Renting a house in Thailand might be slightly different than you are used to in your own country. Here we will give you a few tips, to make your move to Ao Nang a bit easier.
Furnished or no –furnished house?
You will find some houses on Aonanghouse.com that come without any furniture, please keep this in mind when planning your budget to rent a property for a longer time in Ao Nang/ Krabi.
For about 20.000,- Thai Baht you should be able to purchase the most basic items of furniture to make your stay comfortable. This includes a bed, wardrobe, sofa, table and chairs and a fridge and gas stove.
Then, additional equipment, such as TV, DVD player (for the rainy days), hot water shower, kitchen equipment (water boiler, rice cooker, toaster oven) etc. would need to be added to this.
If you are only planning to stay for one year or less, we advise you to look for a furnished home, so when you leave; it is not a big hassle to get rid of your inventory. This is unlikely to bring in much more than a few Thai Baht and a box of beer).
Water:
Water in Ao Nang is becoming a wanted commodity. As Ao Nang is growing so fast the infrastructure is struggling to keep up and supplying water becomes more and more difficult for the government. Keep in mind when renting your dream house, to check if you have a secure water supply.
It is very common in Ao Nang that you might not have water for many days; the only way to tackle this problem is to make sure there is a large back-up of water.
Normally 2 water-tanks of 1000 liters each should be enough to breech the drop in water supply for about a week. Many houses have an individual water-pump, to keep the water-pressure high when taken from the water-tanks. Even then expect to have some problems with the water-supply at the end of high season (February to May). If your house does run out of water, there are still companies with water trucks to contact, who will be able to fill up your tanks. (Price about 300,- Thai Baht per 1000 liter)
In Thailand; the owner of the house cannot be held responsible for lack of water (nor can the water company).
Electric:
Thailand has a 220-240 volts electrical network. As mentioned before with the water supply, electricity is also a utility that is still under-developed around Ao Nang (and Krabi). During high season you might experience frequent drops in voltage level that might even go to under the 180 volts. It all depends how far your house is away from a transformer.
A voltage regulator might do the trick to bring up your voltage level. Sometimes the electricity network will fail completely, causing power blackouts for 5 seconds up to 3 hours. It is strongly advised to always disconnect all your (not directly needed) electric equipment. During a power cut it is better to disconnect all your equipment as sometimes a high voltage surge can damage some apparatus when the power comes back on. Turning off the main-breaker in your house during a black-out is the best remedy to protect your expensive electric equipment.
If the electric company decides to do maintenance on their network, the service will be suspended from 9am until 5 or 6pm. They will announce this a few days in advance, just hope that somebody will tell you this, as it is only done in the Thai language.
Internet (wifi):
Internet is available in Ao Nang; a couple of years ago the region received high speed ADSL access and it is even possible to get dedicated lines brought to your house.
For a price, and in some cases the house owner (a Thai person) needs to apply and sign for this. Don’t expect to get a super fast internet connection brought to your house (same problem as water and electricity).
TOT, TT&T are the main providers that work around in this region.
TV’s and their channels:
In Thailand you can choose between 3 ways to receive your TV-signals:
1st: Traditional antenna located on top, or next to your house. Except for possible lightning-strikes hitting this, you will get little excitement watching from this type of TV. The antenna can pick up only a handful of free Thai channels, showing Thai News, long debates, or the very popular with the locals soap operas.
2nd: Cable TV; for a monthly fee of about 400,- Baht you will be able to receive more than 50 channels; most of them Thai, but also 2 movie channels, a couple of News channels (Fox-News- American, BBC- English, TV5- French, Deutsche Welle- German) and a couple of religious channels. Contact Krabi TV (KTV) on 075-620572
3rd: Satellite TV; you can go 2 ways with this.
“True” is a satellite provider showing many international channels, including movies, sports, knowledge, music, fashion etc….
You can choose between 3 different categories; the Silver-, Gold- or Platinum packages, with subscription rate increasing according to the number of channels in each. It is best to have a look at what you would like to watch before you choose: for example, Premiership football is only available with the Platinum package.
Another way to get your favorite channels, is to buy a dish and receiver yourself and get many hundreds of free channels, a costly investment with not much guarantee for the quality of the delivered channels.
Motorbike rental, traffic:
In some cases you might rent a property that includes the use of a motorbike. If not included, you might want to rent a motorbike. Normally a motorbike will be around 250,- Thai Baht per day. If you are renting for a longer period, you should be able to get a better price, 3500- 4000,- Thai Baht a month.
When renting your bike, you will have to give some documents as a deposit (passport, driving license) a copy of a document is mostly not accepted.
Be warned that most bikes are not insured, even though the owners will tell you that you are insured, you will only notice this when something goes wrong.
If your motorbike is stolen or you have an accident, it will usually be an unpleasant experience, where in the end you will always be paying for the damages.
When involved in an accident without injured parties, you will most likely as a foreigner lose against a Thai person.
Keep in mind if you get an accident in Thailand, and you get seriously injured, your insurance back home might not pay your medical costs, because you are not wearing a helmet, not having a driving license for a motor-bike etc.
Though in Thailand everybody driving a motorbike needs to wear a helmet by law, in Ao Nang you will see only a few people wear a helmet.
Sometimes the traffic police will set up check points to enforce the helmet law; if caught, you will be fined 500,- Baht, which needs to be paid either in Krabi town or at the police box in Ao Nang.
Calculate about one hour processing time at the police station.
Thailand has one of the highest rates in road fatalities world-wide; ask any of the local expats living in Ao Nang for a couple of years, how many deadly accidents they have seen and you will be shocked.
Most motorbikes have 110-125 cc. engines; driving a motorbike like this requires you to have a driving license.
Either an international or a Thai driving license is needed to be driving around legally. Here is the same as mentioned before; you can drive around with your bike nicely until something goes wrong.
The advice is; get all your paperwork in order, wear a
decent helmet and be very, very, careful when driving your motorbike.
Maintenance of the house:
If you rent a house you are expected to take care of the house as if it were yours. In general you can say that the owner takes care of major repairs on the house. Make sure when you want to rent a house, to check if everything is working or not.
Check lights, toilet, shower, air-conditioning (if installed) TV, etc, etc.
Talk with the landlord before renting the house if something is not working properly, and agree who will take care of it.
