I personaly don't know or think that any trader should be living in phuket. I can definitly help you if you need to trade from bangkok, and would be much easier with less hussle. American Paul Renuad who owns www.thaistocks.com use to be living in Pukhet, but i remeber had offered his home for sale some time ago. I think he must have first hand experiance trading from Pukhet. If you are coming for holiday and want to use your time to the fullest, i don't recommand looking for Condo, since you will be spending more time looking for doing DSL connection, paying utility bills, cleaning, repairing, solving security issues and other stuff.. Most Thai condos don't offer lease for less than 4-6 monthes and in order to allow you to arrange your own DSL connection. You be better off looking for places like daily serviced Aptment with ready in-room DSL.
No need to do any search, these are the biggest thai expat forums that i have been taking part in: www.thaivisa.com www.nanapong.com www.nanaplaza.com www.bangkoktonight.com My belief, avoid these thai expat forums with bunch of mother fxxing scam sucking pigs, they don't even know what are the needs for trading
Nana trader, Thank you for your input. After spending the past two days researching the logistics of trading from Phuket, I have come to the same conclusion as your recommendation. It seems better to trade from BKK instead because internet connectivity in Phuket just does not seem up to snuff or readily available. So, I have decided to focus on BKK now and can easily fly to Phuket on weekends instead. I appreciate your insight on the condo versus serviced apartment issue. On my recent trip to BKK, I stayed in the Centre Point serviced apartments and really enjoyed it. They had free DSL in the rooms, but the problem was the bandwidth speed. I tested it several times and noticed it usually registered around 20 kbps, which was often not fast enough to properly display charts on my software. Perhaps other serviced apartments have a better or faster internet connection? Do you know if this is true or are they all about the same? I have been participating in both thaivisa.com and bkktonight.com, but will check out the other two you suggested. Do you mind if I contact you on private message to ask a few other questions? Would really appreciate it. Thanks again, Deron
Deron, I believe internet connectivity in phuket can be as good as bangkok, check http://www.loxinfo.co.th most reliable ISP with most coverage in thailand covered by TA (telecomasia). http://www.csloxinfo.com/broadband/adsl_en.asp Internet offered by loxinfo and connection line by TA. But i guess you can't benifit from it because you aren't staying longterm. You can travel to Pattaya and jomtien beachs by Taxi on weekends also which takes around 1.5 hour for 1000Bhat only. kou sumai famous for chaweng beach that has reputation for one of most beautifull resort in the world isn't very far from bangkok by car. Which centerpoint you were staying? Centerpoint apartment (sukhumvit) has quite nice interior decoration , but still location isn't as good as better deals that i know about. I am currently in Bkk and using DSL in my room for monthly charge of 2640Bhat for unlimited usage. I checked my connection speed just now with http://www.bandwidthconnection.com/speedtest/ Communications: 196.8 kilobits per second Storage: 24 kilobytes per second 1MB file download: 42.6 seconds Subjective rating: Mediocre You can PM me, or we can chat online at ET chat room privatly anytime if i am at ET.
Finally got around to this....... Internet often problematic, especially during business and Thai stock exchange hours - better in US hours. - my biggest problem - after a year still sorting things out - caused far more headaches than any trading issue (including why did I do that? type trades). You have to be able to do your own troubleshooting. For daily trading type usage works out around USD200/month for claimed 512-1000kb that is actually 150-250k when tested. BKK Two ADSL link providers TOT and TRUE (previously Telecomasia) with resellers also. Max claimed speed 1000KBwith TA, 512K with others. TA physical link is OK, but ISP's can be a problem best to partner ADSL link with ISP CSloxinfo or Jasmin internet Phuket (hearsay only) There are 6000 ports going in now. Max speed will be 512KB but will go straight into undersea cable and bypass BKK gateway - probably a major plus. Rest of country. TOT or TT&T are physcial link providers with resellers. Max is 512KB. Very limited coverage. 56K available more widely. Actually OK - less problematic than Broadband depending on ISP. CSLoxinfo, Inet are regarded as worthwhile. Very few people reccommend others due to problems. For more details their is a sparse English forum at thaivisa.com (no relationship with them). PM me is OK if google really does not yield URL's. HTH
Mokwit, Thanks for your reply and detailed information. I appreciate it. Since that last post, I have learned many of these things on my own, especially the discrepency between the stated and the actual speed rates. However, the one thing I was not aware of is the new Phuket broadband setup. This sounds very interesting, as I prefer Phuket to BKK anyway. Do you know when the broadband will be available in Phuket? Thanks, Deron
Deon, I would skim the pages of this http://www.phuketgazette.net/ and when it gets mentioned again follow up with the journalist or maybe just send an email to the editor as it seems people are watching this develpment like hawks down there (due to it being percieved as positive for property prices). You could try contacting the TOT directly, but Thai companies rarely bother replying to emails from prospective customers seeking information.
BTW I was urged to get around to posting this info due to the headaches I have been having with broadband - mainly a problem with the data transmission cutting out for a minute or more. Seems to be a big problem with java based programs, not a problem with a dealing platform I used written when 28Kb was the norm. Seems that the network or ISP is very bad at allocating bandwidth between shared users during high load times. Leased lines are prohibitively expensive and seem to go down quite a lot. I went through this with Bloomberg once and they were adamant it was the network.
You could also look at Shin's Ipstar satellite; you get 11 mbps on the forward link and up to four mbps on the return link. Around 15,000 baht to setup but it has the advantage that you can use it anywhere - up country for example.