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STAMFORD COLLEGE
INSTITUTE OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE MEDIUM EDUCATION
Who and Where we are
A warm Thai welcome to all staff, students
and visitors 
Stamford College was formed and first opened in Singapore in
1950. A year later, some Stamford schools were opened in Malaysia, and since
that time more Stamford schools have been opened in Thailand, Australia and
England. In Thailand, as well as our school here in the south, there is also
Schiller-Stamford International School in Hua Hin. Educational
development is noted by and shared with the other Stamford schools in the group.
Stamford Institute in HatYai opened in 1994. It teaches English language programs
to approx 11,000 students, some of whom are studying in our Primary and
Bilingual school, our Technical and Commerce college, or our International
Business college, and others are simply students who attend our language school
and who wish to improve their English.
We are located in the south of Thailand (see
map), about 25 kms inland from the east
facing coast of the central isthmus. We are on the outskirts of the 3rd largest
city in Thailand, HatYai; it is the main city in the southern province of
Songkhla. Travel due south by road, and within 40 minutes you will reach the
Malaysian border. If you travel north-west by the same means, then within about
three hours you will reach the coastline that boasts some of the more famous
islands and beaches of Thailand, such as Krabi, Phuket, PhiPhi and others. In
fact, Phuket is only a 40 minute plane ride from HatYai International airport
and the cost is quite cheap - about 2,000 baht round-trip. Getting to Bangkok is easy
should you need or want (are you mad?!) to go there. By plane it's about an hour
and ten minutes, or for less money you can take the overnight sleeper train; it
leaves HatYai at 6.00pm and arrives in Bangkok about 9.00am.
In fact, the HatYai/Songkhla area is a good place to live. Even though Hatyai is
Thailand's 3rd largest
city, it is quite compact; these means travel times around town are not
extensive. It's a modest-sized, bustling commercial town with
upwards of 200,000 inhabitants. As a comparison, Bangkok has between 8 and 10
million inhabitants!
Getting around town is cheap and easy, and it only takes 20-30 minutes to cross
town completely from one side to the other by public transport, you can be out
of town and into the surrounding countryside within 10-15 minutes, and the local
beach areas are about 30 minutes away in the city of Songkhla. Samilla beach is
one of the longest in Thailand.
Our main school building in HatYai, on
the way into town coming from the airport
The amenities of HatYai are more than sufficient, there are a lot of hotels,
restaurants and quite a selection of nightlife venues. There are a couple of
cinemas with English language soundtrack, though shopping is really what HatYai is
considered famous for. This, to our foreign staff, means most things are relatively cheap to buy here;
in fact, all kinds
of consumer goods are available.
All kind of food is available too, from excellent cheap Thai food to excellent
expensive Thai food, and then there's excellent quite cheap western style food
to excellent expensive western style food. You can have a healthy and tasty Thai
meal for between 25 and 50 baht. For a western style meal expect to pay between
100 and 250 baht. One thing's sure: you won't go hungry around here...........
Accommodation is easy. You can rent a small one-bedroom apartment for about 3 -
4,000 baht per month, or a small house for about 4,000 baht per month. Deposits
are usually only one month in advance, and the utilities are very cheap; figure
on about 300-600 baht per month for water and electricity. It all depends on how
much air-conditioning you like.
Stamford Institute 1362 Petkasem Rd., HatYai, Songkhla, Thailand 90110 Tel: +66 (0)74 345880-1 Fax: +66 (0)74 345882
a part of the Stamford Institute Education Group