I haven't lived in thailand, but lived in China for a year, and I find that anything found on the internet that is in english has the rents raised substantially

I haven't lived in thailand, but lived in China for a year, and I find that anything found on the internet that is in english has the rents raised substantially. You may want to start by staying at a hostel and becoming friendly with the hostel staff. They usually have friends who know friends who will be able to help you out for sure. You may also want to bring a bit of money to hire someone from the country (in china you can pay around $500-$600/month for a full time university graduate who majored english) to be your personal assistant while getting things set up for you. In fact I would highly recommend this. In China, we had to sign a year lease, but actually got out of it early and it wasn't a hassle at all but that may just be that our landlords were great. Another idea you may want to try is to use something like couchsurfing.com just to meet local expats there. When I lived in the Caribbean I used to let people couch surf and would introduce them to the locals that would show them what they wanted to see/do. You don't even need to stay at their house, you can just ask them questions through the website. Good luck on your adventure, I haven't gotten to Thailand yet, but as soon as I can make it out there, I will. Iceland is next on my list.