Working From a Rented Condo in Bangkok
In short
A dining table is around 75cm and a typing surface wants 68 to 72cm, and you cannot cut the legs down. So raise yourself instead: a firm cushion on the chair and something solid under your feet, plus a laptop stand and separate keyboard, which pack into a suitcase when you leave.
A rented condominium is not a home office, and most of the advice about setting one up assumes you can drill into a wall, buy a desk, and put a chair somewhere permanently. Here you usually cannot, or will not, because you are on a one-year lease and the furniture came with the place.
So this is what to do about a Bangkok rental specifically — a small space, fixed furniture, and a landlord's inventory.
The dining table is the only surface, and it is the wrong height
A dining table is around 75cm. A desk for typing wants to be nearer 68 to 72cm, and the difference is enough that your shoulders lift slightly to reach the keys and stay lifted all day.
You cannot cut the legs down. What you can do is raise yourself instead: a firm cushion on the dining chair gets your elbows to roughly the right height, and then something solid under your feet stops your legs dangling. A box, a suitcase, a stack of books. It looks improvised and it works, and it leaves the landlord's furniture untouched.
Two purchases worth making even on a one-year lease
A laptop stand and a separate keyboard. Together, well under a thousand baht at any of the big electronics floors, and they solve the two contradictory problems a laptop creates — screen too low, keyboard too high — at the same time. They pack into a suitcase when you leave. This is the highest-value change available and it takes no floor space.
A cushion that is actually firm. Not a decorative one. It is doing structural work.
Everything else — a proper chair, a monitor, a sit-stand desk — is better, and none of it is necessary to remove most of the load. Details of the resulting posture problem are in laptop posture in a small Bangkok condo.
Where to sit, given the air conditioning
A condominium usually has one wall-mounted unit and no way to move it. Working directly in the airflow for eight hours leaves a shoulder cold, stiff and guarded, and it is a genuinely common cause of one-sided neck ache here.
Move the chair rather than the unit. If the layout gives you no choice, angle the vanes upward so the air crosses the ceiling rather than landing on you.
The problem nobody mentions: you never leave
An office involves a commute, stairs, walking to lunch, and standing up to talk to people. Working from a studio can mean a genuine total of a few hundred steps in a day, and sitting still for nine hours in one position is worse for your back than a mediocre chair.
The fix is not exercise, it is interruption. Stand up every half hour. Take calls walking around the room. Go out for lunch rather than ordering it — this is the one that changes a day most, and it is the one most easily skipped.
Separating work from the rest of the room
In a studio, the desk, the sofa and the bed are within a few metres of each other. That is a switching-off problem as much as a postural one, and the two feed each other: people who cannot stop working tend to sit in the same position for longer.
Packing the laptop away at a fixed time, rather than leaving it open on the table, does more than it sounds like it should.
Treatment, when the room is also the problem
There is an obvious irony in working from home all week and then travelling across the city to have your shoulders dealt with. We are a mobile service, so the treatment comes to the condominium — and for a table treatment the therapist needs about two metres by two of cleared floor, which in a studio usually means moving the coffee table.
If it genuinely does not exist, head, neck and shoulder massage is done in a chair, through clothing, no oil, at ฿900 for forty-five minutes — the same dining chair you have been working in, in fact.
For the full desk-work pattern, office syndrome massage covers neck, upper back, shoulders and forearms at ฿1,200 for an hour. If one area has stopped responding, deep tissue massage from ฿1,400 is firmer and more specific.
There is no travel surcharge in any of the twelve areas we cover, and what a condominium visit involves covers building access, which is the only part that ever needs arranging.
Book a session, or see everything on the home page.
Frequently asked questions
What should I buy if I am only here a year?
A laptop stand and a separate keyboard, together well under a thousand baht at any of the large electronics floors, and a genuinely firm cushion. The stand and keyboard solve the two contradictory problems a laptop creates, take no floor space, and pack into a suitcase when you go.
I cannot change the desk height. What then?
Raise yourself rather than lowering the table. A firm cushion on the dining chair brings your elbows to roughly the right height, and something solid under your feet stops your legs dangling once you are higher. A box or a suitcase works, and the landlord's furniture is untouched.
Where should I sit relative to the air conditioning?
Out of the airflow. Working directly under a unit for eight hours leaves a shoulder cold, stiff and guarded, and it is a common cause of one-sided neck ache here. If the layout gives you no choice, angle the vanes upward so the air crosses the ceiling instead of landing on you.
Can I have a massage in a studio with no floor space?
Yes. Head, neck and shoulder massage is done in a chair, through clothing, with no oil, at 900 baht for forty-five minutes, and it works in the same dining chair you have been sitting in. If you can clear about two metres by two, any table treatment is available.
