Where to live in Uthai Thani.

Tambon Uthai Mai is Uthai Thani town — the town municipality covers this one subdistrict and nothing else — and it holds 17,510 registered residents in the district table, with a 2008 town count of 16,787. It sits on the right bank of the Sakae Krang a few kilometres above the Chao Phraya confluence, and the river is the town's organising fact rather than its backdrop: households live on it in moored raft houses, raise giant gourami in floating baskets alongside, and grow pandanus on the banks. Khao Sakae Krang rises behind the town carrying the pavilion that appears on the provincial seal, with a Buddha footprint and the statue of Thongdee, father of King Rama I, who came from here. Practically, everything is within a couple of kilometres of Wongsarot Road: the provincial hall, Uthai Thani Hospital, the fresh market, the bus terminal and Uthai Thani Technical College on 62 rai at 58 Moo 2. This is the only address in the province where you can live without a vehicle, and it holds five of the six advertised long-stay buildings in Uthai Thani.

Best for: Almost everyone considering the province: the only walkable centre, the provincial hospital, and virtually all the advertised housing

Below the town the capital district runs on through Nam Suem, Sakae Krang and Tha Sung, and this stretch holds the two modern buildings that matter most in the province. Wat Chantharam — everyone calls it Wat Tha Sung — covers 510 rai at Mu 1 in Nam Suem, 280 rai of temple grounds and 230 of forest. It was founded in the Ayutthaya period in the reign of King Narai and named for the pier where teak logs were floated down the Sakae Krang; it was officially established in 1928, granted its ordination boundary on 25 October 1939, and rebuilt from disrepair after 1968 by Luang Phor Ruesi Lingdam into one of Thailand's best-known meditation centres. Its Wihan Kaeo is a hundred-metre glass hall lined with mirrors and chandeliers around a replica of the Phra Phuttha Chinnarat image, with a golden palace beside it. The other building is Princ Uthai Thani Hospital at 256 Moo 2 in tambon Sakae Krang — the province's private hospital, which the Principal Healthcare group created by buying a closed hospital here as a distressed asset and reopening it. One advertised apartment sits in Nam Suem; the rest is village stock.

Best for: People with a vehicle who want riverside quiet with both hospitals close, and anyone drawn by the temple

Four of Uthai Thani's eight districts occupy the plain between the town and the hills — Nong Khayang and Thap Than immediately west and north of the capital, Sawang Arom and Nong Chang beyond them — and together they are the working agricultural middle of the province. This is the flat country the upper Chao Phraya valley is made of: rice, sugarcane, cassava, and the famous cattle market that earns its own line in the provincial motto alongside the pomelos of Ban Namtok. Each district town has a community hospital, a market, a school cluster and a stretch of highway, and none of them is more than about forty minutes from Uthai Thani town. What that buys is the lowest cost of living in the province and real quiet. What it costs is that nothing at all is advertised for rent here, there is no walkable centre worth the name, and a vehicle is not optional. This is where you live if you already have a reason to be here rather than somewhere you arrive and start looking.

Best for: People with land, family or work already in the province, and anyone who wants farmland quiet at farmland prices

Lan Sak is a young district on a big footprint. Its two subdistricts were split off from Ban Rai as a minor district on 15 October 1975 and upgraded to full district status on 13 July 1981, when the office moved to Ban Kao, and at 1,080 square kilometres it is one of the larger ones. It is also where Uthai Thani stops being flat. Its landmark is Hup Pa Tat at Mu 1, Thung Na Ngam — a valley inside a limestone mountain whose roof collapsed in the geological past, leaving a sunken basin with a single narrow entrance, stalactites and stalagmites around the rim, and a stand of sugar palm growing in conditions that exist almost nowhere else in the country. The Huai Thap Salao reservoir is the district's other defining feature and the reason the surrounding farmland works at all. Huai Khot, west and south, is quieter again and closer to the sanctuary boundary. This is the most beautiful part of the province and the least practical: district community hospitals rather than a provincial one, no advertised rental stock, and an hour or more of road back to the capital.

Best for: People who want scenery and near-total quiet, drive confidently, and have thought through the distance to a full hospital

Ban Rai is the western end of the province and the reason Uthai Thani matters far beyond its size. Its far side is the Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary — established on 4 September 1972, expanded in 1986 and again in 1992 to 2,780 square kilometres, and inscribed by UNESCO in 1991 together with the adjoining Thungyai Naresuan sanctuary as a World Heritage Site covering 622,200 hectares between them. It is the core of the largest intact seasonal tropical forest complex in mainland Southeast Asia, holds roughly a third of Southeast Asia's mammal species and 355 recorded bird species, and is one of the very few places where Indochinese tigers still reliably breed. Karen villages inside the southern sanctuary were relocated to Ban Rai district in 1976 and there is no resident population inside the sanctuary now. Uthai Thani Community College sits at 7 Moo 2 in Huai Haeng subdistrict here, converted from Ban Rai Vocational College on 22 December 2004. For a resident this district offers homestays, absolute quiet, no advertised housing whatsoever, and the longest drive in the province to a hospital that can handle anything complicated.

Best for: Birders, photographers, conservation people and anyone whose reason for being in Thailand is the forest itself