Rayong House Purchase

No we have not been sitting still. Recently bought a house on the beach in Rayong. Its got ground floor and two additional floors and a usable flat concrete roof with a  bedroom on it.  Its old, dilapidated and needs a lot of cleaning and a full repaint job. Have also been thinking about adding a first floor patio to overlook the beach. Also good spot of a permanent Bar B Q and relax area.

Yes ours is the one on the right of the newly painted yellow one.... It looks like a prison with all the security bars. Previous owner was worried about burglary. Single lady staying on her own so I can understand to some extent. Anyway we bought it. Had to spend a day in the land office to do transfers. You need to turn up in person and not just go through a lawyer. Still it gone done. Transfer tax was sorted out at same time. So one minute we were sitting the land office with a  bankers cheque and next minute we had no bankers cheque but were holding onto the original deeds tot he property.

Its 5 meters wide and about 17 meters long/deep from the road. Opposite side of the road is the beach. Lots of little fishing huts and small shops. I understand these are all due for relocation in next year or so to open up the beach to the general public. Essentially they are squatters but they have made a live for them selves and in a way it is a pity to see them get moved on. But there has been a lot of local public complaint about the mess and the rubbish they let and discharge into the sea.

Need less to say we will watch this development with interest. Things in Thailand have a way of happening or not as the case maybe depending on who really wants to get what done. TIT as we say. This is Thailand. So they might move on or they might stay for next 20 years. No one can say for sure....!!!!

A few doors down two town houses have been converted into a guest house.  Link here. Gives you a bit of an idea about the place.  Link takes you to google maps page.

I'll be doing some follow up pages as we progress. For now waiting on electricity and water connections.

CLICK THE LINK BELOW FOR GOOGLE MAP LOCATION

Guest House three doors down from our house.

Road Trip Rayong Chantaburi Part 1

Great weekend away. Road trip to Chantaburi and back. Stayed in small guest house away from it all.

Very relaxing. Little place up in the mountains on the side of a river. 

Stopped off to visit Tuek Deang  known as the "Red House", the National Maritime Museum of Thailand and a bee farm, We also of course made several stops to be sure we kept topped up with good food and drank a lot of coffee along the way.  All in all a simple, relaxing round trip of about 300 kilometers.

The Teuk Daeng, well it was a big disappointment.  Little to see but a red building. Empty save for a rusty cannon and cannon balls. There was an old fella sitting outside selling water etc and overseeing the Visitors book. One good thing. It was free to enter. Unusual for Thailand. I took a few pictures but also found a very good Blog page on it. Describing the original usage etc with the French. Interesting history which needs preserving. tuek-daeng  In fact this is an interesting link for any travelers to Thailand.

Rene my fellow biker signed the book.

The National Maritime Museum was a better visit. An old set of displays but it did have one large mock up boat which you could climb over and have a look round. Other displays included one of a scuba scene and some old battle scenes. Sort of place you visit as its on the list rather than thinking "Must go there, don't want to come this far and miss out !!!".  Anyway as I said we've done it. ticked it off and got the T shirt. Again much better photos int eh web link I added above. Bit embarrassed to post mine!!!

The guide enjoyed her time with us. Probably good for her to have visitors to show round.

The bee farm..Well for me that's something else.  years ago in an earlier life I used to keep bees. Had four hives in UK and then in Seychelles assisted a close friend with his several hundred hives scattered round Mahe. So for me this was interesting. They had an assortment of hives.  All local with different sizes to mine. Also had about 10 different types of bees. Large and small. Some were of a none stinging variety. That said I did get stung. The farmer after removing the "sting" suggested I use my salava on the sting as being the best cure. Worked very well.

Some of the bees were very much at home in natural hives  i.e. using hollows in trees. So the farm had adapted and made some up to meet these bees requirements whilst enabling us to have a good look. Interesting access to these made up hives.  Access was at the bottom of hive through one, only one thin plastic pipe. All in all a very interesting and fun hour for me. All memories of the sting long gone !!

And as for the accommodation.  We had a lovely chalet up in the mountains along side a small river. That's in part 2.....