Trang

[thaigold]

My wife and I plan to move to Trang or its environs the end of this year. Can anyone suggest a community or guest area for long term residents? My wife is Thai (dual citizenship) American. We are going to build a home in Trang, but need a place to stay during this process. We are both bilingual, so there is no language barrier. Any suggestions are much appreciated.

[phuket Mike]

I live about 40km outside of Trang. Rental accommodation is generally very limited to shop houses, there are plenty of cheap hotels and bungalow type places (I was going to resorts, but they are not resorts). Shop house rentals start at about 2000 baht per month outside of the city and go up dependent on the area.

Where is your wife from? Is she southern Thai? This can be a factor because most people speak the local dialect, if she has family or friends in the area it will be a great help. My wife is from here and related to just about everybody within 100km radius.

If you plan to buy land, it is very cheap outside of the city, rubber tree land (with trees) sells for 100,000 per rai, roadside land is more expensive.

I don't think language will be the problem, it will more of a shock for you with very few, if any other foreigners in the area. Where I live I'm the only one for miles, also out in the country the lack of availability of essential food items. I'm not talking about McDonald's, I mean thing like bread, potatoes, butter, cheese, wine, ham, bacon, decent beef.

Anyway good luck with your venture and if I can help in anyway please feel free to PM me.

Phuket (Trang) Mike

[AJARNJACK]

I live about 40km outside of Trang. Rental accommodation is generally very limited to shop houses, there are plenty of cheap hotels and bungalow type places (I was going to resorts, but they are not resorts). Shop house rentals start at about 2000 baht per month outside of the city and go up dependent on the area.

Where is your wife from? Is she southern Thai? This can be a factor because most people speak the local dialect, if she has family or friends in the area it will be a great help. My wife is from here and related to just about everybody within 100km radius.

If you plan to buy land, it is very cheap outside of the city, rubber tree land (with trees) sells for 100,000 per rai, roadside land is more expensive.

I don't think language will be the problem, it will more of a shock for you with very few, if any other foreigners in the area. Where I live I'm the only one for miles, also out in the country the lack of availability of essential food items. I'm not talking about McDonald's, I mean thing like bread, potatoes, butter, cheese, wine, ham, bacon, decent beef.

Anyway good luck with your venture and if I can help in anyway please feel free to PM me.

Phuket (Trang) Mike

There is a very nice gated community of mostly Thais called "Sri Trang" which is on the Palien Highway. That's a main road which goes by the Tesco Lotus store and out towards Wichienmatu School. I taught English there and one of the teachers was able to rent one of the houses from someone who just bought it for an investment., but didn't live there. My self, I rented a large two story town house right in town and up a side street for 6000 baht per month. That was 2000 baht higher than the regular locals paid, but foreigners are expected to pay more. There aren't any real estate agents to help you rent a place because they are only interested in selling a house.

Good luck with your move there and I think you'll enjoy the famous Southern Thai cuisine as I did. I didn't look for western food to eat, but instead enjoyed trying all the curries.

[juanitobxl]

Hi , i Will move to trang in septembre , i pût bussiness in new Robinsons and nées to find a good Houde to stay ;; are you still in touch with that teatcher?? Because i am very intereted n'y a rent in Sri Trang area wich is beautifill and quiet , m'y Email : , please contact me if you havé any informations , it is hard to find house in Trang !! Thanks a lot already , Juan

Edited July 17, 2010 by LivinginKata
Email removed as per forum fules. send a PM

[Pakeha]

Hi , i Will move to trang in septembre , i pût bussiness in new Robinsons and nées to find a good Houde to stay ;; are you still in touch with that teatcher?? Because i am very intereted n'y a rent in Sri Trang area wich is beautifill and quiet , m'y Email : , please contact me if you havé any informations , it is hard to find house in Trang !! Thanks a lot already , Juan

Hi. Can you guys who live in these places in Trang tell me how much you pay for power and internet. Also, are these houses big? Do you get a good place for 6k? I am planning the move to Trang in the future with my (thai) wife and our 2 children. I am trying to get a realistic idea of cost of living. Our lifestyle would be on the thai / local side of things.

I know it's an open question but we live a pretty modest lifestyle. I was thinking 60k per month. Thoughts?

