What price a Baht?

When I hand over say, a 100 Baht note, I always make the mistake as thinking of it as being ┬г1.50. I say 'mistake', because I've been told by many, much more wiser people than myself, that I shouldn't think in terms of Sterling, and should think in terms of Baht. Wise advice I'm sure, but it leaves me wondering just what a Baht is really worth?

When I give a boy, say, 2000 Baht for an overnight stay, (which I often do, honest!) to me, that's the equivalent of about ┬г30. An honest days (or nights) work for an honest days (or nights) pay. But ┬г30 is just the price it's cost me. We all know however, that 2000 Baht in Thailand will buy you a hell of a lot more than ┬г30 would in the UK.

I'm not an economist, so I'm not sure of the correct terminology to use when trying to ask what I'm trying to ask, but the phrase "in real terms" springs to mind. To assume that a 100 Baht note is roughly the same as ┬г1.50 only indicates the exchange rate, and not what the note is actually worth. Has anyone ever come up with a chart of what a Baht is worth "in real terms"? When I give a Thai person a 100 Baht note, what is the worth of that note to them, as a Thai person likely to spend it in Thailand, when compared to someone giving me ┬г1.50 as a UK citizen likely to spend it in the UK?

I'm guessing it's probably a difficult one to work out, but me handing over a 1000 Baht note to a Thai boy would be roughly the same as someone handing over to me...

...?

I'm guessing it's probably a difficult one to work out, but me handing over a 1000 Baht note to a Thai boy would be roughly the same as someone handing over to me...It's not that difficult - the economic theory is Purchasing Power Parity and you can find references everywhere to it - including The Economist magazine's Big Mac Index
http://fx.sauder.ubc.ca/PPP.html
http://www.economist.com/finance/displa ... id=9448015 (http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9448015)

When I give a boy, say, 2000 Baht for an overnight stay, (which I often do, honest!) to me, that's the equivalent of about ┬г30. An honest days (or nights) work for an honest days (or nights) pay. But ┬г30 is just the price it's cost me. We all know however, that 2000 Baht in Thailand will buy you a hell of a lot more than ┬г30 would in the UK.


Interesting but a totally irrelevant calculation.

More to the point is, in the UK would a good looking 18-25 year old guy go for sex with an old and probably overweight guy for ┬г30 and stay all night?

Now if you work out how much that service would cost you in the UK (maybe ┬г150?) and then convert that to Baht (9300 Baht) then you can see you are getting a good deal for your 2K Baht.

A better way to gage what your money is worth to a Thai is to know what others make. The average uneducated Thai worker is retail, construction or security work in Pattaya makes between 200 and 300 baht a day and must work 10 to 12 hours a day 30 days a month, and if he is late to work or commits a rules infraction he fined or fired. Most all of the boys, and girls for that matter, come from e-sarn and are from families that live on the edge of poverty. They have food to eat and a roof over their head, but no money or means to earn money.

When one gives a 100 baht tip to a Thai worker that is equal to 50% of the average Thai workers daily pay. When you are paying a boy 2,000 baht for a few hours work in real terms he is being paid more than a doctor, bank manager, or lawyer: all of which have many years of education and experience.

This may help explain why they see us Farang as rich walking ATMs.....which is exactly what we are.

An additional calibration. A field hand in Issan makes about 100 baht a day for 10-12 hours of work.

[dave_tf-old]

To say a barboy's 'pay' in tips is so much an hour is like saying a professional athelete's pay is per minute played. The latter spends much more time in practice and conditioning that he ever spends on the field. The former probably spends much more time sprucing himself up and being ogled by customers than he spends earning the big bucks...and bar salaries are low, typically. The earnings life of both is relatively short, and in both the income is subject to being lost due to accident or illness.

Homi's reference to the Big Mac index is as good a one as I've encountered for people above subsitence in places like Pattaya and Bangkok.

A one-hundred baht tip for a small service is very generous and any Thai who would sniff at it apparently no longer needs my baht. Good on them.

[fedssocr]

this is an interesting discussion. And I suppose it explains the genuine giddy excitement two boys showed in a particular bar where I spent an evening cuddling and to a certain extent fondling them when I tipped them what must have been a huge amount to them. I gave one Bt1000 and the other 500. You'd have thought they had just won the lottery. "Pun baht!" I had told them I was leaving the next morning to return to BKK in my broken Thai as they didn't really speak English. Mamasan told me they were asking what I would be doing in BKK and when I told her just touring they wanted to come with me. They were making plans to spend the money on a trip to BKK anyway on their own. Part of me sort of wished they would save it somehow, but I guess that's not how they think. I had actually spent a good bit of time with one of them the evening before and tipped him Bt500 or 600. The next night he had new sunglasses and new cheap watch that didn't work. All I could think was that I hoped he learned a lesson from spending his money on a cheap, crappy watch. The three of us had a good laugh over his watch that kept on stopping.

