Marriage Visa

After being here 4 months, 3 months on the waiting for visa status, 1 month extended awaiting approval. I now have the final 11 month stamp on my marriage visa.

So am now "officially" able to live here, not work, not yet, though not sure there's a real need to work at this point.

Our savings/house equity, are funding the building of our house and future financial needs just fine, and there's a little interest coming from those funds, but that will decrease as it is used for the build... But we have enough to last the 4.5 years until the pensions start to kick in.  A bit more wouldnt hurt though, so hopefully I will get a few bob in book royalties.

My 1st 4 months have been quiet, there's no doubt, we're living a quiet comfortable life in a nice rented house, eating sensibly and not going out too much, though we do like to find nice places to eat, we've resisted the 5000bhat western style places.. We tend to eat locally and cheaply 2 or 3 times a week, and of course Jirawan is in her element cooking up food she picks up for comparativly nothing at the markets. Or just getting premade from the noodle bars. 

I see a lot of expats complaining that Thailand isn't cheap any more.... I suspect they've not been home for a while :D prices may indeed have risen here over the years but they did so in spades back in their home country. Thailand is still cheap as chips as long as you get out of holiday spending mode as quick as possible.

The air quality though....oh thats pretty bad here. Yes we knew about it, yes we were all warned, but wow... somedays its like fog and its going to stay this way for a couple of weeks more at least, maybe a month...It has curtailed some of our trips to landmarks, walk abouts etc...but its also suuuper hot at the moment, temps up to 40-42 are hitting some days, so staying home in the air con room is wise..

But overall, my 1st 4 months have not been too overwhelming, I am failing miserably at learning Thai, and Jirawan isn't the best translator in the world, she tends to have conversations with people I want to ask questions about things, rather than just simple translate and reply... but she can't help chatting away to people. Her friendly nature finds a conversation in even the most mundane of interactions, she's not really interested in how high will the wall be, when the builder has a family story to tell :D

I can't wait for the rains to come and things to cool down and the air to clear, yes I also know those rains are apocalyptic in nature but its going to be wonderful to see and really smeel some fresh air.

Yes 1st 4 months, great, next 4 months, expecting rain, then looking forward to the cooler "winter" season where will will do a bit more exploring. Next year for sure though we're going to bug out and go south during the burning season... Condos in Hua Hin and places like that are cheap enough when we're no longer paying rent here.

Ahthankyew

I hope I'm wrong.....

I think I have found a potential downside to living in Thailand..

Bloody immigrants.... or more specifically the type of ex pats who join up local ex pat groups and do nothing but moan and complain.. have 0 sense of humour and are all opinionated mostly right maga types, or extreme left, or hippies floggin crystals.... I mean not all, but so so so many utter pricks on those forums its scary.. And when you see some of the posts, drill down to discover they are flat earth, anti vax, 60+yo with 20yo commodity wives, that rent cos they don't trust their wives to buy... oh dear god..there is a pattern.

I'm hoping its just a case of the loud ones are the pricks and the nice ones are generally quiet and rolling their eyes.. but... it does seem that for the most part ex pats here are entitled nasty pricks.

but as I say, I hope I am wrong.. 

However if not, thats fine, the very nice thing about being my age with no real cares or stress on me is I can literally walk away and ignore such people.. I don't need them in my life.

Meanwhile my eye rolling exercises are showing great results as is my block button.

Ahthankyew

Happiness is measured in many ways.

Having my babies back home is one of them
I shipped 4 over, including my Vintage Les Paul, Goldie, and my MadDog acoustic, hand picked from a small shop under railway arches in Ramsbottom of all places,...both very nice guitars which I like to play, but nothing very special....

These 2 however and very special, much loved parts of me, and I have been a bit lost without them. I did buy a cheap Acoustic to play but didnt enjoy it. And a nice G&L electric, which was more fun, but not quite my thing.... now I have my babies back, maybe some creative juices will start flowing again.


Ahthankyew

that 

Margaret, Goldie, Breedlove and Maddog are coming home

The four guitars I couldnt part with, are finally on the last leg of their trip.. After an absolute age being shuffled around, stuck in a container, being stored, being loaded and waiting.. they are finally going to be here on Friday....oh and lots of other stuff too, but my babies, especially Margaret are on their way home to pappa...

Im very excited, also a bit nevous, especially for the 2 acoustics, even though they were packed well, such intruments dont like wide ranging temp changes, so I hope all is ok when they get here.

