Chiang Mai is a good choice. There is significantly less traffic than Bangkok and it's much cheaper whilst you can easily buy any imports you might want to mak

Chiang Mai is a good choice. There is significantly less traffic than Bangkok and it's much cheaper whilst you can easily buy any imports you might want to make yourself feel at home. The reason Thailand always comes up in these kinds of discussions is that it is a much better choice than Myanmar, Laos or Cambodia with the possible exception of Vietnam that I can't vouch for since I haven't been. Hospitals are better here than in major Chinese cities and even big expenses such as cars are noticeably cheaper here than in the west because Japanese car companies have factories here. A big plus is that the weather here is excellent precisely when it turns uncomfortable in the US and Europe. Also if you have a hardware startup it's very easy to take the 1.5 hour flight to Hong Kong for 65USD and take the MTR to Shenzhen or drive anywhere in Guangdong within a couple of hours. Internet here is fine if you get your own DSL or Cable connection. SSH connections to Singapore and Hong Kong are very comfortable latency wise. There are occasional power outages but those don't last long and are easily solved with a UPS. The only true caveat I can think of is the air pollution, but it's nowhere near Chinese levels, having stayed there for several years.