RETIREMENT- A trip to Thailand and Finding a home

Sitting on the couch one evening thinking ,"what are we going to do now ?" , I've already gave my notice at work , signed up for my early SS, Ciejay doesn't want to live in Tenn. , to expensive to live here in Salem , "what to do ". then I remembered my son Rich had visited Thailand for a few weeks and called me when he got back and said " Dad you should think about retiring in the LOS. I had never thought of it , even tho I was married to a Thai lady , I didn't think she would ever want to go back , and I knew nothing of Thailand , except the little stories of her growing up and the fact that she had two children and a lot of family there .We and the other sisters that lived in America sent a little money to their Mom and Dad every month and also from time to time some vitamins and powered food supplement , and that was all I knew . Ciejay came in and sat down beside me and ask "what you thinking husband?."I told her I was thinking about Thailand and how maybe we could think about retiring there next year .Her answer was that we didn't have any money saved , but I told her that when we retired , we would get a small check from the U. S. Government every month till I die , she did not understand about SS so I tried to explain it to her , I must have did a good job , because she answered "we pray". I left it at that, and for the next couple of months I Reade everything I could find on the www about Thailand , positive and negative.
Well retirement year rolled around and still no decision of where to retire and spend our golden years , then we got a call from Ciejay's sister in Thailand saying that her Dad had pasted away after a long bout with diabetes , and that they were having his cremation and Buddish funeral services in 5 days , well, we were not prepared for a quick trip , I hadn't even got my passport yet and we didn't have the cash for such a trip , we talked to the two sisters that lived in America and we all decided that we would go together for the 100 day ceremony, ( where they put the ashes on a little boat made of flowers and float the down the river ). I told Ciejay , " we will stay 3 weeks and look around for a little piece of land to build us a little house , and see if we want to retire in the LOS .
We went there mainly for the 100 day event , but in the back of my mind I was excited about the possibility of retiring there . I had read and looked at pictures on the net enough to make me fall somewhat in love with the country . After the ceremony , we rented a van and traveled for Two weeks all over the central and northern part of Thailand , but we never saw any place or found a little piece of land that we both liked . The last evening of our trip we decided to go to Sai Yok amphora to the little village of Wang Pho and visit Ciejay's brother before flying back home the next day . We arrived there about 5:15 , it was late evening and already getting dark , the sisters visited with their brother and I sat and looked around the area , already when we were driving down the mountain to Wang Pho valley , I had thought to myself , I like this place , and Ciejay and I had exchanged glances, with a smile , that showed she felt the same .I was dark now and we were about to leave. Ciejay and me had said that we would come back next year on our own and look around some more , we were hurry ,hurry this trip everywhere we went .As we were getting in the van , I said to Ciejay " ask your brother if there is a house and a little piece of land for sale in Wang Pho ", she asked and he said " YES, there" and he pointed to the house next door , can you believe it . We went to look , it was all dark and the house was locked tight and the windows were tinted, soooo we could not even see inside , three bedroom, and 2 to bath rooms, her brother said" not finished" , the man and wife broke and house sat empty for 6 years , I ask if her knew the man and he said "yes my friend in Bangkok" , I ask him to call him and ask the price ( house and a little piece of land .) He called the man gave a price , my brother -in -law ask for a discount and the man said YES and just like that Ciejay had bought us a house and a little piece of land in Thailand . It was dark and we could not see it very well , but as I have said many times we had a dream and God had a plan, and we were happy .
Home we went, with a big smile on our face and a lump in our throat's thinking about what we were going to do and when we could move to Thailand and our dream home , and how we were going to get the money to fix up the house and clear the land and lots of ????????? in our heads.When we showed the one picture of the house we had most of our friends laughed and said it looked like it was ready to fall over, and that we could never make it livable, well we wondered the same thing sometimes , But we had prayed and felt in our hearts that it was right and this was the plan God had for us . This was 2003 and we had till March 2004 before retirement and our plans were to fly to Thailand in Oct. of 2004 to begin our new life .
Of course there was lots to do to get ready and we wondered all along if we could really fulfil our dream of retiring and living in Thailand . In the next post I will go in detail all we did to prepare for the move to the LOS and God's hand in all of it . Malcolm

