Places offering samatha retreats / training I'm looking for a place to train in samatha. I want to master jhana and time is not an issue. I can also do volunteer work in exchange for training. Any recommendations?
There is Pa-auk Forest Monastery in Myanmar (Burma). A good friend just spent a year there. He did a fair amount of research before settling for Myanmar and he also spent months in a temple in Thailand beforehand. According to him, various monks from Korea as well as Sri Lanka, etc. go to Myanmar thinking that qualified Dharma teachers are difficult to come by in their countries. It seems likes "The place to be." He also said that "Most practitioners require between three and eight years of dedicated effort to obtain the full set of jhanas."

I do not know much about Pa-Auk though. For instance, I do not know whether they train lay people as well.