Using an iPhone & iPad in Thailand Tips, App Reviews and News for the iPhone and iPad by Richard Barrow

Farang Friendly Listings

Posted on November 4, 2010


Farang (foreigner) Friendly is the definitive list of Thai and foreign owned companies in Thailand that focus on selling to expats and tourists.

One of the difficult things about coming to live in a new country is finding local businesses that can help you with the things that you need. Even expats that have been here for a while sometimes need help. This is because Thailand isn't always "farang friendly" in that English is not used as much as in other South East Asian nations. It's certainly getting better since the time that I first came here, but local telephone directories, including the Yellow Pages, are nearly always only in Thai. Coming to our rescue is this new iPhone app called simply Farang. It is basically a listing of different things from restaurants to hotels and bookshops to ice cream parlours. The listings are not limited to only Bangkok but cover areas all over Thailand. Obviously, as it is still new it is not yet comprehensive, but I was impressed with what they had already. I was also pleased to see that the ones that I was familiar with had an accurate entry.

The best thing that I like about this app is that it takes your present location and will then give a list of places starting from the ones nearest to you. So, in the examples listed above, you can see that The Erawan Museum is not far from my home. Click on the name and you are given information like address, telephone, website, and most importantly, the location on a map. It also shows where you are in relation to this place. That is great, but what happens if I want a listing of all the bookshops in Pattaya before I go there? They might need to think about giving us the option to choose our own location as well. Another small point is that it seems to keep connecting to the Internet each time that I open another listing. No problem for me as I have an unlimited data package. But, not so good for visiting tourists. However, I think this will prove in time to be a very useful app for expats in Thailand. Get it for free in the Thai iTunes store.

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  1. Wayne
    November 5th, 2010 - 06:01

    This is great Richard. I was surprised how much info there is on Chiang Mai. Nowhere near comprehensive of course, but enough to be useful, and it works well. I hope they continue to add to it. If they do it will become a ‘must have’ app.

  2. Farang Friendly
    November 7th, 2010 - 13:22

    Richard,

    We only published the app on Friday – well spotted!!

    If it’s OK I’d like to add a few comments…

    - This release is really a test version, as this was the first time we have submitted an app to Apple we released it a bit earlier than we should have to check that we were following the correct coding guidelines. It turns out we were, the app was approved first time but we have since found a couple of bugs that need fixing, we’re on with that right now.

    - Your comment on choosing your own location is spot on – we are just playing with a new feature that allows you to zoom in to any part of Thailand and visit it without using your GPS. It’s still a bit buggy and needs another week or so before we’ve smoothed it out, it will be in the next update planned for around 2 weeks time.

    - We have two data teams out on the road constantly collecting GPS data, the aim is to have every company in the database with a GPS location attached – as things progress we’ll tie the app into a navigation app to make it as useful as possible. As you can imagine trying to get the GPS co-ordinates of every Farang Friendly business is Thailand is a huge job that we’ve only just started to scratch the surface of – as time goes on and the company starts to generate some revenue we will add more data teams and the amount of data going in will increase rapidly.

    - The app needs a data connection to work. The amount of data being pulled down is minimal but as you pointed out it may end up causing people on international roaming packages to have larger bills, any app that uses GPS data to geo-locate you and show you what’s around requires a data connection – unfortunately there is no way around this (that we know of).

    Farang Friendly is a massive project that is still very much in its infancy. We did it because it needed to be done, plain and simple. If you have any ideas, see anything that doesn’t work as it should or could be improved on please let us know – we need as much input from our users as possible!!

    Many thanks,

    Tom Green.

  3. Richard Barrow
    November 7th, 2010 - 13:56

    Thanks Tom for taking the time to address potential problems with your Farang Friendly app. I think in time it will prove to be a very useful app for the iPhone for any expat living in Thailand. It is certainly worth downloading now. Please keep us informed of any future upgrades and innovations.

  4. Bodlagz
    January 7th, 2011 - 08:58

    Sounds good, could be a real saver, not to mention stress saver.

  5. banbarian
    March 25th, 2011 - 21:50

    i used the app in koh samui last week, i downloaded the tomtom navigation app and it works really well with the farang friendly one taking me right to the doorstep! brilliant :)


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On this blog I will be sharing with you tips and methods of using an iPhone and iPad in Thailand. I am not pretending to be an expert, but I hope that from my personal experience of using an iPhone for my work and pleasure you might gain some knowledge. As well as reviewing apps that I use, I will also post about accessories and also the latest news from around the world.

- Richard Barrow


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