Raising Kids in Bangkok’s Suburbs: Pros and Cons of Pathum Thani, Thailand

[00:00:00] Have you ever considered moving into a house in Bangkok, Thailand, or in the suburbs of Thailand? I actually moved with my family to the north of Bangkok in a place called Pathum Thani about four and a half years ago. Now it’s not for everybody, and the reason I did it was mainly because I have a couple young children. My wife is Thai, so we’re able to make a purchase and get a mortgage and things like this. But I think there are plenty of people in similar situations to me. Maybe you just recently had kids and wondering whether or not it’s worth it to purchase a house here.

[00:00:43] And again, just a reminder, foreigners can’t own land. So this would mainly be applicable to individuals with a Thai wife or a Thai husband that can make the purchase. And you have to make sure that makes sense for you. Obviously if you don’t have a secure relationship and you purchase a house here, that can be a big risk.

[00:01:00] I’m just gonna share my situation and some of the pros and cons that I’ve experienced moving out to the suburbs.

[00:01:07] And I’ll note again that I am north of Bangkok in Pathum Thani. It’s also known as Rangsit, and it’s accessible to Bangkok. So I could still commute into the city. So I’m just gonna talk through the pros and cons of what it’s like living out here. So the first thing is quite obvious, more space. When I was living in central Bangkok, we had a one bedroom, then we upgraded to a two bedroom place and it was fine and we had enough space to let the kids grow up. But as soon as they were riding bicycles and doing things like this, we could go out to the parks, but it wasn’t easy to just let them go outside and just play outside. Even with like rooftop areas, it just, it got, it was limiting after a while, right? And here, living in a house. First, there’s just a lot more living space, right? So there’s enough room for a kids’ playroom or for a separate bedroom for the kids. There’s room for a home office. And I just like having all that extra living space, having a couple floors. It it goes really far. So definitely that’s one of the big perks for me. Now that also includes outdoor space. So it’s, you’re not gonna probably get a super large yard when you’re living in a gated community like this. It’s also called a Moo Baan here. But when you’re living in one of these communities, you will get maybe a small side yard. We have our own mango tree. We grow some of our own parsley and things like this, so it’s a little bit. It’s not perfect. It’s not like living on a farm, but at the same time, you actually can grow some stuff and enjoy some outdoor space.

[00:02:49] The second benefit is the shared area. So what I’m walking around here, what my neighborhood is really quite nice. We have little community center. We have a playground. And like I said, it’s just really helpful when you have kids, especially to be able to just go outside. One other thing that my kids love to do is feed fish in the fish pond. And that’s not something we have to go to an aquarium or anything like this. We just walk down the street, bring some bread and feed the fish. And a lot of other families are here doing the same thing.

[00:03:25] The third thing is that we have good security guards here. And so similar to just having all this outdoor space, it’s safe. The guards make sure people aren’t driving too fast. It’s not dangerous for the kids. And when delivery people and visitors come in the gate, the guards escort them around, taking down their tag numbers, things like that. One of my neighbors was recently telling me how he feels safe enough here that he would be fine just leaving the door unlocked all the time. And I feel the same way. My wife doesn’t, but. But I’d say it’s very safe. And that leads into neighbors. When I was in the city, I would maybe give a nod to neighbors in a condo nearby, right? And you meet someone in an elevator and you say hello. But it’s not the same as having neighbors that you actually know. And we’re really fortunate to have close by neighbors that we talk to about education, that we talk to about the economy that, that we have barbecues with. It’s not every day, but I just think our most recent new year celebration, we had a barbecue outside of our house in the little kind of end of our soi, and about three or four of our neighbors came by and we, share everything together. And it was just a good experience. And I think, there are a ton of nice neighbors that we have. There’s Khun Yai, who is an older woman that lives here that we like to help and she helps us all the time. There’s a dog that comes running by seeing my kids. It’s just nice people. That also leads into the neighborhood restaurants. A lot of these communities will have people that have their own little side business going on and they’ll have a LINE group where they’ll sell certain things and you just send ’em a LINE message and they drop by your house and deliver it. So when there’s, 300 or 500 houses in your community, chances are you’re gonna find someone that offers something that you want. Another perk I have is something, of course you can get in central Bangkok too, but we live in an area that has these canals or khlongs and at the end of each khlong there are, there’s a market at each end. And so when we basically go out of our neighborhood and drive down the street for a few minutes we are instantly have access to a large open market where we can get poultry, where we can get vegetables and little snacks and smoothies, things like this for the kids. So we do that about every weekend, I’d say about once a week. We just have quick access to fresh produce, everything from that local market. And it’s nice to buy sometimes from the local market as opposed to the big chains.

