Thai life &  Landscape Projects – March 25

Well, it is now the 3rd month of 2025, & March has arrived so quickly. Since my last Blog posting about our post-build activity in January, we have continued keeping busy with planning and delivering some landscape transformation of our dirt building site.

It was a chore to find and secure a landscape provider in our part of the world. Unfortunately, a local large garden center let us down during the planning phase & just stopped communicating. However, my resourceful partner was able to find a company from Roi-Et (about 3 hours away) to estimate, quote & deliver our initial landscape project. The project saw nearly 1000 sq meters of nor noi grass sod laid down, various trees planted as well as a variety of plants & bushes set out in gardens around the house perimeter. We also had a well dug for gardening water. Heading to a local nursery was also on the cards a few times to get plants that we put into our garden.

There is a new page in the menu – “House Landscaping Activity” – so check out the Page Link for details – Thai House Landscaping Activity

There is also a Youtube video on my channel to enjoy about the landscaping project – check it out!

We are now focused on enjoying our retirement dwelling, lots of gardening in 2025 & getting out & about a bit more, now we don’t have a house to build. Aside from house related matters we have also been enjoying life in our small country town a few other things, such as:

Nice overnight road trip – We took a drive to ‘Ubon Ratchithani’ during February – @ 3 hour easy drive from our house – for my birthday. We enjoyed staying at Centara Hotel next to Central Plaza Mall for this get away. We enjoyed large city sights, food, shopping & exploring Index furniture, Homepro & SCG/Boonthavan for house things. Ace’s mother was kind enough to care for our pets while we were away.

Nakhon Phanom University Agriculture Market – we wandered about this yearly market to look for any interesting plants, trees or other gardening ideas. It is a fairly large event with many venders and Ace picked up some grape plants & other fruit trees to plant in our yard.

Thai Document Updates – We finally had time to head to local Government District Office to update my Thai documents to correct our new address. Going to a rural office is a lot easier than it was in Chiang Mai. As I was already issued with a Yellow House Book and a Pink ID Card, these only needed to be updated in the Government system and reprinted with my up to date information. The District Office was displaying a number LGBTQ flags on the service counters – an interesting touch that supported the recent legislation change to allow same sex marriage registration.

Visa Renewal – Another 12 month living here sorted, with a Thai ‘O’ Retirement visa extension, today at That Phanom Immigration. Took about 2 hours. Bank in the morning for documents, nice riverside lunch & afternoon visa processing. It was fairly quiet at the Immigration visa counter. Celebration dinner. Immi indicated they would conduct a house visit within 7 days to confirm I reside here & speak with neighbors! Coffee is on – & they did show up about 10 days later unannounced to check that I lived where I had claimed to – all good and nice chat.

Annual Vehicle Rego – We also needed to complete our annual vehicle registration, insurance update and vehicle inspection. All this took no more than about 30 minutes to complete in our small town. One advantage to living in the country is the low volume of customers at businesses & Government offices so there is no long queuing. Nice

Lunch with Aces mom – an outing treat at this garden food spot near our house – fish, prawns, pork neck salad & Thai pancake. Yummo – Blue skies, breezy & cool (26°) winter weather.

Personal Note – Along with all this activity, I have unfortunately been burdened with a recurrent problem that apparently originates from my previous prostate cancer treatment – the repeat issue of not being able to pass urine. It has been a revolving door at the local hospital to insert a catheter & visits to a urologist after 2 weeks to have it removed & discuss the continued problems. Sometimes I am good for 1 or 2 months, sometimes only 2 weeks between episodes. I have now reached out to another urologist in Sakon Nakhon Hospital to get another opinion on this matter. I am scheduled for an MRI but have to wait until early May to get a queue placement. Getting old sucks when the health isn’t 100% as it does inhibit many activities & getting stuck into garden work.

Cheers for now from RAce Country Cottage in That Phanom, Thailand