Retire In Thailand

I met my wife while on vacation in Pattaya, which is about 45 minutes south of the new international airport by taxi and the airport is around halfway to Bangkok. I met her on the first day I arrived on a double date with a friend who was already there. Within a fortnight she took me back to meet her family in what I later discovered to be north-eastern Thailand.

Isaan is called north-eastern Thailand as well, which is actually confusing because where we are is further north but not so far east. Anyway, most individuals who call Isaan the north east live in Bangkok and Pattaya, the two big hang-outs for foreigners (called farang or falang in Thai), and we are all north-east from there.

A glance at the map and you will see what I mean. If you travel north out of Bangkok, in due course you will come to Phitchit, which is officially the beginning of the north and the northern race as they call themselves.

Then comes Phitsanulok, at one time a capital of Thailand. Another 40 kilometres north is Sukhotai and Sri Satchenali, Thailand’s first capital and the spiritual home of Thailand. The original city is still there, uninhabited and largely restored.

I live in the next province to the east known as Uttaradit, which borders on Laos to the east and the old mountain kingdom of Nan to the north. About 10% of the population of Nan are of the various Hill Tribes. One of these, the Mlabri, are nomadic hunter gatherers who live in temporary shelters fashioned from branches and leaves. Until very recently, they were living a stone-age existence and their language had never been heard by Westerners before 1978 so far as we know.

This is 250 km north-east from where I live. Sukhotai is about 30 km east. Such a lot of difference within 300 km. This region was part of the old kingdom of Lanna, which means ‘ a million rice fields’ or even ‘millions of rice fields’. Phichai or Fort Phichai, 12 km away, used to be the capital of Uttaradit province. Phraya Phichai Dap Hak (Phichai of the two-handed swords) fought here in the late 18th Century. He is Thailand’s most respected and well-known warrior.

In any case, I live in amongst all this lot. Unfortunately, I do not speak Thai well enough for anyone to give details of it to me and nobody that I know speaks English well enough to do it either. Even my wife. I wish I knew more about this fascinating place where very very few foreigners ever come.

There are five of us here at the moment in a 20 km radius. An English teacher, a Canadian teacher, a retired Dutchman and a retired Englishman and me. Often there is an Irishman and another Canadian, but they have gone home for a spell. I usually do not see a foreigner or hold a detailed conversation for weeks on end. And I love it here.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on a lot of topics, but is now involved with Khao Phansa – The Candle Festival. If you would like to know more, please visit our web site at Package Holidays to Thailand.

After my first night out in Pattaya, Thailand, when I met a woman on a blind date prearranged by one of my best friends, I sat up in bed and I recalled the events of the evening before. We had started in The Pig and Whistle, where I was staying on Soi 7. The Pig is a lovely, quiet, sedate, air-conditioned oasis of tranquility in a street, which is one of the liveliest, noisiest and busiest streets in Pattaya.

We went outside into the soi and into a torrent of people not unlike that of a queue heading for a football game, except that all the females were dressed in bikinis. We had called into one of those outdoor bars, where my friend had a surprise waiting for me. His girlfriend of a while, whom I knew nothing about and a friend of hers who wanted to meet me. The four of us had stayed there an hour before walking the thirty metres to Beach Road. The traffic is one-way on Beach Road, so we took a Baht Taxi North going with the flow and got off two or three kilometres further on just before Walking Street, which is the most notorious street in Pattaya.

We had gone into a complex of bars and sat at one at random. It was only then that I realized that the bars were all set out around a Muay Thai boxing ring, where the fighting was uninterrupted and free, although foreigners are expected to donate a prize to the winner of each bout; 20-100 Baht suffices.

We stayed there an hour and moved on to Walking Street to have a meal. We dined in a seafood specialist restaurant which has a pier or jetty as its dining area. The food was incredible and the mood was romantic with the moon shimmering on the sea and the atmospheric lighting.

I don’t believe I had had a chance really, I fell for my gorgeous date that night and I saw her every day for the rest of my 30 days holiday. We had a wonderful time and when I had to go, I determined to see if I could live in Thailand. I went home and worked out, that if I was careful and a few things fell in my favour, I would probably afford to live there for ten years.