I will update when they arrive.

Ahthankyew

Parkinsons Law multiplied

Back when I was doing Project managment, I was aware of a thing called Parkinsons law, which basically outlines the fact, that any work you have to do in a given time, expands into that given time

So give someone a 15 min job, and allow them a day to do it...it takes a day.

Well I've discovered there's a catalyst to Parkinsons Law... its called Thai weather.... its hot... so so so hot at the moment... And if you try to do ANY kind of work outdoors....it's going to take the entire day...there's no way to rush, or hurry. You need breaks to catch your breath, gulp down a gallon of cold water and to just stop for a minute to check on how much is left.

Yes you guessed it, I was doing a job outside, something I thought was simple, about an hour/90 mins, and it utterly destroyed me. 

I added to our garden watering/cooling system. Extending the mini hose to the upper part of our central tree and then around the fence to our small "alpine" (no it wasn't me that put it there) garden, so that when the water is turned on, strategically spaced nozzles, spray a fine mist out into the garden to give the little plants a drink/soaking.. 

It was a great idea... it almost works perfectly....there's a slight issue with water pressure by the time it gets to the last couple of nozzles, but it does still give a thirst quenching drip feed to the plants under it.

But it took me all day, and I am physically destroyed....

I'm going to have to adapt to this heat, but its hard work, 37+ today, and with poor air quality it wasn't easy.

But its done, for now, I have another misting set coming in a few days which will do the other side of the house, which is a smaller amount of trees/hedges to soak. So it will only take me... a day to do.

Oh and Immigration came to see me on Monday last, and didn't ask me a single question, but told Jirawan, its all fine, I just need to go get my passport stampled the day before it runs out for a full marriage Visa... So...I get to stay :D

Ahthankyew

We're a two bike family :D

I love my "little" GPX DZ3, its nippy, quite powerful and honestly, a good looking bit of kit.. But its a wee bit too big for my wee wifie, so Jirawan can't really drive it. (though I've seen smaller Thai ladies on much bigger bikes). But she wanted to be a bit less reliant on the car, especially since there are currently lots of queues at the petrol stations as people panic buy fuel.

So she went for lessons this weekend, passed her test and went to get  her license :D After which we went out and bought her a bike. We went 1st to a 2nd hand dealer but they wanted a lot for a Honda Scoopy with 117K km on it, 40K.... a new one costs 57..... so we went to the dealer and bought a new one.

Amazingly, she picked one off the forcourt, and they cleaned it up and got it ready for her to drive home as soon as she paid for it.. Never seen that before, usually there's a lot of inspections and stuff... but sure enough..after she filled in the forms, there it was, ready, and 10mins of salesman explaining the buttons later, she was ready to go.

I was a bit worried about her driving a new unfamiliar bike home, and suggested she go for a short run around, then meet me at the car park across from the dealer to decide who would ride it home... I waited and waited....and waited a bit more,  and it became clear she either had a horrible crash, or had headed straight for home... So I went home...

I kinda winced a bit when she was not there on my arrival, she'd had a good 10-15mins head start... but not to worry, 5 mins later, she showed up with the biggest grin I've ever seen (since our wedding at least).

So now we have a new Scoopy in the family, and it is rather nice, Jirawan is happy.. life is good.

Ahthankyew

Getting our youtube channel up and running.

I had kinda wanted to get our retirement channel up and running before we actually left The Netherlands. I thought the process itself of applying for visa's and getting goods shipped etc would be interesting. It really wasn't. I did make a few videos but honestly they were dull as ditchwater.. so we've left it till we got here before we started to make content... and its now starting to get a bit easier as I now am getting better at editing the videos, and just need to try to make more interesting content.

I don't have any hopes that this channel will be a money maker, a lot of people seem to rely on youtube channels as a source of income and are very diligent about making regular content, all shiny and relevent to their subscribers needs.

We don't really care... We will make videos about everyday things that happen here, and some things that I might find interesting. Of course documenting the build of our house, good/bad/wtf on a regular basis will be of interest to lots of people I think, many retiree's come here with different ideas about renting/buying/building a house.. So our content will help them do some research on that.

But for now, Im just learning how to put videos together make them interesting and hope that we can get the subscriber count up.

Today I uploaded 2, including this test of our GoPro 13 camera, which its pretty awesome.

I hope people find it interesting, but if not, at least I have a few people reading this who might like the content as it will document how we're getting on in Thailand.



Ahthankyew