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Rating Bangkok Life


FAT_AUSSIE

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Hi All,

 

For those of you who live in BKK, specificaly Bangkok, how do you rate your day to day lives?

 

I guess the benchmark for your apprieciation of Bangkok would be your home country so I would expect vastly mixed replies.

 

How do you rate doing business/ working in Bangkok.

 

How do you rate rasing children in Bangkok?

 

Prolly would'nt be for quite a while (would like my wife to have Aus citizenship-3 more years) but we often consider moving back to LOS.

 

Just not sure about raising a family in BKK.

 

What are your thoughts?

 

 

FA......

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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F-A, I used to live in Bangkok and definately rate the overall quality of life as better than the UK. Even thought the cost of living has risen in recent years I think it is still far better value than western countries and you can enjoy either a far better standard of living for the same money or the same standard for a lot less. Both the wife and myself would move back if a suitable chance to do so arose. Hope to do so but it won't be this side of 2010. I can't really comment on the aspect of children as we hav'nt got any. But you would obviously have to factor in the cost of their education in any move as the one thing I do know and I'm sure you do also is that the ordinary Thai state system is absolute crap?!

Simie.

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Depends, depends, depends...

 

...doing business/ working in Bangkok

 

What type of business? Will you be on a full ride x-Pat package? How old are you? If you are under 40 and don't already have a large pile of $$$, then will you work/business allow you to stash away a retirement nest egg and university $$$ for the kids?

 

...raising children in Bangkok

 

Can/will you be able to afford good schools? My friend in Singapore was paying $16K USD for one child in a good international school, per year. No kiddies for me here, so not sure of the costs.

What do you children like to do now? do you live in a large city now?

What do kids in BKK do now...play video games, walk around the malls, lay around the house (from what I see)...not sure of kiddie activities in BKK but looks boring to me...maybe sports? clubs?

 

Not an easy question to answer, but if I had children, I would not consider moving to BKK unless for a short term (a few years).

Also, I would have to have a good job so I could sock away some $$$.

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One HUGE plus with regards to raising kids in Thailand is the abundance of nannies / wife's family members that live for cleaning up after and taking care of kids.

 

If you get the right set up all you have to do is bring home the pay check and play with the kids (or other fun stuff). None of that changing nappies nonsense like back in farangland.

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Can/will you be able to afford good schools? My friend in Singapore was paying $16K USD for one child in a good international school, per year. No kiddies for me here, so not sure of the costs.

What do you children like to do now? do you live in a large city now?

What do kids in BKK do now...play video games, walk around the malls, lay around the house (from what I see)...not sure of kiddie activities in BKK but looks boring to me...maybe sports? clubs?

Even with money, the schools in BKK, even the "best" (NIST, ISB, etc), leave much to be desired. My girls when to NIST at ~B500k/each/year (plus ~B10k/mo/each for spending/transpo/food money) and I was quite unimpressed with the quality of education, at least for that amount of money. We ended up changing schools to a cheaper but at least as good alternative, Sai Nam Peung (difficult to get into, but wifey is an alumnus), before giving up and sending them to the States to finish high school and go to Uni. Triamudom would be another decent Thai school to look at, but *very* difficult to get into.

 

There's plenty of city things to do, and most schools have activity clubs. And the British Club was a hit with my kids for their facilities. Not expensive, and you do not need to be a limey to join either. And the ANZWG has an awesome guide with lots and lots of stuff to do for expats. And they are a pretty cool group of old gals.

 

The other point Cava made is quite important and I see soooo many ignore: make money here, or don't do it as that is retirement financial suicide and a black spot on your CV (unless you are in a high end position, a stint in LoS is a negative to HR execs)!

 

Cheers,

SD

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