"The house is situated next to a peaceful rubber plantation in Chalong, providing potential renters with lots of privacy and scenic views."

That might be a clue.. For the rest, looks nice..

Where can I buy a case of Beer Lao dark in bkk?

re: no motorbike

thats right, right now I dont plan on getting one but thats no where final,
last time Ive ridden one is more than 10 years ago (was in asia too)
and I will rethink once there..

If I really stay there long term I will get one of course

but I enjoy walking anyway and ~30minutes is still within walking distance for me


btw a big thank you to all of you posting and answering questions ITT!

if it werent for you guys I dunno if I would move to thailand in the 1st place
and most def would have been much less informed..

learning thai:

Ive found a number of schools on phuket online where you can learn thai
(200 hours a year) and when you apply you get a 1 year student visa,
legit or not?

legit, i'm on one of those visas from Walen in Bangkok right now.

well in 30 minutes you still won't get far in phuket from any of our homes here. I'd be able to walk to the dutch guys' house in 30mins but everyone else would be much longer walk. some of the activities we do and the restaurants/night life spots etc etc are 10km away atleast for someone every time.

you'll see what we mean when you get there. just trying to get you ready for the fact that a bike is something you really need here

fwiw i hadn't driven a bike in finland before I came here. It took a little time to get used to the traffic but after that it's pretty awesome

yea the visa is legit. i'm pretty sure there are some schools that don't have that good reputation too so make sure ask some feedback first before signing in to one.

Thanks for the responses fellas, I really appreciate it. I thought the price seemed a little too good to be true. Basically, I'm looking for a 2-bedroom place to rent for May, June, and July. I think it is a bit ambitious to think this exact place would still be available then to inspect it before signing. The location looks to be fine but like you said, it could be on a busier road. I really wouldn't mind so long as the gravel delivery company scenario wasn't true. As for the kitchen, I really don't care. I've lived in Korea for a year and never even turned on my stove. I'm not much of a cooker, especially when on vacation.

My question now is this: how realistic is to just show up in May, book a hotel for a few days, and find a place like this in a similar price range for a 3 month rental? We just want a two bedroom with A/C, cable, internet somewhere on the southern part of the island--nothing balla required. I know zero Thai and have very limited experience in Phuket. I know I'm going to be there during low season but I also like the peace of mind of having a place booked ahead of time. Is it worth waiting or should I be seriously considering this place?

Thanks again. Drinks will be on me in May.

My reccomendation is to hold off. Availability will open and prices will drop. Try hunting around those sites again in say mid april. Find like 4-5 options you like and then contact one us to go check them out.

about those 1 year student visas. can you apply for the course and simply not go?

you can but you won't get extensions to your visa if your school is legit.

the school needs to fill paperword for you which you need to show to immigration.

i don't know the exact details. maybe jigsaw will help you more

I want to order some weightlifting shoes (addidas ironworks) and a belt. Anybody have any experience with ordering stuff like that on amazon or whatever?

You just order it to your Thai address like normal, but you're going to get charged a tariff.

You want a thai speaker (Thai person or farang with experience), rosetta stone does not do the language justice. There are sounds that are hard to make and you want a Thai speaker to correct you over and over. Craigslist has a lot of tutors in most cities I looked.

I'm on a edu visa. The school gives you a letter for the original visa (lasts 3 months) and a letter to renew your visa inside Thailand for the remaining 9 months. After that you no longer deal with school paperwork and everything is up to you for the remainder of the year.

Why spend so much money to get an edu visa and not bother learning the language? They have tourist visas for that.

Actually the rubber plantations tend to be as advertised in that you are shielded from most annoyance by a field of incredibly symettricly planted trees.

i learned using becker's books a lot, and later was curious and went back and listened to the pimsleur tapes and was fairly impressed. so..+1.

also +1 on thai dictionary.

and get a thai gf when you move back to thailand, that will accelerate learning 50x.

learning thai,

pimsleur is good to start with

on itunes search for learn thai podcast, they have some free lesson you can download and monthly membership is $30 and they bring out a new lesson everyday i think with transcript, its pretty good http://learn-thai-podcast.com/

also http://www.linguaphone.co.uk/levels/advanced.cfm is an extensive course which takes you from beginner to advanced, its little bit expensive at $400 but i think you can find the download on utorrent

get a girl and get her to teach you

I stayed at smith residence in january and my net disconnected pretty often (same for my friend who lives there). I moved out because for baht 10k at www.centralhillplace.com I could get a similar room that they charge 22k baht/month at the smith.

hehe, I guess it's better than possible alternatives...

already had looked on CL and none in Las Vegas. Found a couple online but they were language teachers who knew like 10+ languages, not thai native speakers


And if I can't learn thai I can always just replace every word with KAP and I should be fine, right screech?


Almost every girl I met in a normal club in thailand asked right away "do you speak thai?", and a couple asked the worst question(to a guy with a hotel room, visiting) : "do you live here?". Being able to say yes to both seems promising.

kap!

miriam and slappz pretty much hit the nail on the head.

before i came to thai i tried tried the benjawan book, and thought it was worthless and too difficult to comprehend. now it's my favorite learning tool. you should really take the time to learn how the thai alphabet sounds early on, and practice reading thai because quite a bit gets lost in transliteration.

i always thought pimsleur was the nizzles, and still think it's good, but it's way too polite/informal. but it's quick and easy to use, and helps with sentence structure and a bit of tones and pronunciation. definitely worth spending the 15hrs it takes to do that.

the thai website is obviously great for filling in the gaps in your vocab and pronunciation. this one is very good too.

and having a native thai tutor a few hours a week is nice to correct you in little areas your going wrong, help with vocab, and show you how Thais usually speak to one another in different situations so you don't come off as too formal (or unformal) in different situations.

how's the internet at your place?

don't you have CDMA or did you sell it?

it not and you are planning on staying here for a while just buy a new one

or is your plan just to hang in CM for a few months and then leave thailand?

No importa. Get an AIS super 3g card. Mine works great.

just withdrew from moneybookers to kasikorn, how long does it take normally?