Living and Working

Situated in the south of Thailand, HatYai is the third largest city in the country. Bangkok is the largest with a population of around 10 million, so with a population of 300,000 HatYai is actually more akin to a town. Typical of many busy Asian towns, HatYai comprises a very busy, commercial center with large modern Western-style department stores mixed in with ancient Thai temples. The facilities for eating are many and incredibly varied, from street vendors offering bowls of spicy noodle soup to luxury restaurants serving all kinds of foods from all over the world. HatYai does have it's share of Pizza Huts, KFC's and 7-11's, though generally local Thai food is the mainstay of the cafes and eating houses that are everywhere around. HatYai is a convenient place to live - you can get around town via local taxis and buses very cheaply (10 baht), and to travel from one side of town to the other takes around 20 minutes. To get out of town to the countryside is also quick and easy; to the east the beach areas of Songkhla are a 30 minute bus ride away, to the west the hills and waterfalls are 20 minutes away, to the south the Thai/Malaysia border is 40 minutes away.                                                                                                                                              Kindergarten 3

HatYai has both a busy train station and a modern airport. The trains to Malaysia to the south and Bangkok to the north run daily, there are flights to Bangkok and other East Asia destinations daily. Visiting the more famous tourist destinations of south Thailand, such as Phuket and Krabi, is both cheap and convenient as there are numerous bus and mini-bus services that run daily. HatYai is one of those places in the world where getting away for a weekend is a simple matter of buying a ticket and off you go.

Accommodation in Hatyai is, again, quite simple. There are many apartment buildings to choose from, and renting a small townhouse is an option that many of our staff take. There is an apartment building very near the school in which many of our newly arriving teachers elect to stay in, at least for the first few months until they find their way around town and learn a little 'directional Thai'. The school is located in a fairly densely populated area, so  townhouses for rent are fairly easy to find. Rents, both for apartments and townhouses, do not usually include utility bills; figure on around 400 baht monthly as a total for water and electric. Local telephone calls are cheap, overseas calls can be expensive though currently there is a plethora of people offering cheap rate calls from mobile phones. These entrepreneurs set up a small table on the side of a busy street, and on the table are a number of mobile phone units that you can use to make long-distance calls. They are plentiful, and it is actually quite hard to walk around the town areas without tripping over one of the tables.

A good source of information regarding living in Thailand is The Russ Guide to Thailand