[donx]

Hi , i Will move to trang in septembre , i pût bussiness in new Robinsons and nées to find a good Houde to stay ;; are you still in touch with that teatcher?? Because i am very intereted n'y a rent in Sri Trang area wich is beautifill and quiet , m'y Email : , please contact me if you havé any informations , it is hard to find house in Trang !! Thanks a lot already , Juan

Hi. Can you guys who live in these places in Trang tell me how much you pay for power and internet. Also, are these houses big? Do you get a good place for 6k? I am planning the move to Trang in the future with my (thai) wife and our 2 children. I am trying to get a realistic idea of cost of living. Our lifestyle would be on the thai / local side of things.

I know it's an open question but we live a pretty modest lifestyle. I was thinking 60k per month. Thoughts?

Trang is next to Phatthalung which is where my wife is from. With 60k per month you should be living very comfortably especially if your lifestyle is on the Thai/local side of things. I would guess most local families live on less than 20k per month in these two provinces.

[Pakeha]

Trang is next to Phatthalung which is where my wife is from. With 60k per month you should be living very comfortably especially if your lifestyle is on the Thai/local side of things. I would guess most local families live on less than 20k per month in these two provinces.

That's good to hear. I did some guess-timating and reckon we (2 adults, 2 children) could do it on 33k minimum. When I put in a few unnecessary but nice luxuries I think 50k - 60k per month is a sensible figure. I know most of my wife's family do it on less but we don't want to go there if it's a 'struggle'.

We would live on the outskirts of Trang city so we would need a car I think. Do people think you have to have a car to live in Trang? What would other options be? I don't like borrowing the families vehicles.

What is the deal with buying vehicles there? How much is a basic second-hand vehicle? Nothing fancy. Just a good, safe pre-loved vehicle. What deposit would I need and what would monthly repayments be if it was on hire purchase?

Cheers.

[donx]

At a minimum you will need to have a scooter to get around. I don't know how much used cars go for but from what I remember others saying they go for much more than they would in the western world.

I don't live in Thailand but in order to have a vehicle when we visited we ended up buying a new toyota vios for about 5 million baht. I just finished the 5 year payments of around 8,000 baht/month. So my recommendation would be to get a 5 year loan on a new inexpensive car or truck. It will be worth it in the long run.

[Pakeha]

That must be quite a car donx. 5M baht = NZD $200k. You must mean 500k baht. I think I'll go down this route also. 8k per month is reasonable. As you say in the long run it makes sense. We already own a scooter there.

Where is a nice area to live in Trang? The wife wants to go to Yantakhao near the family... But I'd rather be closer to the city I think. Can anyone suggest any real estate websites? We would rent initially.

[olsen]

At a minimum you will need to have a scooter to get around. I don't know how much used cars go for but from what I remember others saying they go for much more than they would in the western world.

I don't live in Thailand but in order to have a vehicle when we visited we ended up buying a new toyota vios for about 5 million baht. I just finished the 5 year payments of around 8,000 baht/month. So my recommendation would be to get a 5 year loan on a new inexpensive car or truck. It will be worth it in the long run.

What???? 5 million THB for a Toyota Vios??? With gold wheels?? It costs around 500,000 THB....and you can only buy it on instalments if you're Thai national. Or your wife can buy it if she can show proof of income.....You cannot borrow money to buy a 2nd hand car unless the car dealer will finance it privately.

[phuket Mike]

Depending on the age of your children Trang City is the only place where there are any decent schools. You can forget Real Estate web sites, there aren't any agents. Rental property which is in very short supply outside the city and is usually rented by a sign outside or by word of mouth. Land is sold via word of mouth or by local brokers. Also outside the city the only property your likely to find for rent is a shophouse.

Buying a car, buy a second hand 4x4 truck such as a Toyota/Ford etc. There are occasions when you will need the extra height, plus the space in the back is useful taking lots of people to the beach. You can borrow money to buy a second hand car most of the dealers work with certain banks, but it would be in your wife's name, if she has land it will be no problem.

I live pretty much out in the middle of nowhere, internet can be a problem with a lack of telephone lines, 3BB's wireless service is only available in Trang. CAT Telecoms CDMA seems to work just about everywhere.

Electric for a 2 bedroomed shop house without air-con is 800 baht per month, with air-con 1500-2000. 60k a month you will live like a king in the country because there nothing to spend your money on. In the city it should give you a good standard of living.

Depending on how far you want to be away from the family Phatthalung is rather nice, on the coast, has a Tesco's and KFC, it's worth a look, my wife really likes it.

[Pakeha]

Thanks Mike. That info is really handy. We are pretty much committed to Trang to be near family.