Six weeks later, I returned to Thailand and Joy was waiting for me at the airport. Nothing had altered between us and we caught a bus to go to see her family in northern Thailand. We slept in a room that her brother had given up for us and everyone made me feel very welcome. Joy’s family live in a traditional teak house built on stilts and everybody lived and slept in one room in the traditional way, except for Joy’s brother, who had built an extension, because he was hoping to get married soon.

I love that village and still live there now, five years later. Joy and I are married and have our own home – a traditional, European, concrete-block bungalow not five metres from Joy’s mum, who is a brilliant mother-in-law. Her family appear to understand what a big step it was for me to come here alone and are determined to be there for me, should I need assistance, like my own family in Britain would be. The mission at hand is learning Thai as no one else in the village, besides my wife, speaks English.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on a lot of topics, but is now involved with Khao Phansa – The Candle Festival. If you would like to know more, please visit our web site at Package Holidays to Thailand.

In order to be eligible for a year’s visa in Thailand, you have to have a certain amount of money in the bank: 400,000 Baht if you are married to a Thai and 800,000 if you are not married. (I have heard numerous times that two can live as cheaply as one, but never for half the cost). Another stipulation is that that money has to be in a Thai bank three months before you need the visa.

This time my bank in Britain was slow sending my money to Thailand so I lost my twelve-months’ visa. There are a few choices open in this case but all require travel. My wife and I took the decision to go to the nearby Laotian capital of Vientiane, which is approximately 500 miles (800 kilometres) from where we live in northern Thailand, because neither of us had been there previously.

The bus goes from Phitsanulok, which is about 75 kilometres in exactly the opposite direction from Laos, that is south-east. Because the bus was leaving at 22:00 there was no suitable bus to take us there and we had to find a taxi.

The journey to Phitsanulok took us four hours, because the taxi driver wished to stop off and check that his mother was all right. He was not a real taxi driver, only a farmer with a car. There are no real taxis where I live and his mother was not sick, he merely wished to take advantage of the fact that he was going to be passing nearby her village to check that she was all right.

None of that is out of the ordinary here, you take it in your stride as part of travelling through ‘the country’. The bus was spotless and comfortable and on time, which, to be fair, they frequently are. When it came to saying good-bye, why wife’s daughter did not want to get left behind. Luckily, there was a seat left on the bus, so we took her along as well.

The journey to Udon Thani was enjoyable but long; seven hours of winding through the mountains of north-eastern Thailand, but in the dark so you could not see anything. Udon was cold – the first time I have ever been cold in Thailand in six years.

Although it was almost certainly around ten degrees Celsius, I have become acclimatised to a minimum of 20c and an average of 30c. We had no warm clothes and the daughter did not have a change of clothing at all. Nor a passport. And she had forgotten her ID, which has to be taken at all times.

My wife rang a friend in Udon and she arranged a taxi to Vientiane, which is 22 kilometres across the border from Nong Khai, which is 50 kilometres north of Udon – a distance of 72 kilometres. This time it was a shop-keeper with a car who wanted to go to Laos to buy some duty-free cigarettes.

Once across ‘The Friendship Bridge’, we parted company for a time as I had to use a different route through passport control. My wife and her daughter were waiting at the other end for me, but the taxi had deserted us and gone home. I have no idea how the daughter got through without an ID, but I know money changed hands. Procuring a taxi, a real one, from there to Vientiane was easy.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on numerous subjects, but is now concerned with Vientiane visa run. If you would like to know more, please visit our web site at Package Holidays to Thailand.

categories: thailand,visa,vientiane,laos,holiday,vacation,abroad,destinations,travel,trips,diving,asia,enlightenment,other

Orchids have the reputation of being difficult to grow in the West. Gardeners shy away from trying to grow them because they think that they are a problem to grow and because they are expensive. This is easily understood, but there is more to the story than that. The fact is that most countries have their own native orchid species, so it is possible to grow orchids wherever you live, if you pick the right species.

