Living in Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai is an easy city to visit and a slightly more complicated city to live in. Not difficult — just full of small procedural details that nobody tells you about until you hit them. Which bank will open an account on your visa. What your landlord is charging you per unit of electricity. Whether the drive-thru 90-day report window is running this month. How bad March actually gets.

This section collects everything we publish on the practical side of life here. It covers the visa routes people actually use, what the city genuinely costs across different lifestyles, finding and renting somewhere to live, healthcare and insurance, banking, the remote-work infrastructure, and the one topic that shapes the year more than any other: air quality and burning season.

None of it is written to sell you on the city. Chiang Mai does that well enough on its own. The aim is to answer the question you actually have, in enough detail that you can act on it.