Steemit City - What Would It Cost You To Live Here?

Hey guys, @menta here

We've been getting many questions about Steemit City lately. We're still building out the entire idea and setting up the development environment. A site with more information is on the horizon in the near future.

For now, I just wanted to give you a quick overview of what it would cost to join us in Steemit City. I added a section at the end of the post that handles international flights and how to find cheaper ways to get to Siem Reap.

1. Visa Costs

Cambodia is one of the easiest countries to get into. Every nationality, bar a handful of Middle-Eastern countries, can arrive at the airport or border and get a 'ordinary' visa. These visas are a bit more expensive than the tourist visas, but you can extend them indefinitely. The immigration officer will give you a month visa. This costs $35 and is a single entry visa. Once you get to Siem Reap, you can extend this by going to any travel agency. Then you can choose for a 3-month single entry, a 6-month multiple entry, or a 1-year multiple entry extension. The prices tend to vary, a 1-year visa is usually between $260-$300.

Monthly cost: $24-$35

2. Accommodation Costs

The goal of Steemit City is to rent our own hotel or apartment block. If we fail to secure enough funding and interest, it will be scaled down to a 6-8 bedroom villa. There are plenty of great rental opportunities in Siem Reap. Since it is such a tourist hotspot, the city is littered with hotels and guesthouses. And some of them fail. This is when places such as this 'Luke Skywalker Villa' come up for rent. Twelve people paying $200 a month pays for an entire apartment block. Of course, there will be extra costs for staff and services. And although staff is cheap and easy to find, electricity is rather expensive in Cambodia. An extra $1200 per month should cover these costs. This includes access to at least two internet connections from different ISP's. All of this is highly speculative, since we could easily find a cheaper place if the general consensus is that the price is too high.

Monthly cost: $200-$350

3. Food Costs

One of the coolest parts about Siem Reap is the diversity in cuisine. You can find anything here, from North-Korean restaurants to quaint little Italian restaurants. Street food is cheap ($2-$3), and Western food is still affordable with prices between $4-$10 in most restaurants. If you want to burn through your Steem dollars, go have a $90 Kobe steak at the local Japanese place.. To make it even more convenient, we'll have a cook onsite, doing daily market runs. This way we can have food priced at street food prices, but that are a bit more healthy (no MSG, less sugar,...). Make that a lot healthier, since my wife @amy-goodrich will be providing recipes! Of course, if you don't like a healthy smoothie for breakfast, nothing stops you from eating bacon and eggs as much as you like.

Monthly cost: $150-$300

4. Transportation Costs

The main modes of transportation for tourists are buses and tuk-tuks. But we are not tourists! So the best way to get around is to buy a bicycle or motorbike. Motorbikes are highly valued here and will usually sell for the same price as you bought it for. You can find simple second hand scooters for around $200-$300, or semi-automatic motorcycles between $300-$500. An average, simple bicycle will set you back $50. Since you can sell them when you leave, you will lose very little money. If you decide to go the other way and use a tuk-tuk for everything, we will have our own driver. But this can get expensive quickly. A small trip in town will costs you about $2. While going a few miles out of town quickly goes up to $5. Getting around the country is easier. There are daily flights between Siem Reap and the capital, Phnom Penh. Tickets go between $25-$75. Buses are dirt cheap, you can hop on a bus to Bangkok for a excruciating 16-hour drive, but it's only $8. Going to Ho Chi Minh can be done for as low as $20.

Monthly cost: $20-$100

Overall Costs: $400-$800

The huge difference in minimum and maximum costs clearly illustrates the diversity of Siem Reap. I know people who live for a lot less! Since we do need a certain setup to make it a feasible destination for this project, a $400 is the bare minimum that is needed. What do you think? Is an average of $600 too much? What is your current cost of living? Keep in mind that (unless your from the USA) you wouldn't need to pay income tax anymore?

Finding Cheaper Ways To Get To Siem Reap

Getting to here looks expensive at first glance. Depending on where you're booking from, the prices can vary wildly. Cambodia does not have the same level of tourism as Thailand or Vietnam, so flights to here are usually more expensive. A good trick to get here cheap is taking a flight to Bangkok. This screenshot shows the difference of going from JFK to Siem Reap directly, or booking a flight to Bangkok.

On some days, you can save up to $250 by going to Bangkok. And there are cheap flights to here from the main Asian hubs. Siem Reap is one of the top tourist destinations for Asians, and flights from Korea, Thailand, China, and Japan land here every single day. Bangkok is only fifty minutes away, and budget airlines such as AirAsia and Thaismile have daily flights between them. A ticket is between $50-$100. On average, you can get here (depending on the time of year and where you live) for around $500.

If you want to save even more money, you can catch a bus at the Bangkok airport that heads for the border with Cambodia. This costs you between $25-$35. There is an excellent article written about this journey, which takes about 9 hours on average.