My brother told me to always book a place with a backup power source in Southeast Asia

Robert Allen · 2026-03-17T01:05:05.324201+00:00

He said it after his own trip to Bali got messed up by daily outages. I ignored him and rented a cheap villa in Chiang Mai for a month. Sure enough, the power went out four times in the first week, killing my work internet each time. I had to scramble to find cafes with generators. Anyone have a good method for checking a rental's power reliability before booking?

rowan3895mo ago

Four times in one week? How did you get any work done?

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rowanf645mo ago

Brothers are always right, it's a universal law.

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tarak174mo ago

Honestly this is part of a bigger problem where people treat cheap rentals like they're just a discount on the same experience. Power reliability isn't some mystery you can't research, you just have to ask specific questions. I've started checking the local Facebook expat groups for any area I'm looking at, just search "power outages" and the neighborhood name. Way more reliable than reviews that might be from people who weren't even working during their trip.

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