The Cheapest Service Apartment In Chiang Mai Thailand

The $89 Apartment

So one of the best things about living and traveling through Southeast Asia, to places like Thailand is how far your American, Euro, Australian dollar or British pound will go. I know most backpackers are also budget travelers and most long-term travelers are trying to figure out a way to stretch their coin, so in this article I wanted to let you in on a little secret on one of the cheapest apartments you could move into in Chiang Mai Thailand, that's not only affordable but also nice to live in as well.

The Siriruk Apartments

The Siriruk Apartments is a collection of two 5 story buildings, located near Maya Mall and a 10-minute walk from the famous Nimmanahaeminda's area or Nimman's for short and just a 5-minute motorbike ride from old town or Tha Phae Gate. These apartments are in a great location, with a mix of western comforts and Thai culture; with everything you need within a square mile of the neighborhood, you have your cheap amazing street food and fruit stands, your trendy cafes, corner markets, laundry mates, message polar's and more.

The apartment itself has a garage to park, a security keypad to enter the building and motorbike rental on site. The building is mostly made up of studio apartments, some bigger than others. Each studio apartment comes fully furnished, with a queen size bed, with sheets, pillow and blanket, a wardrobe, a table, mirror and med size refrigerator. Each apartment also comes with a large window, with a screen, allowing nice airflow and natural sunlight depending on the location of the studio apartment, without letting in any pesky bugs but the studio also comes with long thick floor to ceiling curtains to shut out the light when need be.

Now for the best part, How Much Is It...the studio I lived in was less than $100 American dollars, $98 to be exact and that included communal Wi-Fi and water is also including in the price. The tenant has to pay for electricity, I usually only had my fan on, but pretty much for the entire day, because it gets HOT in Chiang Mai Thailand and with my electricity bill my total with rent and utilities usually came up to about $120 American dollars monthly.

My studio apartment was located on the fifth floor and had tons of natural life, a great view of the city, with no other building obstructing my view. There are other studios that are a bit cheaper and others that’s a bit more expensive, like if you rent a corner apartment, with two large windows the rent cost will be more like $120-130, which is still really cheap. As I mentioned earlier there are two buildings, one that’s been renovated (that's the one I lived in) and the other building was newly built a few years ago. I believe all the studio's in the newer apartment are around $120-130, again still really cheap.

Extra Tip: The apartments in the newer building usually only come with AC, whilst the older building has both options of AC and fan; when you run the AC your electricity bill will most likely be 4 times higher than those who only have their fan running and as I mention before it can get pretty hot in Thailand, so you will most likely have to AC running the entire day. Even though the newer building has more foreigners residing there, so newer travelers could make friends with their neighbor a lot easier, whilst the older building is a mix of Thai Local's and foreigners, however if you're someone who's on a specific budget you might want to move into the older building instead of the newer building because your electricity bill will be much lower, even though you could also just buy a fan for a studio in the newer building.

Extra Extra Tip: I mentioned earlier that communal Wi-Fi is included in the rent but you can also purchase private faster Wi-Fi for an extra 600 baht a month, which is around $18 US.

Another great thing about this apartment is the landlord; when I first moved out to Chiang Mai I moved way out of town to a more boutique type of apartment, which cost a bit over S200 a month and even though the apartment was really nice, my landlord was a nightmare, she constantly was finding ways to squeeze another dollar out of my pocket, adding to that Not always true stereotype that Thai locals think westerners are all rich and are constantly trying to scam us, foreigners, so to have a landlord that was the complete opposite was a relief. When I first rented the apartment, I told her I needed to go to the ATM to grab more cash for the deposit, she told me to just give it to her later, I was amazed. She is not the type of landlord that's constantly at your door on the day rents due, telling you to Pay Now. Not to say she's a push over because she's not, the apartments are named after her, Siri and she owns both buildings, so she's a self-made business woman but she is pretty laid back and relaxed about things. She also rescues dogs, which is a nice touch and once and a while I would wake up to a bag of banana's hanging from my doorknob, gift by my landlord, so she's awesome.

If your worried about the deposit, Don’t be; when I moved out I received my entire deposit in a timely manner and with no problems.

There's also no contact that so many of the other service apartments have you sign; the rent is month to month and you don’t even have to stay there for an entire month, if you’re just looking for a place for two weeks or so, no problem, you still have to pay the full deposit but when you leave she will pay you back the difference, along with the deposit, that’s of course if you don’t trash the place.

So that it, that’s one of the cheapest apartment's, that I know of, in Chiang Mai Thailand, that's actually nice. The Siriruk Apartments doesn’t come with tons of bells and whistles but it's in an amazing location and comes with everything you need and also makes for the perfect starter apartment for those who are new to Chiang Mai. Most apartment's that I found around the same price range looked like someone died there and no one found the body for days, so when I stumbled upon this treasure, I felt a need to spread the good news; I mean that's why I do this, is to help other travelers make their travels just a bit easier. Unfortunately, because of my praise of these Apartments, along with a few other YouTubers, the Siriruk Apartments do quickly get filled up, so get your apartment while you can, there more available studios during low season.

Extra Tip: It's better to just go directly to the apartments in person, the phone number can be unreliable, and haven't found any way to book rooms online. Just arrive, cross your fingers there are rooms available and have cash in hand. If there are no rooms at that time, just go ahead and sign yourself up for the waiting list.

Hope this article helped and if you think this could help anyone else please feel free to share. If you know of any apartment overseas that you think is an amazing deal, please feel free to leave it in the comment section below. If you want to stay updated on my travel's tips, tricks and inspiration please feel free to sign up for my mailing list. Thanks for reading and hope to see you again.

Subscribe @ https://www.youtube.com/c/LuvuluvuLaChic
Follow me @ https://www.instagram.com/livelovelifeandtravel/