The season or the year: visiting Thailand and living in it.

The line between visiting and living

The families our Russia desk works with tend to arrive on one pattern and drift into another. The first winter is three months in a rented villa, booked as a long holiday. The second winter is five months, with a school place attached. By the third year the children have friendships that run through the summer, someone has bought a car, and the family is living in Thailand while still planning as though visiting it. That drift is where most of the avoidable difficulty happens: on visas, on schooling, on tenancy terms and on the household.

The useful question is not how long you intend to stay but what you want continuity in. A season needs nothing to be continuous. A year needs the school, the medical relationships, the residence and the paperwork to hold together across it. Decide which you are doing, then buy the arrangements that match, and the whole thing becomes considerably cheaper and calmer.

Where the long stay actually happens

Phuket carries the largest share of Russian speaking long stays in Thailand and has done for two decades, which means the practical infrastructure is genuinely there: international schools, Russian speaking staff at the private hospitals, agencies, sports academies and a social circle that already exists. Within the island the choice is less about beach than about rhythm. The south around Rawai and Nai Harn is residential and family heavy, with the international schools reachable and a village pace. The west coast beaches of Kata, Karon and Patong are busier and more seasonal. The north west, Bang Tao and Layan and the Laguna estate, is where the quieter, larger money settles, with the resorts, the golf and a great deal of new villa stock.

Bangkok suits families whose life is business rather than beach: the schools are the deepest in the country, the hospitals are the best, the flight connections are complete, and a serviced apartment in the Sukhumvit corridor removes almost all household friction. Koh Samui suits smaller families willing to trade choice for calm, with a real but much smaller international school provision. Chiang Mai suits families who want cool season air, low costs and a slower town, and who can accept the burning season air quality in roughly February to April, which is a genuine drawback and should not be glossed over.

Choosing the roof

Three formats cover almost every long stay. A serviced apartment is the least trouble and the most expensive per square metre: staffed, maintained, no utility accounts in your name, and a contract you can leave. A condominium rented on a twelve month lease is the middle path, with a building that handles maintenance and security and a landlord who handles the rest. A villa gives space, a pool, a garden and privacy, and hands you a small estate to run, with a garden, a pool plant, a septic system and a generator that all belong to you for the duration.

• Expect to pay two months of deposit plus one month in advance on a standard twelve month lease, with the deposit returned after a joint inspection.
• Read the break clause. Many Thai residential leases have none, and a family that leaves in month seven can lose the deposit entirely.
• Confirm who pays for pool and garden maintenance, pest control, and air conditioning servicing. On villas this is a real monthly number.
• Check the electricity tariff. Some landlords resell at a marked up unit rate, which on a villa running air conditioning becomes significant.
• Ask for the landlord's title document and identification, and pay rent to the named owner rather than to an intermediary's account.
• Ensure the landlord will file the TM.30 address notification, which the immigration office expects and which you will need for other paperwork.

The household, done properly

Most long stay families end up with some combination of a housekeeper, a nanny, a gardener or pool technician, and a driver. Thai domestic help is capable, and the relationships tend to be long and warm, but they are employment relationships and should be treated as such. Employing a Thai national in your home carries obligations: a written agreement, social security registration where applicable, proper notice and severance under Thai labour law, and payment through a traceable method rather than an envelope. Families who treat this casually discover the cost only at the end.

Two further points our office raises early. Bringing a nanny or housekeeper with you from home is a work permit question, not a family question, and the honest answer is usually that it is difficult and must be structured properly with a lawyer before anyone travels. And background checks are worth doing on anyone who will be alone with children or with keys; a good agency will provide identification documents, a house registration record and prior references, and will not be offended by the request.

Schooling holds the calendar together

School is the decision that fixes everything else, because school terms are the least flexible part of a family year. Thailand's international schools mostly run August to June on a British or American calendar, or an International Baccalaureate programme on similar dates, which does not align with the Russian academic year running September to late May. Families managing both, typically because the children may return to the Russian system later, generally keep a parallel Russian curriculum going online and sit the required assessments remotely, which works but requires a fixed weekly commitment rather than good intentions.

Places at the established schools in Phuket and Bangkok are not always available at short notice, particularly in the popular year groups, and assessment and enrolment can take a term to arrange. Start a year ahead of when you think you need to. Our schooling guides cover the individual schools; the point here is that a family which chooses the school first and the house second has an easier year than one which does it the other way round.

The rhythm of a Thai year

Long stays feel different in each part of the year and it is worth knowing the shape before committing to twelve months. On the Andaman coast, Phuket and Krabi, the high season runs roughly November to April with clear seas and firm prices, and the monsoon runs roughly May to October with warm rain, green hills, empty beaches and a genuinely lower cost of living. On the Gulf side, Samui runs on a different clock and is at its wettest late in the year. April brings the hottest weeks and Songkran in the middle of the month, when the country stops for several days of water and family travel. Late December to early January is the busiest and most expensive fortnight of all.

Families who stay through a full cycle usually report that the low season is the part they did not expect to enjoy and did. The island returns to itself, the schools are in session, restaurants have tables, and the household bills drop. Families who only ever come for the high season are paying peak prices for the version of Thailand that is most crowded, which is a legitimate choice but should be a conscious one.

The admin that a year requires

A long stay is a paperwork commitment. Whichever visa route the family takes, and the options include the Destination Thailand Visa, long stay categories tied to retirement age or family, the Long Term Resident visa for those who qualify, and Thailand Privilege membership, the obligations that follow are similar: report your address to immigration through the TM.30 when you move or re-enter, file the ninety day report of residence, keep a re-entry permit valid if your visa requires one before leaving the country, and keep the passport with sufficient validity and pages. Missing a ninety day report is a small fine; missing an overstay is not small at all.

The rest is mundane and worth doing in the first fortnight. Register with a private hospital and get the family records into one system. Put the insurance in place before anyone needs it. Arrange a Thai mobile number, because almost every service in the country authenticates by SMS. Keep scanned copies of every document in a place both parents can reach. Our office does this as a matter of routine in the first week of a client's stay, and the families who do it themselves have exactly the same quiet year.

Visa categories, reporting duties and permitted lengths of stay change, and immigration practice varies between provincial offices. Confirm your position with the Thai Immigration Bureau or the Royal Thai Embassy before relying on any of it, and take advice from a qualified Thai lawyer on employment and tenancy matters.

This briefing is general information, not legal, tax or investment advice. Thai rules change frequently and individual cases differ. Verify current requirements with the relevant authorities, including the Immigration Bureau, the Board of Investment, the Land Department, the Department of Business Development and the Revenue Department, and take advice on your own facts before acting.