It can be very challenging to find a house in Thailand to rent. There aren't many websites that list houses for rent nor many realtors that will take you around to see anything and if there are they are usually crazy expensive. So, what you need to do is drive around yourself and go down every street of the city to find a place that has a sign, in Thai, that says "for rent".
Another fun challenge is finding your way around since there are no detailed maps of the city. It's fun exploring the city because you never know where you'll end up or what you'll run into, a dead end that you can't turn around in, a rubber tree plantation, an alley way you can't fit through or a dog sleeping in the road that won't move. In Ubon, it took us a while to find a house and when we did it needed MAJOR work and clean up. This time, here in Krabi, we took 3 days to look and found a few houses that could be options for us. I felt like we were on House Hunters International. We could have done our own show. In the end we choose a house that fit most of our criteria that we were looking for... It was in Krabi Town, 3 bedrooms, bathroom in the master bedroom, safe, quiet, middle class neighborhood where the girls could ride their bikes. We were really hoping for a furnished place but since there were so few places to choose from, this desire was not met. We did bargin with the owners to leave the fridge and washing machine. So, tomorrow we hope to meet the owners and write up the contract. They have to move all their belongings out and then we can get in there and paint and clean. Here in Thailand, renters are responsible for everything in the house, so if something breaks, we have to fix it and if we want fresh paint, we need to paint it.
Thankfully this house is in pretty good shape. It needs some paint, deep cleaning and yard work. We are so relieved that we don't have to do any major repairs! The cherry on the top of this is that there is a community pool!!! The girls are super excited about that! :)
