What you are gonna spend on a room greatly matters where you are going, there isn't a room in Phuket for under 80 a night I would even consider stepping into let alone sleeping. But go up north and ya you can find sufficient rooms for like 30 range, certainly not a nice room but not disgusting either. There's allot of people in Thailand who call themselves backpackers, in reality 90% of them are just semi drug addicts who are trying to escape responsibility back home, essentially they are homeless bums here who live off of 10 cent hotdogs and rearley leave the few street blocks where they first passed out upon arrival. I'd suggest shaving your beard so you don't get lumped in with these waste of lives, also you will be much more respected everywhere you go. Overall Thailand is a cool spot to check out, its reasonably priced and has some nice area's, if you want to go somewhere really cheap, diverse and beautiful I'd suggest Vietnam or Cambodia, there allot of places you can go where you won't feel like one of the thousands of tourists and people will treat you much better, in Thailand there is a growing hatred towards tourists thanks to the rude Russians and doped up Americans who seem to litter every nice area.