I hear of plenty of places for sale via word of mouth. We are not in Thailand now so I just roll my eyes when my wife tells me about a place for sale she heard about from her sister, whose neighbour has a friend with an uncle whose boss is selling a house etc.etc... A real estate website for Trang could be a good business idea!

I know the prices of property around YanTaKhao. You might pay 300k - 400k + for a 'shophouse' (out of town) on a small bit of land. What are the prices like closer to the city? We are hoping to be able to buy a place for less than 1M. I want to be as close to the city as possible though so I'm not sure what I'll get for that money - any ideas?

That's good to hear about the schools. We have a 12 year old who I was thinking about home schooling but if there is a decent school we'd rather she go there. What would you rate as the best schools for a 12-13 year old girl? Writing thai could be a problem!

What's your food bill if you don't mind me asking Mike? I was guessing 9k - 10k a month is realistic for a family of four. Then I think that is more than the average thai's pay so it should be much less. Apart from a bit of bread and cheese we don't require western food.

Cheers. It's great getting a perspective from people in the south.

[lsd]

You probably have to drive around the town if you would like to find a house to rent as there is no estate agent here. The rental price is varied between 3,000-12,000 THB depending on the type, size and age of the house. There is an estate not far from Tesco on the road to Yantakhaw called Sri Trang Estate (www.baansritrang.com), perhaps you would like check it out. Sometimes, the rental advertises as well as land/property for sales are posted in a website: www.trangzone.com. I went to this estate yesterday and I saw a rental sign in front of the house. Yantakhaw is a bit away from the town and there is no decent supermarket. There are some high schools such as Wichien Matu, Sapha Rachinee and Burana Ramleuk, in town but there is no international school here.

[Pakeha]

Thanks lsd. Those websites were good to look at. Any idea on what the prices were at baan Sri Trang? Is it nice there?

[donx]

That must be quite a car donx. 5M baht = NZD $200k. You must mean 500k baht. I think I'll go down this route also. 8k per month is reasonable. As you say in the long run it makes sense. We already own a scooter there.

Where is a nice area to live in Trang? The wife wants to go to Yantakhao near the family... But I'd rather be closer to the city I think. Can anyone suggest any real estate websites? We would rent initially.

Yes I meant to write 500,000 not 5 million.

Sorry I can't help with specific information about Trang.

[donx]

What???? 5 million THB for a Toyota Vios??? With gold wheels?? It costs around 500,000 THB....and you can only buy it on instalments if you're Thai national. Or your wife can buy it if she can show proof of income.....You cannot borrow money to buy a 2nd hand car unless the car dealer will finance it privately.

Yes I meant to write 500,000 baht. As for the installments, we did this by letting my brother-in-law put it in his name. Some might say that's crazy, but my in-laws (except for one yabaa crazed sister-in-law) are all very trustworthy individuals. Now that it is paid off, we will put it in my wife's name the next time we visit.

[phuket Mike]

Sorry it's taken so long to reply, I'm not used to people replying to posts in the Southern forum! So don't check it much. So let's start with the price of property, a 2 bedroom shop house, second-hand where I live about 40km from Trang City sells for 600,000 baht, a new one in the same area 900,000 baht. We looked at some new ones in Huai Yot which is a small town not far away, 1.2m Baht and to be honest they were pretty poor quality Thai toilet's etc.

So I think it's the same old story in Thailand anything already built is expensive, build yourself cheaper. I regularly see signs advertising new western style properties usually nearer the city selling for 2.5 - 4m baht, when we have gone out to see them, they have not even started building. I think in reality you need a piece of land and build it yourself.

Food costs, well that difficult to say, we are a family of 5, a dog and a cat. In general if we only shop at the local market 500 baht a day is easily enough, if you want to be tight 300 baht is enough to get by on. IF we go to Tesco or Makro in theory it should work out cheaper, but it never does, Makro is the best because you can buy in bulk and they don't sell clothes, so for me that's about 1500 baht off the bill. The wife like to buy clothes for the kids, herself, her mother, father, auntie, best friend etc etc.

You said you can get by on some bread and cheese, good look finding the cheese, Tesco's only have processed slices and Makro have cheddar in 600 baht lumps. As for bread Farmhouse is okay, but I make my own very easy in this climate. Hope you like Pork also as the beef is very low quality, chicken's very skinny and fish - well it's fish, and potatoes non-existent.

We are about 40km from Trang and 100km from Krabi so once a month we go to Big-C in Krabi and get a lot of things you just can't get in Trang.

