As I’m in a charitable mood, here is my final roundup of blogs that helped me out during my request for guest posting. I think there are still a couple more blogs that offered to let me write a post, but I haven’t got round to those ones yet. These are four blogs that will make your life better if you visit them.

First up is Bangkok Diaries. I like Bangkok Diaries because the blog has kind of a community feel about it. People submit their blog posts and therefore you have a range of different writers covering a broad base of topics. I wrote a post about the maddest person I ever met in Bangkok. I actually like the post and almost wish I’d put it up here, but such is life. What particularly impressed me the first time I visited Bangkok Diaries was the clean layout of the theme. There’s heaps of material to sift through.

Move & Buy Thailand is a resource that can help you out if you are looking to buy a car or some real estate. There are also job listings, a bunch of classified ads with random stuff for sale and a section where you can buy pets. The holidays section has offers on hotel rooms, while there’s also a lot of information about Thailand. The blog part of the website really takes a back seat for the rest of the material up there.

Jamie Monk the granddaddy of Phuket bloggers. Jamie’s Phuket was the first Phuket blog I ever came across and it’s been around for more than two years. It contains heaps of information about where to eat, drink and sleep in Phuket. It’s updated regularly and is full of pictures. Jamie is the man about town in Phuket.

And finally we come to Tatt2Dude, a British guy who runs a tattoo studio in Pattaya. Si’s blog has gone through several phases since its conception, but it seems to have settled now and there’s loads of content up there about tattoos and life in Thailand. The blog itself is there labelled “T2D Diaries”. The writing is gritty and blunt and has attracted quite a following.

Enjoy these blogs if you haven’t before and if you have, I’m sorry for wasting your time.

It’s not for me to get into some debate about whether you should learn Thai, but if you’re in Thailand, learning the language opens up many doors. One of my big regrets after three years in Thailand is that my Thai is pretty average. If I were to do it all again, I’d brush up on my Thai skills a lot earlier. Part of the problem for me was that ever since my arrival I assumed I’d be leaving in the near future. As a partner of this blog, the guys over at Learn Thai Podcast gave me a password to their premium program and asked me to check it out.

First up, Learn Thai Podcast is website comprising podcasts of Thai-to-English audio and video, covering words and phrases by topic and translating them for you from Thai to English. The podcasts focus on learning Thai by going over practical phrases and expressions that can then be applied to everyday situations.

The lessons follow a standard pattern: you listen to a word in English and then to its Thai translation several times over. Longer sentences are broken down into individual words.

At the moment, there are a bunch of free Thai lessons up on the website. Lessons include:

• Food and Drinks in Thailand
• Counting and Numbers in Thai
• Shopping in Thailand
• Dating and Sweet Things

The lessons are easy to follow and the main words and phrases are transcribed. There are also audio and video files for learning the alphabet, tones and vowels. While the free lessons on the site cover most of the basics, to really progress with the course you need to become a premium member. At the moment, you can subscribe to the premium course for $19.95 a month, which works out about 650 baht or so.

For your 20 bucks a month you get access to the premium content, of which there are well over 100, covering everything from body parts and time to conjunctions and various tenses. A vocab lesson is added daily and there are twice-weekly premium lessons. You basically get access to a whole lot of resources for learning Thai, which can be accessed on the Internet, downloaded to your computer or loaded onto your MP3 player of choice.

The website is powered using blog software and so there are RSS feeds you can subscribe to, granting you access to new content without the need to continually visit the website. There is also a newsletter that grants access to even more information for learning Thai.

One of the coolest parts of the website is the Flashboard section. It can only be accessed by premium subscribers, but it features a range of interactive photographs. You hover your mouse over something in the photograph, click it and an audio files plays. There are heaps of photos that inject a bit of fun into the whole learning-Thai experience.

As I’m leaving Thailand, I don’t have a whole lot of use for Learn Thai Podcast, but if I were staying, it’s something I’d be keen to check out. If you want to learn Thai, even if you’re an absolute beginner, then Learn Thai Podcast is worth a look.

As I said, Learn Thai Podcast is a partner of this blog and hence I am reviewing their service. If you’ve visited the website then leave some feedback and share your thoughts. What I’m most interested to know is if other people think this could be a valuable resource for learning Thai.

As promised, here is my second post about blogs that helped me out by letting me write a guest post recently. If I’ve missed anyone off the list, please let me know.

Flow Drops is a cool blog. I really like the name Flow Drops for some reason. The title of the blog is actually i.Farang, subtitled “Just another life in Thailand”. The author does blog about Thailand, but the focus is on Wordpress and blogging. Aesthetics fans will appreciate the clean two-column theme. A worthy read.

Thai World is a blog with heaps of Thailand-related content. There are lots of travel articles about various destinations, including Phuket, of course. The blog has only been around since May, but there seems to be a lot going on over there. This blog would be especially useful if you are planning a trip to Thailand. The focus is less on current affairs and more on things to actually do here, which can’t be a bad thing. Worth a look for sure.

Absolutely Bangkok was good enough to publish a post I wrote about death. Absolutely Bangkok is one of the better Thailand blogs out there, updating regularly with decent content. The focus is on current affairs and what’s going on in Bangkok and around Thailand. This is a Thailand blog that is actually worth reading. Definitely one to subscribe to, but the RSS button could do with being bigger and more prominent.

A little while ago I made a plea for people to let me write a post on their blogs. There were a number of people who responded and let me post up a short piece with a couple of links in it, for which I am very grateful. As promised, I said that I would give a mention to each of the blogs that ran my posts. As there are a few of them, I’ve decided to break this down into two posts. For the record, I’m rather disorganized and so if I forget your blog, let me know.

Långrygg: Cultural learnings of Thailand for make benefit glorious nation of Sweden is longest name I have ever seen for a blog. The majority of the content is in Swedish, which would certainly be good news for any Swedish readers. If I were Swedish, however, I’m sure I’d appreciate someone writing about Thailand in my native tongue. I assume the pic in the top right of a guy holding a gun is the author, or it may be some kind of Swedish joke. The blog has been around for about 18 months. The author actually has another blog on a similar domain. It looks as if the other one is the more updated of the two.

Thailand, Land of Smiles will already be familiar with a lot of you. This blog has been around for a while now and covers a bunch of Thailand-related categories, including moving to Thailand, working in Thailand, Thai language and Thai food. This is one of the few Thailand-based blogs that is updated regularly. There’s a lot of useful info on there and the writing is pretty snappy, making it an entertaining daily read.

Ash’ventures is a blog that has been around for about a year or so. To my understanding. The author used to live in Phuket, but doesn’t at the moment. The blog is not updated all that often any more, but you’d hope that it starts picking up again at some point in the future. There are quite a few posts about Phuket in there, complete with pics and all that jazz. I think the author is now in the Philippines.

More blogs to come soon. Check out these ones in the meantime.

Google is updating the toolbar PR display at the moment. I’ve gone back down to PR4. 2Bangkok has dropped to PR5 while Thai Blogs has gone up to PR5. Sajal Kayan went up to PR6. I haven’t noticed many other changes. The toolbar updates usually take a few days to complete. Nothing too much to worry about either way. Suitable bragging rights if you go up.