RETIREMENT and MONEY

Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy. -Groucho Marx
"Early to bed and early to rise -- till you get enough money to do otherwise.
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One thing I learned about retirement very quickly was that you needed money and lots of it , and that there is no retirement fairy that comes along and zaps you on the head with her or his magic wan and says "now you are retired, do what you want when you want and where you want." Retirement as I have already said" takes money", and you have to plan to save it ,retire from a job that gives you a pension , win the lotto, sell a business, marry someone rich ( if single) inherit from rich relative , or as I did start drawing your SS check when you reach the ripe ole age of 62. And at 62 the check is not enough to live on and especially if you have a wife , which I had when I reached retirement age .I took a look around me and and at my SS check and I knew that with that amount of money coming in every month, that there was no way we could live in our present location . My brother lived in Tennessee and offered to let us build a small house or put a trailer, or manufactured home on a little piece of land on his property and we went there to check it out , I loved the idea of being close to my brother and living in the country, but Ciejay just did not like the area, and expressed that she did not think she would be happy ( and her happiness was very important to me ). I think we could have lived there on my SS check (bearly getting by), with the amount of MONEY we would have coming with each check . I could do like a lot of folks that say they are retired and work another full time job just at a different company or they get a part-time job and their wives get one too , Soooo they say they are retired , but in reality they are working just as much as before , just drawing their SS check, (selling the house that they bought for twice what it was worth (when the banks were loaning money to anyone that breathed and had any credit (good or bad) young or old )moving to a different location , most of the time only renting and to a warmer climate and calling themselves retired, with the MONEY they had saved (if any) and the MONEY gotten from the sell of all the things they had collected over the years , the yard and garage sells, and their SS checks . All of this adding up to the Money that it takes to retire. If you don't have the Money or a way to get it, then you really can't retire and will have to work till you drop dead , paying for that new car and big house that you bought and really didn't need in the first , but you have no choice because nobody will buy that used car , not even what you owe on it and the house that you bought for $250,000 dollars, now with the collapsed housing market is worth half what you paid for it , and no one wants to buy it because you owe more to the bank than it's worth , but you still have to make the payments because the banks want take it back , or file bankruptcy, Which means your. credit is ruined and you can never buy anything on credit again ( the thing got you into this mess in the first place ) which means you can't retire , Because to retire takes Money.
I hope you have thought about these things way before it's time for you to retire and have started to save as much as you can every month and started living a little more frugal that you did before you started getting close to your golden years, and remember , when you retire you want need all those TOYS and THINGS you spent your hard earned Money for , Heck most of them you 'll be to old to play with anyway , get rid of them!!!!!!! Now!!!!!! while you still can .When you wait till retirement time , folks know it and will try to steal them from you , remember their not retiring you are and your down sizing is their Wind -Fall. It's all about Money yours and theirs.
When we (Ciejay and me ) retired we had not been married bur two years and I had never saved a penny in my life and had no thoughts of retiring at all , I planned on working till I dropped dead, but when I meet Ciejay all that changed and I wanted to spend all my golden years with her , laughing , loving and enjoying life and the blessings of the Lord to the fullest, and that did not include working every day from dawn till dark, 6 or 7 days a week and not even a part-time job, but how to do this was the problem , because as I stated in the first of this post it takes Money and that was something I didn't have much of , and very few toys to speak of .And as I said before there was just noway I could see us retiring on our small SS check .
I know that there are lots of folks in the same boat we were in and are wondering how they can retire and enjoy their golden years ,and not have to work themselves to death . I hope they have a plan and the MONEY to make it work, I didn't , BUT----- God did and in my next post I'll tell you all about it , this post is getting way to long and I don't want to loose any one along the way , stay tuned for the next post . Malcolm
ps:
I know some folks will not agree with the things I have said ,BUT some will relate and these are the folks I hope this post gives a little inspiration to.

Enough is Enough

This is my first time in the Hammock in 21 days as you can see , I've lost a little weight (14 lb.) but I'm feeling stronger.

Well , I think I've been a slave to that bed long enough , I've been in and out of it (mostly in ) now for 21 days and I say I need to pull myself up by my bootstraps and get on with living normal again, I have eaten good the last couple of days and have started to get my strength back .The Dr.'s ran all kind of test and everything turned out ok , My last run thru the hospital a few days ago they said I just had a bad flu, that was not responding very well even to anti-biotics and told me to get all the vitamin C I could and in doing this I feel a lot better .

Thanks for all the well wishes and encouragement and prayers , thats what keep me from getting depressed, and there was a few times when I felt like throwing in the towel .

I am soooo much thankful to Ciejay, she has had her hands full ,taking care of me , I don't think I'm a easy patient to care for , I hate being sick . She has been a real trooper and , I will forever be greatful to her .

I'll be back to my blog in a couple of days as soon as I get my mind back in gear too .. Malcolm

I've really been sick

It's not that I don't want to put up a lot of new post about retirement , but I have really been sick this past week and am even today only feeling about 50% . Take care and I'll be back soon , don't forget me . Malcolm

Retirement--"I love It "(Most of the time) no really "I love it"

This is what the house looked like when we bought it one year before we moved to Thailand

Me acting like I am helping , when most of the time I was just in the way

We are seeing some progress , we really did a lot

The folks that did the work remodeling and almost rebuilding, were great and it took a lot of work and reconstruction work to get the house the way we wanted it .

