang Mai for a place with a desk and a solid door. The tradeoff is I meet way fewer people. Has anyone else made that switch and found a way to keep the community without the shared room?

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taylor_fox16d ago

$600 a month in Chiang Mai? That blows my mind. I was paying almost double that in 2020 for a tiny studio in Phuket with a mattress on the floor and a bathroom that smelled like mildew. I get the productivity thing though, I remember trying to edit video on a bunk bed in Krabi and someone's snoring made it into every clip. The social part is the hard loss, no doubt. I tried doing coworking spaces for a while but people there are nose-down in laptops, not exactly chatty. Maybe find one cafe or bar where the same expats hang out every week, that's the closest I got to hostel vibes without the 2am noise.