An Expat Life in the Suburbs of Bangkok

I have spent around 15 years in total living and working in the city of Angels, Thailand's Capital, Bangkok. In the early years I felt the need to live very central in more well known expat areas like Nana, Asoke and such like. But as the years rolled on by, I discovered that life in the suburbs was much better value, less crowded and more 'Local'.

As you can see above, the view from our 17th floor Condo balcony was just fantastic. This was a southerly view from Sukhumvit 101/1 as per the pinmapple marker at the end of this article, showing Bangna and the elevated highway that goes down to Pattaya. Some more lovely view shots below.

Very close to our condo, we had a good choice of street vendors, food markets, shacks and proper restaurants, all of them much more local in terms of pricing as opposed to the pricing we used to pay when we lived in the more central areas. In most cases it is also true to say the food was much more 'Local' in taste, which suited me perfectly.

The area is becoming more and more built up, as the years roll on by. Indeed, when I first came to work here (Vietnam mainly), the BTS Sky-train did not even come out of the city this far. But now there are condo building, modern shopping malls and 7-elevens all over the place.

The condo we chose to live at was called S&S Sukhumvit. We ended up very lucky to have chosen here in October 2019 when we first moved in, as shortly after we started the first round of Covid lockdowns and curfews in around March 2020. This was not big hassle for us, as we had a pool, gym, on site 7 eleven, the nearby markets and a lovely on-site park where we could just go sit among the trees and feel almost like we were out of the city all together.

Just a couple of stops away, on the BTS Sky-train system as you end up at a beautiful temple in Sukhumvit 77 called Wat Mahabut, which we went to on quite a regular basis to chill, and feel the aura. Temples often have quite a few very different sites to see; they are not so regimented as some might think.

In October 2020, we moved to Pattaya/Jomtien for business reasons as well as wanting to make sure we could be near the beach and see for the upcoming lockdowns and restrictions. I will follow this story up with some images of our life here in the next few days.