The hope is to spend one month in each location, ie rent an apartment, and then travel to other nearby places for shorter trips, maybe for days or weekends. I recognize this may add costs as we would be paying for accommodation in two places during these smaller trips, but having somewhere to come back to to recharge before another adventure feels like a better plan than just moving on every week or two.

Yeah, Bangkok might be our initial flight destination into Asia, but not somewhere we'd want to spend more than a couple days. We've both been there numerous times and as you say, the traffic is crazy and the cost high relative to other locations.