We're very happy with the way it turned out ,and we have added a lot that I will show in the post to come .


Malcolm and Ciejay Retired in Thailand

I love being retired and especially ,being retired here in Thailand , but loving it and enjoying all the benefits that come with being retired and accepting all the not so fun things, and some of the lack of benefits that come with being retired also, all this and more (of which I will share in later post ) took quite a while to get use to and even longer to get my mind, to accept the fact that I was indeed retired .
Almost all the things I will write about will be from my own experience, being retired here where we live in (Kanchanaburi) in the small village of Wang Pho, Thailand , from time to time I may mention other places and people , but for the most part it will be about us and OUR retirement life .
The first couple of months , it was life as usually , just in another country , we were busy remodeling the house we had bought pr yer to our retirement in the USA.We were there everyday watching , and sometimes complaining about the way the work was progressing , we were, trying to make this little house into a home , that we could live and enjoy, the rest of our lives in comfort and with as many of the conveniences that we were use to back in the good ole USA . Little, did I realise that some the things I hoped for , would never happen, and that this is not the good ole USA and they don't think , live , work ( or even think important ) many of the things we just take for granted , living in our homelands. I had to wrap my mind around these facts real quick or go crazy , fly into fits of rage, and show my anger and disapproval, just as I would in the good ole USA, have a long , hard and intense, talk with everyone and end up getting things done MY WAY. Well it don't work that way here in the LOS they will just pack up their tools and leave ,and you will not see them again and no one else in the village will come to work for you because the first folks that you ran off are all related to everyone in the village, and now you are on a Thai black list , which can take years to get off of , and then only if YOU learn how to be Retired in Thailand and Loving It . Some things I have learned the hard way , but for the most part I was at least smart enough to do a lot of research and learn a lot about Thai life and customs and Village life before we arrived and I have to say up front ,that I have the most wonderful Thai wife in the world (Ciejay) and she saved me from many a pit fall , and kept me from making a lot of mistakes along the way, starting in to this new way of life , Retiring and living in a strange and new country all at the same time .
Once all the work on the house was done, furnished like we could afford and learning how to get along without the things we could not afford right away, and we had things almost like we wanted them , we moved in , Then the real life of being retired set in, and believe you me , did this time in my life ever take some getting use to .You ask "like what ", well these are some of the things I am going to write about in the up and coming post :
Family , food , shopping , money ( having a lot or a fixed income based on a small to medium pension) , market days , health care , exercise, (enjoying or lack of ), village life ( how much to get en voled,)Kids , grand-kids , neighbors , animals, (yours and the neighbors) social life, together time with wife or husband, time for self (hammock time ), and any other subjects that pop into my mind or that you as my readers and folks retiring or thinking about retiring(in Thailand) would like me to write about , from our point of view, and from mine and Ciejay's experiences.
I hope you will enjoy this post subject and the follow-up post and that you will be kind enough to take a moment out of your retired or not retired life and leave a comment. Malcolm

FISH MARKET DAY IN WHANG PHO

I've said it before and I'll say it again , "my favorite day of the week in the LOS is market day". there are soooo many reasons why I like market days soo much , I like getting to see everyone , the whole village and surrounding area comes out to buy their weeks supplies of fresh fruit and veggies and anything else you can think of that you might need to keep body and soul together and then some.I like for the folks to see the farang and see that he's still here after six years and not just a visitor. Right beside the market is a car wash and I can get the truck cleaned and detailed for 100 baht , and there is a great coffee shop there too and the lady always puts a scoop of chocolate ice cream in mine , yum yum . give it a try . The real reason I love the market is that everything is sooo fresh and I can pick what and how much I want with out it being wrappped in plastic saran wrap and stored in a cooler for several days and then put out as fresh , I can pick it up, and squeeze it , smell it, hand it to Ciejay for a look see and her professional, (ha ha ) approval or disapproval ,and even ask for a sample taste if I'm not to sure , and the person does it with a smile and not like I'm bothering her or him, like I have experienced in the store front markets .What a difference it makes when you are spending your money and the folks really appreciate you buying from their tent or little table , and you know you're not only getting fresh fruit and veggies , but you are helping this family , by buying the fruit of their labor .

