Covered or mentioned in this post:
Paying for electricity and paying for water.
Living in Chiang Mai, like anywhere else, unfortunately involves paying for living expenses like rent/mortgage and utilities such as water and electricity. This post is a shortie to give you a little useful information about the latter two.
I am only speaking from my own experience living in a Moo Baan, or gated community, in Chiang Mai. The process may be a little different in other situations or locations. I know it is in Si Bun Ruang but the goal is the same i.e. money out of your pocket into someone else’s!
In our Moo Baan every house has a small plastic “postbox” attached to their outside wall. This is our house and you can see it under the light.
The utilities postbox on the right.
A closer view.
The meters are read once a month here and separately for water and for electricity. You then get small printed invoices put in your postbox usually with the ends showing so you know they have arrived. They look like this:
Water on the left and electricity on the right.
Now all you have to do is take these invoices into any 7/11, and there seem to be one of these every few hundred meters in Thailand, hand them to the cashier and pay your money. All good until next month. Now the time you have to do this at 7/11 is very limited. If you look at the bottom of the invoices above you will see as date range, which I have enlarged below:
This for water 13 – 19 September
A bit longer for electricity 17 – 26
This is the period during which you can pay via 7/11. Miss this date and you have to pay directly at the utility company, which is a bit of a pain. In Chiang Mai the water company is on the super highway 11 while the electricity company is on Route 106, the road I wrote about in detail HERE. A Google map with their locations can be found HERE.
For your interest our water bill for this month was 175 THB or around A$5.50. The electricity for August was around A$17.00 but we were away in Isaan for much of that period. The highest electricity bill I have had here running an air conditioner full-time at night is around A$55.00.
UPDATE: 15 Sept. The guy has just come around to read our electricity meter and the bill for the last month was 1,200 THB or around A$40.00. We have been running an air conditioner in the bedroom overnight every night. As we were away in Hong Kong for a week this sounds about right.
Thanks for reading.
Dear Tony,
For the last 1.5 years I’ve been writing a guide book about Chiang Mai for expats; specifically, the practicalities of living in the city (having lived here myself on and off for 16 years) not least about utility bills. I’m just a day or two away from publishing my book but am missing a photograph of a water bill! In all the time I’ve lived in Chiang Mai and for every placed I’ve lived in, my water bills have always been issued by the accommodation. So it was with great delight that I happened upon your web site and, lo and behold, a photograph of a Provincial Waterworks Authority water bill! I wondered, therefore, if you’d be kind enough to allow me to use your photograph of the PWA water bill in my book? I would, of course, provide due acknowledgement and thanks (precisely as I have for the few other photographs in my book which are not my own). I do hope you consider my request acceptable but if you would be kind enough to let me know either way within the next 24 or so hours, I’d be immensely grateful.
Very many thanks for your time and best wishes,
Mike.
Of course Mike and I appreciate you writing to ask.
Do you want me to find the original photo?
All the very best for the publication of your book. Maybe I can add it as a recommendation to the blog once it’s ready. This is not a commercial site but I am always happy to point people in the direction of a quality product and they can use their own judgement.
Regards Tony
Bless you, Tony, for not only replying so darn promptly but, more importantly, for your very graciously allowing me to use your photograph of the PWA water bill – I am really very grateful.
If you do still happen to have the original photo and it won’t cause you any trouble at all to dig it out then, yes please, I’d very much like to have a copy, thank you. But please do not go to any trouble if it’s not immediately to hand.
Thank you so much as well for your best wishes regarding my book and in particular for the opportunity of your recommending it. In fact, bar the obligatory visa/border runs, eating and sleeping (neither of which I’ve had much of in the last 1/5 years!), I’ve devoted almost every waking second to the book and I can say that without any trace whatsoever of dishonesty or exaggeration. Despite it draining me dry intellectually, physically, emotionally, spiritually and, most of all, financially, it has been a complete labour of love (not least because I’ve long been exceptionally passionate about Chiang Mai). God willing, the first edition will be published (all 400+ pages of it plus an accompanying custom map illustrating over 1000 points of value, everything from local hospitals, work spaces, transport hubs, rental accommodation, day & night markets, government offices, gas stations and much more) in just a day or two…though it still feels like I have a mountain to climb to reach that point!! Nevertheless, I do really appreciate your offer of ‘assisted marketing’ – that is very kind (and perhaps a tad courageous!) of you to offer not least as you’ve has no visibility of the content itself.
So, very many thanks again, really, for your help and support, Tony, it does in fact mean a lot to me. Very best wishes, Mike.
Not a problem and I have sent you a high quality version to your mailbox.
Your book sounds like the ultimate Chiang Mai guide and I wish it was around when we lived there. With the number of expats making Chiang Mai their new home I am sure it will be a great success once word gets out. You can have a couple of days off and then get stuck into the first update 🙂
Please keep in touch with details of the release.