Sri Racha is a pleasant enough town but not the most exciting - but then if you are living somewhere you want unexciting rather than exciting as exciting tends to be much more dangerous. Certainly, Sri Racha is a pretty safe town on the whole, a bit of petty burglary and that sort of thing but little serious crime and nothing at all like Pattaya, the big city a further 40 kms or so further on, which is the big tourist destination.
Although many foreigners live in Pattaya we would never even dream of living there, it is just so dangerous and apparently is nowadays run by the Russian Mafia. Sri Racha is the complete opposite, much more peaceful and safe. It's main claim to fame, apart from being the home of Sri Racha chili sauce, known throughout the world, is that Sri Racha is home to the largest Japanese community in Thailand, outside Bangkok. This is mainly because Thailand's biggest, and main, port, Laem Chanbang is just a few kilometres further south and a lot of Japanese work in the businesses in the port hinterland.
Laem Chanbang is a bit of a dump but whilst Sri Racha is not very beautiful, it is better than Laem Chanbang so is a popular place to live. You don't see many Japanese around in town during the day, but in the evening after the end of working hours, you will see a lot of Japanese in town.
Sri Racha has consequently a large number of Japanese Restaurants, Japanese karaoke bars, and other establishments catering to the Japanese market. There is one big shopping mall in town, anchored around the Robinson Department Store. Reasonably good range of things there albeit not as good as the Malls in Pattaya or further north by Chonburi town Sri Racha is in Chonburi Province. There is a small, but good, though pricey, supermarket in the Mall's basement, called TOPS, which stocks a lot of foreign products.
There is also a good local produce market in the south side of Sri Racha which is in 2 separate buildings, one part just open in the morning, the second part open nearly all day. Easy to get good, cheap, local produce there. Can get a bit smelly but not as bad as in some Thai fresh food markets. There is a good IT Centre Mall where you can get a good range of good priced IT hardware, software, plus the enormously popular mobile phones. A large number of small local shops as well in town where you can get most things that you need.