I look at my time in SE Asia as redistribution of wealth from the Western world to their world. I figure the money I spend there means a lot more to them and their survival than it probably means to me in my life, so I am happy to spend it. But if the dollar keeps crashing I may not be so happy. :-)

Soi 10 Tom: The average uneducated Thai worker is retail, construction or security work in Pattaya makes between 200 and 300 baht a day and must work 10 to 12 hours a day 30 days a month

As long as it is not raining, in which case those working on construction sites where they cannot work do not get paid!

[ChrisUK]

These guys would spend 30-40 baht on a meal.. does that give some perspective?

Whenever Thai friends I meet on the street ask for "tip" to eat, they want about 25Bt, which gives them enough for a snack meal. That's the exchange rate I think of when handing over the Baht.

[dave_tf-old]

Not colonial at all. It's the primary purpose of any good tourism industry.

[dave_tf-old]

Good article, and raises many valid points. Some of them I've also raised in my time on this board and its predecessors. The commodification and Disneyfication of culture, the presence of multinationals at the top of the food chain, the displacement of economies and people to development for tourism.

On the other hand, it isn't just hotels that have sprung up all over places like Pattaya, but condos. That at least suggests that pressures to 'westernize' areas come also from expats looking to remake the place into something they feel comfortable with...doesn't hurt to make a buck either. Pattaya is well past the point of returning to a sleepy Thai fishing village--whether that's a good thing or not depends on who you ask.

It can also be argued that keeping people naked and living on grubs to maintain some ideal of anthropological authenticity is a different kind of colonialism.

Anyway...it all boils down in the end to wishing that all those pesky 'other people' would just think right (like me), and is mostly just pissing up a rope.

It's not colonial. Thailand's an independant country which doesn't even let Farang settle there. We are encouraged to visit as tourists though.

Thai economic mismanagement ensures labour rates are exceptionally low compared with the west, so rent boys are cheap.

In the case of the US & UK, that gap will soon be reduced somewhat by our own mismanagement (tax, spend, borrow, waste, import --- then the currency falls in value).

The more prudent rent boys would use the money to get an education, or build up a nest egg so they can set up a business & live in comparative luxury after retiring from the go go bar scene.
I suspect there are not many doing this?

You know many boys who saved their moneys ?

All boys I know use their money everyday for drink, karaoke, shirt, and pay their room 1 time per month
Some send money to village
I never hear or see one of them save any money or pay for school or to go back school
but most of them are 18 to 22, and If I remeber what I was doing with my money at this time, it was not so different, just I was not sex worker....

[a447]

If the average worker gets paid 3000 baht a month, and a gogo boy can make that in 1 night, well......that's 30 times the average worker's wage!!! Imagine what that would be like in your own country - a policeman earning the equivalent of A$8000 a DAY, not a month!!!
Are we being too generous? As someone here said, the boys do not think what the money would buy in London or Sydney, they only think of what it would be worth in Thailand.
They must be amongst the richest of the rich in Thailand, earning much more than doctors, lawyers and the like.
I know their job is pretty unpleasant at times, but a construction worker in Thailand in the middle of a hot day has it pretty tough, too. The Thais seem to have their priorities all wrong.
Thank god for that!

Thai economic mismanagement ensures labour rates are exceptionally low compared with the west

What makes you think this is "economic mismanagement"?

It has always been deliberate policy on the part of what used to be the few wealthy Thai families who owned and ran the country, whose interests it was in to make sure that the poor, uneducated masses remained just that. The arrival of mass tourism, foreign investment and the emergence of a growing middle class, however, has upset the status quo

[fedssocr]

It has always been deliberate policy on the part of what used to be the few wealthy Thai families who owned and ran the country, whose interests it was in to make sure that the poor, uneducated masses remained just that. The arrival of mass tourism, foreign investment and the emergence of a growing middle class, however, has upset the status quo

Just as it is now beginning to do in China. The growing middle class is starting to care a great deal about issues like environmental degradation, and they are not sitting still and taking what the authorities force on them anymore. You are starting to see reports out of China on a frequent basis of mass unrest and protest in many places. Ultimately the sleeping giant there is beginning to awaken and it's going to be tougher and tougher for the people in charge to keep a lid on it.