The other side of the coin is that what most gardeners in the West think of as orchids are orchids from exotic countries and they can be difficult to grow. I say a problem to grow, but that is not the whole story either. If you can make an environment similar to where the orchids come from, it need not be a problem at all.

A lot of the spectacular orchids are parasites, like mistletoe is a parasite plant in the temperate countries of the West. These orchids often grow on trees. In trees and on trees, that is. So, their natural environment is to become attached to the bark of a living tree or to be lodged in the fork of a branch.

The orchid will then draw its nutrients and water from the inside of its host much in the same way as does a flea or a bed bug. Another thing to be aware of is that if a plant lives under the canopy of a tree, it seldom, if ever, experiences direct sunlight. Wooded areas are also fairly humid. It is also worth mentioning that exotic plants usually come from warm or hot countries.

Therefore, if you can reconstruct these conditions of providing warmth, humidity and a host, growing foreign orchids should not be that much of a problem. And in truth, it is not, although in the West it might necessitate a greenhouse.

Thailand is home to numerous parasitic orchids, most of which grow on trees in the forests, which are warm to hot and humid, but most people do not live in those conditions. Most Thais live in either open villages or cities where conditions are not favorable to growing jungle orchid varieties. However, most Thai gardeners do not want or even have greenhouses.

Instead, if a Thai gardener is interested in nurturing jungle orchid varieties, he or she will buy (or acquire) the root complex of a dead tree which also has a tree stump of, say, a metre attached. They will then move this tree stump in to a very shady place, say, under a shelter and grow their wild jungle orchids on that.

How is that done?, you may ask. Well, it is actually simplicity itself. First you acquire a sample of the orchid and then you affix it to the stump with a ’strap’ of something that will both permit the orchid to expand and to breathe. Most Thais use some of the fibres from inside a coconut.

The gardener will strap the baby orchid to the stump using the coconut matting as a band-aid with either staples or small nails. By the time the orchid has sunken its roots into the host, the matting will have rotted away, as will probably the staples.

The only thing left to do is to keep the tree and the infant flower well watered so that it can suck the remaining nutrients out of the dead tree. They will flourish for many years under these conditions and the tree stump will be a living flower pot, of sorts.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on several topics, but is now concerned with Loy Krathong. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Package Holidays to Thailand.

Landscape architecture plays an important function in the improvement of all contemporary cities. The principles of landscape architecture are used in order to create open ‘breathing spaces’ so the city has some fresh air and does not look cluttered. Landscape architecture is taught in Thailand and is acknowledged as a profession offering professional qualifications at degree status.

If someone wants to practice as a landscape architect in Thailand, then he or she has to have a bachelor’s qualification in landscape architecture from one of the two universities offering the course. Chulalongkorn University and Thammasart University turn out around 100 post graduates between them in landscape architecture each year.

Bangkok is home to most of Thailand’s landscape architectural companies. There are around thirty substantial businesses and about eighty freelance landscape architects.Lots of the post graduates would like to continue their study or gain more experience abroad before settling down to practice in Thailand. In order to work as a landscape architect in Thailand, one needs to obtain a license from Thailand’s official Association of Architects.

The Thai Association of Architects plays an important role in maintaining standards of landscape architecture. The Thai government, both local and national, employ landscape architects to help with the design of such projects as highway development, inner city renovation and airport design. On a more understandable level, landscape architects are involved with the Royal Flora Expo in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand.

The Association of Architects in Thailand is a private organization but it works hand in glove with the Ministry of the Interior. It assists the government regulate four professions which can have an effect on the environment and one of these is the occupation of landscape architecture. However, landscape architecture does not make up 25% of the Association’s work. At 15% of the association’s workload, it is fair to imagine that landscape architecture is under represented in Thailand.

The Association of Architects issues licenses to applicants based on the results of three principles. These concepts are education, experience and examination. The principle of education is satisfied by gaining a BA in landscape architecture. Then the applicant has to provide proof of work experience and finally, the association has its own examinations which the landscape architect also has to succeed in.

