STAMFORD COLLEGE
INSTITUTE OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE MEDIUM EDUCATION
Who and Where we are
Stamford College was formed and first opened in Singapore in
1950. A year later, some Stamford schools were opened in Malaysia, and since
that time more Stamford schools have been opened in Thailand, Australia and
England. Educational
development is noted by and shared with the other Stamford schools in the group.
Stamford in HatYai opened in 1994. It teaches English language programs
to approx 11,000 students, some of whom are studying in our Primary and
Bilingual school, our Technical and Commerce college, or our International
Business college, and others are simply students who attend our language school
and who wish to improve their English.
Stamford in Phuket started as a joint venture with a well-known school in Phuket town, and now has expanded to be not only a language teaching program, but also a teacher training program. We currently have almost 1,000 students in our school in Phuket.
In Phuket we are located near the town area, and on the main
road leading out to the main beaches of the island. We host our TEFL course in
Phuket in the old school building of our school, which is a recognized landmark
of the town area. Famous for it's Sino-Portuguese architecture, it represents a
cultural and educational facet of Phuket, and is recognized as an important part
of Phuket's history. Phuket is famous of course for it's beaches and rightly so,
but Phuket is in fact quite a large island and offers far more. The Old Town
area is a well-visited part of the island, mainly due to it's architecture.
In Hatyai, we are located about 25 kms inland from the east
facing coast of the central isthmus. We are on the outskirts of the 3rd largest
city in Thailand, HatYai; it is the main city in the southern province of
Songkhla. Getting to Bangkok is easy
should you need or want to, by plane it's about an hour
and ten minutes, or for less money you can take the overnight sleeper train; it
leaves HatYai at 6.00pm and arrives in Bangkok about 9.00am.
In fact, the HatYai/Songkhla area is a good place to live. Even though Hatyai is
Thailand's 3rd largest
city, it is quite compact; these means travel times around town are not
extensive. It's a modest-sized, bustling commercial town with
upwards of 200,000 inhabitants. As a comparison, Bangkok has between 8 and 10
million inhabitants!
Getting around town is cheap and easy, and it only takes 20-30 minutes to cross
town completely from one side to the other by public transport, you can be out
of town and into the surrounding countryside within 10-15 minutes, and the local
beach areas are about 30 minutes away in the city of Songkhla. Samilla beach is
one of the longest in Thailand.
Our main school building in HatYai,
where out TEFL course is hosted,
on the way into town coming from the airport
The amenities of HatYai are more than sufficient, there are a lot of hotels,
restaurants and quite a selection of nightlife venues. There are a couple of
cinemas with English language soundtrack, though shopping is really what HatYai is
considered famous for. This, to our foreign staff, means most things are relatively cheap to buy here;
in fact, all kinds
of consumer goods are available.
All kind of food is available too, from excellent cheap Thai food to excellent
expensive Thai food, and then there's excellent quite cheap western style food
to excellent expensive western style food. You can have a healthy and tasty Thai
meal for between 25 and 50 baht. For a western style meal expect to pay between
100 and 250 baht. One thing's sure: you won't go hungry around here...........
Accommodation is easy. You can rent a small one-bedroom apartment for about 3 -
4,000 baht per month, or a small house for about 4,000 baht per month. Deposits
are usually only one month in advance, and the utilities are very cheap; figure
on about 300-600 baht per month for water and electricity. It all depends on how
much air-conditioning you like.
teachertraining@stamfordcollege.org
Stamford Institute 1362 Petkasem Rd., HatYai, Songkhla, Thailand 90110 Tel: +66 (0)74 345880-1 Fax: +66 (0)74 345882