As for my "colonialist attitude", I agree with ceejay. A true colonialist attitude would be to steal as much as possible from the locals while subjugating them and trying to change their culture to my own. I rather enjoy Thai culture for the most part and certainly wouldn't want to change it. I recognize that once I hand my baht over to a boy or anyone else it is theirs to do whatever they want to do with it. While I might wish they would do something more constructive with it, that's not up to me. And as ceejay says, when I am on holiday I am doing things for me that I enjoy.

So, as a Brit who still thinks in terms of Sterling and not Baht when I'm in LOS, how far off the mark would I be if I thought of a 100 Baht note more like a ┬г5 note, and a 1000 Baht note as a ┬г50 note? Would that be about right?

[quote]So, as a Brit who still thinks in terms of Sterling and not Baht when I'm in LOS, how far off the mark would I be if I thought of a 100 Baht note more like a ┬г5 note, and a 1000 Baht note as a ┬г50 note? Would that be about right?/quote]

You would be way out 100 baht = about ┬г1.65 1000 baht =┬г16.50.
(and going down alas)

[travelerjim]

So, as a Brit who still thinks in terms of Sterling and not Baht when I'm in LOS, how far off the mark would I be if I thought of a 100 Baht note more like a ┬г5 note, and a 1000 Baht note as a ┬г50 note? Would that be about right?

I think of 100 baht as being US$3.00,
and 1000 baht note as being US$30.00

50% of that and you have what your currency is worth...
as your sterling is about 2 times our US$
or *1.50 and 15.

(*Wow, my math was initially wrong...I have made the correction)

So, as a Brit who still thinks in terms of Sterling and not Baht when I'm in LOS, how far off the mark would I be if I thought of a 100 Baht note more like a ┬г5 note, and a 1000 Baht note as a ┬г50 note? Would that be about right?I thought 1000 baht is more like 15 pounds than 50 pounds. 50 pounds is 3000+ baht. These days I tend to divide by 100 for small numbers - 100 baht is around a pound, but once you get up to larger numbers it's slightly more difficult. 1500 baht is 20 quid, more or less. It's slightly easier for the Australians and the Americans (with their dollars almost at parity) - 1500 baht is $50. And why do I harp on 1500 baht? - well, it's getting to be the de facto standard short-time tip in Bangkok

I know that 1000 Baht is rougly ┬г15 ($30) but I'm not talking about the exchange rate. I'm talking about the equivelent worth of the note. What I mean is, is the worth of a 1000 Baht note in Thailand, roughly the same as the worth of a ┬г50 note in the UK?

I know that 1000 Baht is rougly ┬г15 ($30) but I'm not talking about the exchange rate. I'm talking about the equivelent worth of the note. What I mean is, is the worth of a 1000 Baht note in Thailand, roughly the same as the worth of a ┬г50 note in the UK?

It is not possible to be exact on this as the prices of many things are not pro-rata between the UK & Thailand, but your generalisation that giving someone 1000Baht here is akin to giving the buying power of ┬г50 sterling in the UK is probably as close as you will get.

However if you are talking about prices for boys then I would imagine that in a UK city you would be paying much more than ┬г50 which equates to 3000Baht. It would be interesting to know the London prices for a comparison.

However if you are talking about prices for boys then I would imagine that in a UK city you would be paying much more than ┬г50 which equates to 3000Baht. It would be interesting to know the London prices for a comparison.From my frequent visits I can report that 100 to 150 pounds is standard

However if you are talking about prices for boys then I would imagine that in a UK city you would be paying much more than ┬г50 which equates to 3000Baht. It would be interesting to know the London prices for a comparison.From my frequent visits I can report that 100 to 150 pounds is standard

So as that equates to between 6000 -9000 Baht as I have always said Thailand boys are a bargain even after taking into account the difference in the cost of living here. Maybe some of the frequent cheapskate moaners should keep that in mind. :blackeye:

That cute twink must have been a drug addict. In other words I don't believe the friend you HAD in the US or you for that matter.

Not the one I am together with, and I think I should know, having worked in an institution for young drug addicts.
Well maybe it is beause I don't pick them up in Sunee bars.

btw. I still don't believe you or the friend you have HAD

Heather Mills cost Paul quite a bit.

The settlement equated to ┬г17,000 ($34,000) for every day of the couple's marriage.

It all depends. You can find lots of boys on GayRomeo who will do it for less than 1000 Baht. I guess it is the virtual equivalent of visiting the park for a cheap trick. That said, in Bali you can find happyness for the equivalent of 400 THB or even less. The Indonesians are not as sweet as the Thai though.