Landscape architecture is still in its early years in Thailand. That is to say that, landscape architecture has only recently started being applied to public developments. There have been landscape gardeners working on the gardens and palaces of wealthy Thais for centuries, just like in each other country with a more affluent ruling class.

Two of Thailand’s most well-known landscape architects are Somwang Leevanjikul and Chanvudhi Varavam, both of whom have been used in large government projects in Thailand using their skills in landscape architecture to make Thailand’s cities and countryside a better looking place to be.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on several subjects, but is now involved with Loy Krathong. If you would like to know more, please visit our web site at Package Holidays to Thailand.

Car, foot, boat, bus and many other unique modes of transportation exist in Thailand. Learn from some of the pros who’ve been there, done that, on how to easily find a teaching job in Thailand in this free video series.Expert: Sean Graham Bio: Sean Graham is an expert in hair re-placement design. He has worked in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, teaching and designing new hair pieces. Filmmaker: Sean Graham

Thailand is the most well-liked tourist destination in South-East Asia and has been for decades. This is because the climate alters throughout the year from hot to cool and even cold, if you would like to look for it; Thai food is world-renowned; the range of wildlife is broad as is the flora; the diving is fantastic and the people are friendly and welcoming. Thailand is not known as the Land of Smiles for no reason.

There are also a lot of festivals, some of which are religious, which equals Buddhist, and others are not. Thailand has been Buddhist ever since the country came into being in the Thirteen Century, but the people were Buddhist long before that. Or at least the majority of them were. There were also throw-backs to older religions just as in the West.

In the West Christmas and Easter were moved to cover up pagan festivals, but in Thailand they just have the old festivals as well. One of the biggest festivals is Loy Krathong in November (the first full moon in the twelfth lunar month). Loy Krathong is a delightful festival to appease the goddess or water, Ganga, for using and abusing (polluting) her.

These days, people still remember the old significance of Loy Krathong (’Floating Boats’), but it has been taken over by lovers too. People float symbolic boats out onto the water and ask the goddess to forgive them and to grant a wish. Lovers push their boats out together and numerous people believe that if the boats, krathong, float out side-by-side then they will have a trouble-free year together.

Numerous women don traditional Thai costumes for the evening, particularly if they are going out for a meal or to a party. Some men do as well, but not so many.

Also in November is the world-famous Elephant roundup in Surin. The elephant roundup is also well-liked with foreigners and Thais alike. The city of Surin is full on this weekend so if you would like to go it is worth booking your hotel with your travel ticket otherwise you may be stranded. Not that it is cold or likely to rain.

Bridge Over the River Kwae week is in November. The bridge is a moving reminder of the horror that prisoners of war from all over the world experienced at the hands of the Japanese overlords at the time. More Thais died than foreigners although Thailand was thought of as ‘friendly’ by the occupying Japanese.

In December it is the King’s birthday and Fathers’ Day on the 5th. The king is very extremely well esteemed in Thailand and many people will light candles in their garden on the roadside to the king in the early evening. This is a very pretty sight, especially in the villages where street lighting is normally negligible. Constitution Day is on the 10th and is a bank holiday, which normally means a celebration.

Christmas is celebrated in the cities by tourists, ex-pats and young Thais although it has no real religious significance outside the Christian churches in the larger cities.

New Year’s Day is huge. There are parties that will last all night, dancing, feasting and fireworks.

Thailand is a wonderful place to come to in November and December and although it is thought of as high season, I am certain that you will find it cheaper to come on vacation to Thailand – The Land of Smiles – than it is to remain at home in the cold.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on numerous subjects, but is now concerned with Loy Krathong. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Package Holidays to Thailand.

www.squidoo.com Find an English Teaching Job in Thailand, Japan, China, Taiwan, S. Korea and many other places.

Today, February 5th, in Thailand was also Super Tuesday for American expats residing here in the Southeast Asian Kingdom. Many of the expats here registered to vote

Many Americans move to Thailand to become a teacher. Learn from some of the pros who’ve been there, done that, on how to easily find a teaching job in Thailand in this free video series.