[00:06:20] Now this is a perk that’s probably just not beneficial to everybody. But I personally love having, door to door delivery. So if I order Lazada packages or I don’t, we don’t often get food delivered, but when we have something delivered, it comes right to our door. For me, actually, something unique about living in a neighborhood like this is I’m able to have an ice bath right under my little outdoor garage type area, and I have an ice bath and I have someone deliver three large bags of ice to me every morning and just pour it into my ice bath. That’s something that doesn’t cost me anything extra. It’s just, it’s super simple because they can deliver it right to my door. That wouldn’t be possible in a condo.

[00:07:10] Another benefit I like here is the slower pace of life, and I know that people might think that Thailand is generally more slow paced, especially if you’re coming from maybe a western city, but still it’s just congested and rushed when you’re in any city center. And of course this is the perk behind any suburbs, but people are just a little more laid back. And like I said, with neighbors and people around the neighborhood that you chat with. Everyone’s just not in a rush. They’ll talk with you casually, and I really enjoy that because I think that there’s work time to where you’re really focused on getting something done, but then there’s life time where you might want to actually enjoy a conversation with someone, and you definitely can get that when you’re living in a community like this.

[00:07:59] Another perk is being nearby schools and affordable schools. So living up in the north here, there are good schools nearby and my daughter just got picked up this morning with a van that went straight to her school and it’s about 30 minutes away. But there are other options that are even closer. And just having a van be able to pick us up or the bus be able to pick your kids up to go to a good school nearby, it’s huge for us. it’s one of the main reasons we moved out here was access to a good multilingual school.

[00:08:34] The last benefit I had is easy access to Bangkok. So when we were moving, I think there are a lot of different options, but I particularly chose this area because it’s easy to get into the city or easy enough to get into the city. We’re pretty close to a tollway, so it’s a matter of going down one of the main highways for 10 or 20 minutes getting onto a tollway and heading into the city. And of course we have to pay for the tollway. But my point is that it’s not like I have to think of taking a big trip into the city. It’s maybe 30 minutes on when there’s no traffic, and maybe an hour if there is on a typical scenario. Now, of course we get hit sometimes with much heavier traffic. My point is I think some people might think in terms of, let’s live in Bangkok, or let’s live in Chiang Mai, or live somewhere else. And my only fear with that personally was I’d be getting a flight or driving a very long way if there was something going on in the city or if I had to be in the city for a meeting or something like that. Whereas here, it’s an inconvenience, but it’s just far more accessible.

[00:09:48] Now that’s it for the pros that I can think of. I’m sure there are more.

[00:09:54] As far as the cons, living in a house, you have to take care of things yourself and so there’s always maintenance things. I’d say overall we’ve been pretty lucky ’cause we went with a pretty good developer. There’s water pumps that break. There’s air conditioner units that need to be cleaned. There’s lawn that needs to be mowed. And overall it’s really not that big a deal. It’s totally fine and there are people that can help with certain things, but you have to take care of your own space. And it’s different than calling the people in the main office of a condo and saying something broke, fix it for me. In this case you’re calling your own person out to clean your air conditioners or whatever, and a very small con, but I thought I’d mention it.

