im planning on coming over to thailand for about 3 weeks sometime between late september and late november. when would be the best time to go during that period?

i would like to check the place out with the possibility of living there next year for 4-6 months. where are the best places to live in thailand? ill obviously include these in my trip.

the later you go the better the weather will be.

best place to live are:

1) bangkok
2) chaing mai
3) phuket
4) samui

assuming you intend to play internet poker. check all those places out and decide for yourself what you like best.

thanks for your response. yes, ill be playing internet poker.

how is the internet over there? do you get disconnected much or experience lag?

Tsunami warning for Phuket:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/tsunami-...0811-efua.html

i wish a tsanami would hit kophangan. f that place

hi,

I plan to fly to bangkok from like the mid of sept until the mid of october.

Is this a good time to go there?

also, i want to only book a flight and travel around there a bit.would it be a good idea to stay in a hotel in bangkok for a couple of days and then just travel around and see where i stay,or would you recommend to book the hotels earlier?

I still don't know why you continue to leave Pattaya off the list, given that it has the best internet connections and is cheaper than all of those places as well.

Pattaya has a beach, has far more services aimed at westerners, extremely good deals on accommodation, and is only an hour's drive from Bangkok airport. It is definitely worth considering.

because i've never been to pattaya and (most likely incorrectly) assume it's like patong which is a place i'd never want to live.

That's one slow plane!!!!

Patong is 1 tiny area of Phuket, just like Walking Street is 1 tiny area of Pattaya. And Walking street is a lot more like Soi Cowboy than it is like Bangla Road.

Pattaya is a city of nearly half a million people, it's silly to think it's all like Patong.

It has pretty much everything that a poker player could want, at about half the cost of living of Bangkok or Phuket. It also has a beach (Which Bangkok and Chiang Mai lack), and is very close to Bangkok Airport (a big disadvantage of Samui/Chiang Mai)

I find it hard to believe you guys have been living in Bangkok for over a year and haven't been there yet. It's only 1000 baht in a taxi to go to Pattaya, you should go check it out.

What was your list like one year ago?

Like I said before you are the first person to say anything good about Pattaya. The picture of Pattaya in my head is also a Patong but much bigger one with dirty beaches.

I guess I have to plan a trip there at some point

pattaya is bad and good. there are some really nice places. especially to the south.

Most people's picture of Phuket is probably similar, 90% of people who go there never leave Patong, so they don't know about spots like Kata.

But as with Pattaya, there is more to it than just the central nightlife area.

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying the Beach at Pattaya is better than Phuket or Samui's (it's not). But as a package, Pattaya is good because it offers everything you need at a reasonable price, and the internet there is reliable because Pattaya has much more modern infrastructure than places like Phuket and Samui.

When I say reasonable, here's an example:

http://www.viewtalaycondos.com/

These guys are offering apartments 5 minutes walk from the beach with Internet and Electricity included for 15k baht a month. In Pattaya there are plenty of places available in the 6000 baht per month range too, and for guys on a bigger budget, 30k a month there will get you a pretty nice 2 bedroom serviced apartment with Ocean frontage.

Unfortunatly we won't know if it will hit us :

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Tsunam...d-t287615.html


Only in Thailand...

i've been to pattaya, and all of it is much worse than patong. terrible.

What makes it "worse" ellys? What exactly didn't you like about it?

Simply saying it's "terrible" doesn't really help people who might want some actual information about the place.

pattaya is like patong on fire. the streets are dirtier, the falangs are older and more obese and from germany. it's a lot more noisy than patong, it's ridiculously loud, the beach is terrible and restaurants are awful. also i didn't see a single attractive girl anywhere. they're all from the most sun-cooked part of the issan steppes. there you have it.

So, even parts of Pattaya that are 10 miles from Walking street are Noisier and dirtier than Patong?

See, this is what I'm talking about. You obviously never went anywhere apart from South Pattaya.

South Pattaya is very much like Patong but that is only about 1/5th of Pattaya.

Jomtien beach is similar to Karon, much quieter and mostly condos/5 star hotels.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KagsVVCj-Lg

As you can see Jomtien is nowhere near as busy as Patong, like I said if you judge all of Pattaya gby Walking Street then you should judge all of Phuket by Patong.

PokerSpiv,

Where would you stay in Pattaya for like 4 nights in february. I would be coming with my gf for the first time there just to look what is in there, maybe do some shopping etc. We are fine dining in std thai food places so i dont need fancy chairs and table covers nor english speaking staff when i eat.

Are there any markets going on there on weekends or are they open every day? I mean like the night market in phuket that runs on saturdays and sundays if you happen to know that one.

Lessu: It depends what you want to do but generally Jomtien is classier and quieter, South Pattaya itself is where the action is.

So if you and your gf want to go clubbing, discos etc then stay in South Pattaya, if on the other hand you want to chill out by the beach then stay in Jomtien.

Either way they are only 10 minutes apart by Songthaew so it's not a big issue.

I don't know the market that you are talking about in Phuket but is this the sort of thing you are looking for?

http://en.sevenload.com/videos/QRpuu...-South-Pattaya

Another one here:

http://www.livepattaya.co.uk/soiBuak...etPattaya.html

Pattaya also has standard shopping malls etc.

Ko Larn Island is a good day trip if you want some other things to do:

http://www.livepattaya.co.uk/tawaenBeachKolarn.html

thanks.

i will look into those later when the trip actually comes closer and update you with our preferences

the same. why do you ask?

pokerspiv,

that video doesn't look that appealing. it just seems like a flat tourist city on a mediocre beach. it could be fun for a short visit but i wouldn't want to live there. what makes phuket so liveable natural landscape, great beaches, and diversity between towns.

Screech:

You are just trying to justify writing it off earlier without ever visiting.

Like I said before the beach in Pattaya isn't as nice as Phuket, but the advantage it has over Phuket is affordability, better services, more reliable internet and proximity to Bangkok.

The video was deliberately selected to disprove the previous comments that all of Pattaya was dirty and noisy. Obviously I could have shown you a more exciting video of Pattaya, but I don't think anyone is seriously arguing that Pattaya is lacking in that respect.

This thread is supposed to offer advice to prospective travellers. If you have never been to Pattaya it would be more responsible of you to say "I've never been to Pattaya so I can't comment" rather than pretend you know something about it.

I don't live in Pattaya either, I live in Samui, but I have been there a couple of times and I think it is a pretty good fit for the 15-20 people each day who post here looking for "A beach in Asia to grind from".

At the very least it is the only beach in Thailand (and possibly all of South East Asia) that has internet connections up to first world standards. It is also by far the cheapest Beach resort town in Thailand. Cheaper than Samui and way, way cheaper than Phuket.

Along with Pattaya's legendary nightlife there are more than enough reasons for an online poker grinder to be interested in Pattaya. So if you yourself are not interested, don't go. But posting lists claiming that Chiang Mai, Phuket and Samui are better places for internet poker is a little silly when you take into consideration that 90% of accommodation in those places doesn't have a suitable internet connection for online poker.

There are other places too. Petchaburi has good internet on the beach, as do some other places further down south on the mainland. And I don't know if you count Cha-Am, Hua Hin, Khao Lak etc as resort towns, but I don't think there much of a price difference.

I think Pattaya is somewhat of a human wasteland and I'd probably still rather stay there over Phuket (yes I've stayed outside Patong), but it's close.