But today was a special mission, we had company coming for dinner and I wanted to have a fish fry , soooo I was on the hunt for the freshest fish I could find, well I soon found out that there were sooo many different kind , and sizes, That I had to go back home and get Ciejay to come help me( that was a first as I always think of myself as the shopper King ), I never knew there was so many varieties of fish swimming up and down the River Kwai, and raised in all the little ponds in back of my neighbors houses.Well I picked a big Catfish to grill and Ciejay picked a Mud fish , to make Tum Yum Pla , we had a couple of Thai's coming too and she said they would like the Tum Yum , Sooo I said ok . Everyone had a great time , the Cat fish fry turned out great , I served it with grilled hot veggies and served on a chilled bed of lettuce , red and green, topped ,with my home made Italian dressing , baked potatoes with butter ,chives and sour cream and bacon bits and my very own corn hush puppies ( deep fried cornbread rolled into balls ) and served with home made cole slaw (South Carolina style ). The Thai guest jump right in and had heaping bowls of Tum Yum and a side dish of the famous Jasmine Rice (Thai guest are soo easy to cook for ).
Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves , and everyone keep say the were full , and Em sooo I guess it was a success.
I am always sooo glad for the fresh things we can get at our market that make it sooo much fun to cook and it (i hope) always taste soo good and fresh , especially the fresh fish , just caught this morning.
I'm posting a few pictures of all the fresh fish I had to chose from. I hope you have a fresh market near you and if possible , buy as much there as you can, the family farmers will love you for it, and you will be eating a lot freshier and healthier.
I'm glad I'm here in the LOS and that I have a wonderful person like Ciejay to share it with, I guess you could say I'm here, I'm happy,I'm blessed, and to top it all off I'm Retired in Thailand and Loving It .

Tuk-Tuk's Love them or Hate them

All aboard

Click here for all you need to know about Bangkok http://www.onestopbangkok.com/

These folks bought this one new and rode all around Thailand , they store it in Kanchanaburi for their next trips and for their friends to use when they are here . He said made special for the 250,000 baht " I want one."

Opps-!!!! how did that get in here

Ciejay really liked this one

Alex on a Resort Tuk Tuk

Here are a few Picture of Tuk Tuk's

Here today and maybe gone tommorow

ME, I love them and for lots of reason They are cute, they are cheap , they are colorful and the guys that drive the are crazy , and you are in for the ride of your life and the most important reason is "They are a big partof Thailand" , what would a trip to the (Big Mango) hope Martyn doesn't have that name copyrighted, ha ha, without a ride in the little motorcycle that has made the big city and travel around the city famous , I know a lot of you folks don't like the smoke and the noise they make , but after all it's Thailand and you are just here visiting and to some folks it just would not be a complete trip to Bangkok with out a ride in one, when I rode in( or on) my first one I hung on for dear life , it was like riding on a amusement park ride. Ciejay was scared to death and to me it was like riding with my Mom in her little Ford Mavrick in 1975 , when she got her license ot 60 years old . Her moto was the same as the Tuk Tuk drivers "peddle to the medal" and then some . ha ha .
Well I guess they have limted the number of tuk tuk 's in certain areas of BKK and in some areas they have outlawed them all together , that was what a friend of mine told me .
Now ,they have come up with a green Tuk Tuk-- battery powered and charged with solar panels , or a 10 baht charge at a charging station for a 80 kilometres ride , I guess it was to be expected and for the Earth I guess it will be better , BUT I'll miss the smoke and noise and you can bet they want go as fast.
Here is a article I got from a link on the web about the "new" Tuk Tuk's.

The end of the line for noisy tuk-tuks?
July 5th, 2010 Health & safety, Transport posted by Jimmy Kransic
The ubiquitous Bangkok tuk-tuk is in for a revamp with the development of an environmentally friendly and silent model.
For decades, tuk-tuks, which are a form of taxi in Thailand, have been a fixture on the streets of Bangkok. The tuk-tuk moves with a sound akin to a chain-saw. Tuk-tuks are powered by petrol or gas, with little engine maintenance, and usually belch out thick clouds of exhaust fumes.
Due to the fact that the colourful vehicles can only carry two passengers comfortably, they are slowly being superseded by alternate transport options, which include taxis and public services, such as the Skytrain. Tuk-tuks are more of a tourist attraction than a viable means of transport nowadays.
With the appearance of a new solar driven model, tuk-tuks could be given a new lease of life. The only snag is the hefty purchase price. At over 300,000 Baht, this option is more than 50 per cent dearer than a standard model. The new price of the current model is around 180,000 Baht.
The initial expenditure on these green models would soon be recouped with lower running costs. Although the new tuk-tuks have batteries, they supplement the power from them by utilising the sun’s rays. The batteries cost 10 Baht to charge, which gives a distance of up to 80 kilometres.
The solar powered tuk-tuk could become more affordable if the government subsidised the cost of it. With an estimated 8,000 tuk-tuks on the streets of Bangkok, replacing them with smokeless, silent vehicles would surely lower noise and air pollution levels in the capital.