[00:10:41] The second con I have is the access to hospitals. So there are plenty of good hospitals in this area, but we do drive into Bangkok when we get certain things taken care of. My wife recently had a surgery. We went into Bangkok for that to get the good surgeon that we wanted. And we all know that Bangkok is really well known for the healthcare options, and all I’m saying is when you get a little bit further outside the city, you’re just not gonna have as many options. The hospital that’s closest to us is definitely mediocre at best. I’m not gonna call out its name, but the point is it’s okay. It’s fine. But when we actually want the better quality healthcare, we’re gonna typically go into Bangkok versus staying out in the suburbs where there’s other local options that aren’t quite as good.

[00:11:33] The third con is the access to taxis and grabs. When you’re in the city, you can just call a grab, jump on the BTS, go where you want to go. Whereas here I often do my best by planning ahead quite a bit more, so I’ll call a grab unit or schedule it maybe two to three hours before I want to go somewhere just so I get priority treatment. Otherwise. The grabs will often reject my request because if they’re out in this area, they don’t always want to go into Bangkok or they don’t want to fight the traffic, right? So they’ll often reject it. Or maybe they will accept it but then not move for a long time. And maybe they’re just waiting for me to reject it so that they don’t get that on their record. And. It is just annoying, I guess when you think about how to get taxis. Now I think there’s ways around that. If you meet some local taxi drivers around here that you can call and get a personal relationship with, then I’m sure it would make it a little bit easier to organize trips where you need to go. But just know that grab is a lot less reliable.

[00:12:41] And that ties into the fourth con, which is, you have to plan ahead. And I think I do miss when I was in the city and I’d be chatting with a friend or I’d be talking with a business and we’d want to have a quick meeting, right? Let’s just grab some coffee. I don’t often tell this to the people that I’m meeting with, but I don’t, the people that know me know that just grabbing a coffee means it might be an hour and a half. It might be quite a hike for me. It’s gonna be a long time in a taxi, so it doesn’t always make sense just to have a quick chat with someone on a over a 20 minutes drinking some coffee. So I definitely miss that. I miss that convenience you have with always being able to say yes and meet with people all the time and maintain those friendships and whatnot. It’s a little bit harder to do when you’re a little bit further out.

[00:13:30] And those are all the cons that I can think of off the top of my head.

[00:13:36] I definitely recommend considering it, considering moving out to a neighborhood, whether it be in the area that I am, or it be an area maybe south of Bangkok, closer Suvarnabhumi Airport or Bang Na, something like this. There are a lot of great communities like this and I honestly didn’t realize they existed before meeting a friend that had a nice house in a community close to  Suvarnabhumi. And when I saw the community I just, I was so surprised. I saw he had kids, he had a nice house, he had a playroom, he had all these things and I was thinking, “this is Thailand?” It didn’t seem like Thailand to me. But here I’m in a community of 500 houses. It’s maybe three foreigners live here, but this is all just nice Thai families that live in a great community out here. And I think the middle class or maybe is the upper middle class, but a lot of people live this life and I don’t know that everyone knows this type of life exists here. I know I didn’t.

[00:14:39] So if you’re at all frustrated living in Bangkok and you’re thinking, maybe I’ll move my family back to my home country, or maybe I’ll move somewhere. Another country. I’d say to give it another chance. Look at other areas that exist that you just didn’t know existed, because it’s easy to live in a bubble and not look at your other options and just think that what you’re experiencing today is all there is. For me, it’s been big, it’s been a big improvement. It’s been four and a half years, and it’s been, as I shared, really mostly positive. I’d say 90% positive.

[00:15:16] If you have questions about living in the suburbs, anything like that, leave a comment in the video. I’d be happy to help. I’m not a real estate agent. I don’t have specific recommendations, but I could certainly give you my guidance or give you some tips if it’s something that you’re considering.

[00:15:37] And lastly, if you like videos like this, if you are either in Thailand or thinking about moving to Thailand and you like to get this type of information, either in more of a presentation format or this walk and talk style video subscribe to my channel. I’m not a traveler YouTuber, I’m not gonna tell you so much about food and whatnot. I’m gonna tell you about living here as a professional with a family. I don’t make money off this. I’m a business owner here and I just like to share things with other people. So like I said, subscribe if that’s the sort of thing that you like. And I wanna thank you for taking the time today and making it to the end. Alright, bye for now.