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Learn real Thai in a real Thai town —
and stay long enough to use it.
Small classes, 8 hours a week, and regular excursions into Trat to use your Thai for real. Non-Immigrant ED education visa support from a licensed school. And the islands? 40 minutes away, every weekend.
Book a free Zoom chat →30 minutes, no obligation. We'll talk about your Thai goals and whether TEC is the right fit.
Why learn Thai at TEC
We've taught languages in Trat since 2014. Now the school built for Trat's kids opens its doors to the foreigners who live here, with the same method: use the language from day one.
ED visa support
Meet the requirements (enrol, prepare the documents with our guidance, study genuinely) and your Non-Immigrant ED education visa follows.
8 hours a week: double the usual
Most ED-visa schools timetable around 4 hours a week. You get 8 face-to-face hours, plus online support materials between classes.
Language excursions
Every few weeks, class moves into town: the market, a noodle stall, a temple. You use exactly the Thai you just learned, for real.
Built by a language learner
TEC's founder Damien has spent 20 years learning Thai and a career teaching languages. This course is the one he wishes he'd had.
Your pathway: Mangosteen to Durian
Trat is Thailand's fruit-orchard province, so your levels are named after its famous fruit, and each level name is some of your first Thai vocabulary. You graduate when you're Durian: the intense, authentic real thing.
Mangosteen — Foundations
The queen of fruit: sweet, gentle, everyone's first favourite.
- Thai script, sounds and the five tones
- Survival phrases that work from week one
- Ordering food, numbers, prices, directions
- Reading your first real signs and menus
→ You can get through a day in Thai.
Rambutan — Everyday Thai
Spiky outside, sweet inside. You learn to get past the shell.
- Real conversations: markets, taxis, neighbours
- Small talk that goes past the script
- Reading menus, signs and simple messages
- Understanding answers, not just asking questions
→ You can handle the everyday, unscripted.
Durian — Confident Thai
The king of fruit: the acquired taste that marks a real local.
- Opinions, stories and jokes in Thai
- Local life: banks, clinics, immigration, festivals
- Longer reading and real listening
- Conversations that go where they want to go
→ Thai people stop switching to English on you.
Two programmes, one pathway
You enrol in the full Mangosteen-to-Durian pathway (that's what your visa paperwork shows) and pay level by level as you progress. Every level is 104 face-to-face contact hours over 13 weeks at 8 hours a week, with online support materials, language excursions, and ED visa enrolment documents included.
- 8 hours a week, face-to-face
- Small group, never more than 6
- Pay as you progress, level by level
- Full pathway (3 levels): ฿109,000, saving ฿10,700
- Language excursions every few weeks
- Online support materials between classes
- ED visa enrolment documents & guidance
- 8 hours a week, private, one-to-one all the way
- A course built from your life: we interview you about who you talk to and what you need Thai for, then build your course around it
- Schedule arranged around you
- Weekly feedback on your real spoken Thai
- Full pathway (3 levels): ฿165,000, saving ฿14,700
- Language excursions included
- ED visa enrolment documents & guidance
💡 Comparable schools charge around ฿440 per contact hour. Our group levels work out under ฿400, and every hour is counted and published: 104 per level, no vague "courses."
The weekly rhythm: Monday & Tuesday 2–4pm · Wednesday & Thursday 10am–12pm.
Four days of Thai, then a three-day weekend. Koh Chang, Koh Mak and Koh Kood are about 40 minutes away. Learn like a local Monday to Thursday; live like you're on holiday Friday to Sunday.
One level ≈ one 13-week term, which lines up neatly with the ED visa's 90-day extension rhythm.
🛂 Meet the requirements, get your visa
If you meet the requirements, you get the visa. Enrol in our approved Thai-language programme, prepare the documents we walk you through, and study genuinely. That's what the Non-Immigrant ED education visa is designed to approve, and it's exactly what we set you up to do.
As a licensed private education institute, we provide the school enrolment documents and supporting paperwork required for eligible students. We also guide students through the application process, step by step, and explain what documents they need to prepare.
Students must attend classes regularly, participate genuinely in their course and maintain active student status. The initial education visa normally permits a stay of up to 90 days. Students wishing to remain longer must apply for an extension through Thai Immigration with supporting documents from the school and the relevant education authorities.
Education visas and extensions are issued at the discretion of the Thai Embassy, Ministry of Education, Immigration Bureau and other relevant Thai authorities. The school can provide support and documentation but cannot guarantee that a visa or extension will be approved.
Thai you use, not Thai you memorise
Most courses teach you a textbook. We teach you your life in Thai: the conversations you'll actually have, with the people you'll actually meet.
📖 A course built from real tasks
Every unit starts with something you genuinely need to do in Thai (buy fruit, explain a problem, chat with a neighbour) and works backwards to the words, script and grammar that make it possible.
On the One-to-One Programme we go further: your course is generated from a needs-analysis interview about your life in Thailand, so the dialogues you practise are the ones you'll actually have.
🛵 Excursions: the classroom is the town
Every few weeks, class walks out the door and into Trat. You've just learned it; now you use it, with real Thai people who don't slow down for the textbook:
- Mangosteen level: buy fruit at Trat's market. Names, numbers, prices, bargaining
- Rambutan level: order lunch at a noodle stall, negotiate a songthaew across town
- Durian level: chat with the vendors, and the conversation goes where it wants to
Why Trat beats the big-city language schools
In Bangkok and Chiang Mai, everyone answers you in English. In Trat, Thai is simply what's spoken, which makes a small town the best classroom in the country.
Real immersion, by default
No tourist bubble. The market, the coffee shop, the mechanic: your practice partners are everywhere, and they speak Thai to you.
The islands, every weekend
Koh Chang, Koh Mak and Koh Kood are about 40 minutes away, and your timetable keeps Friday to Sunday free, every week.
Cheap, calm, delicious
Small-town cost of living, Thailand's best fruit straight from the orchard, and a community small enough that people remember your name.
Damien has spent 20 years learning Thai, through the tones, the script, the plateaus and the breakthroughs, alongside a career in language teaching. Your teachers are native Thai speakers; the course design comes from someone who has sat exactly where you're sitting.
Questions foreigners actually ask
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