If your wife has family here she needs to find out about getting land from the government, I don't really know how it works but every year the government releases land for local people, no proper land title for about 5 years but it's free. This last year my wife has got 12 rai, although see has had it for 4 years we only just got the paperwork, her father is very well connected locally. Having said that it's no good for building a house unless your real name is Grisly Adams, it's in the middle of no where at the moment.

I say at the moment because her father gave us a rai of land to build a house on, which was also in the middle of nowhere then, but now it has a proper road, electric and is next to the national scout camp, it has become very nice, so things change.

Anyway good luck and I hope you enjoy living in real Thailand. If you have a Facebook account it might easier to chat, you can PM with your FB details.

[Dyna]

AJARNJACK: The man with house in Sri Trang , think I know him and if so he live there now with his wife and daughter. But he just bought another house he will have for rent but I dont know where he have it.

Another good way to get help/information about Trang: Go to "Price bar" a bar just beside of the parkinglot in the front of Trang trainstation. That bar is like a meetingpoint for western people and you can get lot of help from them also if you want to rent house.

I'm also planning to move to Trang , my wifes family live just outside town in Ba Nong Trud. We are lucky cause mi wife have a piece of land already and we are planning to start to build in february next year.

[phuket Mike]

Another good way of finding information about what's available in Trang is Facebook, with a little bit of effort you can easily find people that live in Trang province both Thai and Falang. I recently made contact with an English Teacher and her husband who live near Tescos, she is Thai and her husband English. I'm not saying that your going to find a house to rent but you never know, and if your planning to move here why not makes some friends before you arrive.

Just on another point the new Robinson opening in Trang City last week, we foolishly went on the opening night, anyway the centre is excellent, Tops Market and a number of other shops. Oh and a Cinema wow

[phuket Mike]

To find a house to rent out in Real Thailand there is only one way, you need to be in the community where you want to live. Your wife or girlfriend needs to be in the local salon at least once a week, you need to go to the same shops and talk to people.

What happened to me recently is the perfect example. I currently rent a 2 bed shop house in a small village on the main highway 4 from Krabi to Trang, it's good, it's big, clean and secure. Unfortunately the people that own it are broke, they owe money everywhere, from the bank, their car and motorbikes. So the bank are now taking his house, now we can hang on because the bank want to find a buyer first, but it's not ideal. The rent is 2500 baht per month.

We have a big shop at the end of the road and the market over the road, load of children so the location could not be better. So my wife is talking with the lady in the shop, complaining about our stupid landlord, and low and behold we find one of the other houses is coming available for rent. This house is owned by the 3 sisters that own the big shop and the land that the market is on. Now these people are really nice, I see them everyday, one of them really wants to learn English. So my wife goes and talks with them about this house, as soon the sisters find out it's me that wants it, it's ours and the rent 1500 baht per month. So now my rent, internet and UBC for the same cost as my current house.

This has all come about because we know the people in the area, well everyone knows me because I am the only falang for miles. So my advice to anyone looking to find a rental outside of the tourist areas is to get into the community, be seen, spend time and money in local businesses , make friends, it's the only way.

[Dyna]

To find a house to rent out in Real Thailand there is only one way, you need to be in the community where you want to live. Your wife or girlfriend needs to be in the local salon at least once a week, you need to go to the same shops and talk to people.

What happened to me recently is the perfect example. I currently rent a 2 bed shop house in a small village on the main highway 4 from Krabi to Trang, it's good, it's big, clean and secure. Unfortunately the people that own it are broke, they owe money everywhere, from the bank, their car and motorbikes. So the bank are now taking his house, now we can hang on because the bank want to find a buyer first, but it's not ideal. The rent is 2500 baht per month.

We have a big shop at the end of the road and the market over the road, load of children so the location could not be better. So my wife is talking with the lady in the shop, complaining about our stupid landlord, and low and behold we find one of the other houses is coming available for rent. This house is owned by the 3 sisters that own the big shop and the land that the market is on. Now these people are really nice, I see them everyday, one of them really wants to learn English. So my wife goes and talks with them about this house, as soon the sisters find out it's me that wants it, it's ours and the rent 1500 baht per month. So now my rent, internet and UBC for the same cost as my current house.

This has all come about because we know the people in the area, well everyone knows me because I am the only falang for miles. So my advice to anyone looking to find a rental outside of the tourist areas is to get into the community, be seen, spend time and money in local businesses , make friends, it's the only way.

You right about that!