Where to live in Amnat Charoen.

Tambon Bung is the province's centre of gravity: the Amnat Charoen town municipality occupies part of it, and the tambon recorded 28,931 people across 23 villages in the district's 2008 figures. Chayangkun Road — Highway 212, the Ubon Ratchathani–Mukdahan trunk route — runs straight through rather than around, which gives the town its shape and most of its commerce. Amnat Charoen Hospital, the Ministry of Public Health provincial general hospital, is at 291 Moo 6 Arun Prasert Road; Amnatcharoen School, the province's leading government secondary since 1951 and one of Thailand's World Class Standard Schools, is at 277 Moo 13 on Chayangkun Road; and the Big C is the landmark that roughly half the province's rental listings quote as their nearest reference point. This is also where the advertised housing is — small apartment blocks, dormitory rooms and the one building in the province advertising a lift and a fitness room. Walkable by provincial standards, unremarkable to look at, and by some distance the most practical place to live.

Best for: Anyone who wants the province's services within walking or short riding distance, and the widest choice of advertised rooms

Non Nam Thaeng is a tambon of fourteen villages just outside the town municipality — 7,928 people in the 2008 district figures — carrying two institutions that matter far more to a foreign resident than its population does. Mahidol University's Amnat Charoen Campus at 259 Moo 13 was completed in 2009 on 338 rai and teaches Agricultural Science, Public Health, and Innovation for Social and Environmental Management; it gives a province of under 400,000 people a national-university presence, with the staff, students and small rental demand that come with one. The Amnat Charoen Immigration Office is also in Non Nam Thaeng, which means extensions, 90-day reporting and re-entry permits are handled inside the province rather than in Ubon Ratchathani. Advertised housing here is thin — a couple of buildings — and the rest is ordinary Thai stock let directly. Quieter than the town, and only minutes from it.

Best for: Anyone connected to the Mahidol campus, and anyone who values being minutes from the immigration counter

South and southwest of the capital, Phana and Lue Amnat carry the culture the province puts in its own slogan. Wat Phra Lao Thep Nimit in Phana rests on a foundation traditionally dated to around 1720, with a Lanna-style chapel housing the gold-leafed Phra Lao Thep Nimit image in the Maravijaya posture — an image Thai tourism sources routinely call the most beautiful in the northeast. The Don Chao Pu botanical park nearby is a protected patch of forest best known for its resident crab-eating macaques. Lue Amnat is where the 'precious silk' of the slogan is made, alongside khit weaving, sedge mats, fish sauce and chilli paste. Both districts have their own community hospitals and secondary schools, and both are agricultural, quiet and cheap: the lowest advertised rent we found anywhere in the province, ฿1,700–2,000, was in Lue Amnat — from a single building, on a listing already two years old.

Best for: People with a vehicle who want rural Isaan with real temple and craft life on the doorstep, at the lowest cost

Chanuman is the northeasternmost district and the only one of the seven that reaches the Mekong, giving Amnat Charoen roughly 38 kilometres of river frontage and an international boundary with Laos — but no bridge and no international crossing anywhere in the province. From February to May the river drops and rock formations surface, including Kaeng Tanglang at Ban Si Sombun near Chanuman town, whose laterite basins are the district's signature sight, and Kaeng Hin Khan at Ban Hin Khan about 30km south. Pathum Ratchawongsa sits between the capital and the river and holds the north's only advertised rental building, at Na Wa. The province's northern edge rises toward Phu Sa Dok Bua National Park — 231 km2, a 423-metre summit where Amnat Charoen, Mukdahan and Yasothon meet, and eleven natural stone pools of lotus on top — though the park headquarters is over the line in Mukdahan's Don Tan district. Beautiful, remote, and thin on everything else.

Best for: People who want the Mekong and genuine quiet, with their own transport and a healthcare plan already sorted