There are some expat hot spots all over Thailand where it seems the foreigners gravitate towards in order to live here. I think the most popular ones are Phuket, Krabi, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and unfortunately Pattaya.
I wouldn't want to live in any of those places other than here and perhaps Krabi, but Krabi is kind of uninhabited and there aren't a lot of things that you would get in a place with more people in it such as shopping malls, tons of restaurants, and flights to almost anywhere.
But here in Chiang Mai the downtown area is not really a good place to try to live if you are moving here. Most people are correct when they say that the rent there is overpriced to the point of being a ripoff for foreigners but this is why people who are considering living here should really hire an agent and have a look at one of the suburb areas such as Sansai Noi where I have lived for the past 5 years.
When you get out into the suburbs of Chiang Mai a lot of things change. For one thing, the traffic is almost non existent unless you get on one of the highways that leads to downtown. I don't really have much reason to ever go down to the center of town and if I do I find that it is a rather easy ride either on my bicycle or my scooter. It is 12 km one way, which might seem like a bit of a jaunt for some people but it really doesn't take that long and if you don't like driving, you can get a Grab taxi for a couple of dollars.
Another benefit of living out here is that most of the neighborhoods are specifically designed so that it would be of no benefit for anyone to try to use them as some sort of shortcut. If something like this ends up accidentally happening the owners of the area will wall off the exit or entrance that is causing this and also lay down speed bumps to prevent any sort of traffic from coming through other than people that live there.
As far as shopping is concerned, no matter where you live in Chiang Mai you are never very far from some sort of massive grocery store that also doubles as a sort of minimall.
The one nearest my house used to be called Tesco, which I think most people in the world is a brand that they are familiar with, but for whatever reason in the past 2 years they have rebranded to be called Lotus's, which is a stupid name but as far as what is going on inside the store is concerned, nothing has really changed. All of these shopping centers have a grocery store and they also tend to have some level of banking and ability to pay your bills such as internet, electric or water. The one nearest my place is just 1.5 km away and most of the time I just take my bicycle.
Of course we now have the option to just do online shopping and get all of that delivered as well, for the truly lazy.
All these suburb places have a bunch of local restaurants and you don't necessarily need to be able to speak Thai to go to them. They tend to have picture menus at all of them or you could just learn the name of some sort of dish that you know you already like.
one of the best things about living in the suburbs is that most of Chiang Mai has a surplus of housing outside of the downtown area and therefore there isn't a lot of price gouging that is going on out here. The people who own the property are not going to get some sort of wild notion that they can just double your rent after your first year in an attempt to fleece you.
The downside of these places is that they can prove kind of difficult to find unless you have unlimited time and the desire to just drive around looking for "for rent" signs that are unlikely to be in English anyway. I can speak Thai on a very rudimentary level so I wouldn't want to be on the phone with the owner of my house. Various apps such as Whatsapp or even more popular in Thailand and app called LINE, have built in AI translation tools so that can facilitate speaking to your landlord even if you don't share a language.
The best thing to do though is to find a real-estate agent and just book a day to go and visit them and look at pictures. I had an amazing agent that took time out of her day to drive me around in her car and show me a bunch of places and I ended up renting one of them in the same day. My 2 bedroom, 2 bath, 2 story house that was mostly fully furnished costs me 9000 THB a month, and that is less than $300. After electric, water, and internet charges are built in I pay less than $350 a month. That's a pretty great deal and you are never going to find a deal like that in the city center.
I feel like I have really struck gold living out here in San Sai, and I think that other people that are considering moving to this part of the country would do well to follow suit. Living downtown in Chiang Mai can be a bit of a drag because everything is always busy but out here in the suburbs I sometimes forget that I live in one of the most populated place in the country because if I don't leave my neighborhood, it is quiet and nice like a small city would be. Yet giant shopping malls are just around the corner a few km's away!