In recent years, more and more independent travelers have ditched hotels for short-term rental apartments which give them a larger space for the same price and sometimes free guided tours from the hosts. Singapore-based Roomorama has been a big player here in Asia for a while, and now Airbnb (www.airbnb.com), the world’s largest short-term rental portal with more than 200,000 rooms worldwide (1,500 in Thailand), has just officially launched its Thai-language edition (th.airbnb.com) with a Thai-speaking service call center to follow soon. “The idea was born in 2007 when we decided to rent out an empty room with an airbed to help us pay the rent; so we called it airbed-and-breakfast,” explains Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczky. We tried searching for properties in Singapore during ZoukOut (Dec 6-8) and found interesting pads like a nice two-bedroom apartment in Orchard for B4,500, an entire four-bedroom shophouse on Ceylon Road for B31,400 and even a yacht for B46,000 a night. More realistic? A seaview room in Phuket starts from only B1,777.