Thailand – Where My Whimsey Takes Me

January 26, 2014September 8, 2016

Wat Phu Thok

Back on the 29th of December, we took a trip to Wat Phu Thok (Wat Jetiyakhiri) maybe four or five hours to the northeast of the city of Udon Thani. Bua, Pop, and I were visiting some old friends of ours from Pattaya who were staying Si Wali for the holidays. Wat Phu Thok is a good size mountain for a predominantly flat farm plain. Visually, it’s identifiable for quite a ways away.

Wat Phu Thok was, and still is, a monks retreat. It’s a bit easier to access now with the stairs and pathways, but it’s still a good trek up the sides of it. Fortunately, there are benches for rest stops along the trails. Some of the stairways are reasonable, and some seem nearly vertical. Thankfully, there are a couple of alternate paths going up, so the mountain goats can follow their inclinations, and those of us not quite so athletic can take a more reasonable climb — sometimes.

The upper levels have paths that circle the mountain. Parts of the walkways, a couple of people could walk abreast, and other areas, you almost have to lean out over the void to make your way around outcroppings. Our friend took one of the higher level tracks around the mountain. He took his jaunt alone though, since none of the rest of us felt all that comfortable joining him. If you look closely, you can see him up on the path. In case you are wondering, that is a wooden walkway anchored in sandstone, of unknown age. As and engineering feat, it’s terrific. As a walkway, parts of it border on terrifying.

All in all, it was a fun family trip, and well worth seeing. There is so much of the local area still left to discover.

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November 8, 2013January 5, 2014

Be my neighbor? Revisited

My previous post was about a home for sale. There’s a newly remodeled place down the way that is for rent. As you can see, close neighbors are not an issue with this place.

If you head left from this place, you get to the corner store about 100 meters away. If you go right, and go to the end of the lane, you get to our house.

We’ve been watching this place be remodeled since we moved up here. The inside was gutted, so it’s all new in there. While I have not been inside, there is supposed to be a big room, with an attached and enclosed kitchen out the back. The upstairs is divided into two rooms, with the upper balcony for morning coffee. The nice wall is only in the front, though the owner told Bua that when she gets renters, she’ll expedite replacing the barbed wire fence with a good wall on the other three sides.

No worries about neighbors on this side, since there is a massive pond full of water flowers. You can see some construction trash along the side of the house that is still in the process of being removed. At a guess, I think the pond is 60 meters by 60 meters, but I’m not sure. Too bad it isn’t stocked with fish, and a bit less clogged with plants. If it were, you could almost fish out the livingroom window.

This side shows much more of the construction waste that is in the process of being cleaned up.

You can also get a better view of the kitchen area at the rear of the house. I think once the surrounding walls get finished, this will be quite a nice Thai style home.

Here’s another view of the entry way, and the upper porch. In our entryway area we have a small cafe table and a couple of chairs. It really makes for a nice place to sit and enjoy the day. On this house, they should catch some afternoon sun, but the mornings should be shaded.

The owner also said she’s more interested in older, longer term renters. She’s putting a good amount of money into the house, and wants someone who is going to treat the house well.

I don’t have a name for the owner, but the Thai phone number is 087-951-4857. She told us rent was going to be 5000 baht, about $160 USD, per month. It looks like there was a DSL line to the house before, so Internet access would not be a problem.

November 7, 2013January 5, 2014

Be My Neighbor?

Feel like moving to the country, while still being near the city? The house down the way is for sale, at around $22,000 USD or 700,000 baht. The road in front is dirt now, but within a few months it will be concrete, same as the recently upgraded road in front of our house.

I have no idea how many bedrooms are inside, but you can see it’s a good size home, with few neighbors of it’s own. At this point in time, the only near dwellings are behind it.

As you may have guessed, at just over $20K USD, it’s a bit of a fixer-upper. However, I know from recent experience, even with a house unoccupied for several years, it doesn’t take too much effort to get it livable again. Houses here are concrete and brick, rather than wood. Cleaning and painting, sure, but probably not any structural damage. Putting another $5K to $10K and you’d have quite a nice little house, and grounds.

It does have the basic form, just needs some polish. A boundary wall would be good, rather than the tin sheeting. Someone’s been keeping up with the greenery, so it’s not all overgrown like our house was. If the inside is in the same condition as the outside, I doubt all that much effort would be required to get it “farang-ready”. I didn’t see any air conditioning compressors when I was looking at the front of the house, so unless there is one in the rear, there is no air conditioning. For our house, we have three; two working and one broken, and so far we’ve only turned them on to test them.

Not that I’m all that frugal, but I do try to limit our use of air conditioning as much as possible. Unless it’s really awful, I’d rather use a fan, or passive cooling (open some windows for a cross breeze.)

So, like I mentioned, it would be cool so have some English speaking neighbors. I don’t personally know who owns the house, if it’s the bank, or an individual or company. There’s a fair amount of land in our community area repossessed by one bank or another. I’m not sure, but I suspect a bank would be more interested in turning over the property rather than speculating on how much more the land should be jacked up after the announcement of a second Ring Road for Udon.

If anyone is interested, let me know, and I’ll ask Bua to ask the Village Big Boss how to contact the owners.

Non-Thai citizens are not allowed to buy land. However, Thai companies can buy land, so if you have (or create) a Thai Company, that company can buy and own the land for you. If you’re married to a Thai national, it’s just a matter of buying the property for your spouse, and if you’re hedging your bets, leasing the house back to yourself for 30 years, with an option for another 30 years.

October 29, 2013January 25, 2014

Moving to the Northern City

After long and careful consideration (Bua looked at the house and loved it), we’ve moved to the city of Udon Thani, in the province of Udon Thani. We’re now in a detached, single family home just a tiny bit inside the ring road around UT.

It’s owned by a friend still living in Pattaya, and we got a good deal to come up here, get it back in shape, and overall enjoy the country life.

What I was looking for was to get more of a feeling of living in residential Thailand, rather than living in Tourist Thailand. Pattaya does have many wonderful attributes, but even living 4 km out on the Darkside, it still was fairly touristy. Our here, I rarely ever see another farang in our community/village. I know there are other foreigners living around here, I just don’t ever see them.

October’s been our first month in Udon. So far, I’m wondering why we didn’t do this last year. It’s been a great moved, and while I do miss my friends in Pattaya, we’ve already scheduled our first ‘vacation’ back to Pattaya in mid November.