Lovely New Year period. Out with 2014 and in with 2015.

I took the bike and drove up to Khon Kaen and Ban Muang to our house. Took me about 6 hours. Not to much traffic and where the cars were stacked up I managed to take the side lane and keep going. Fortunately there was no rain. 6 hours seated on a bike does give a sore backside no matter what you may think. Still it was worth it for the fun of the trip.
We had friends staying so the holiday was a chance to show them around and make us do a few things. Otherwise I think we would have sat down and used up four days planning what to do next !

That said the plan was for me to drive up and then have 4 days relaxing with Wanna and friends. Rene and O. It was their first time up with us. And the family was holding a new years eve party at Wanna’s Brothers place. Small family affair which we went along to. Lot of fun and everyone enjoyed. Music, Karaoke and some dancing. Wanna organized a raffle. Finally got some sleep around 3.00am…..

The remained of the days were spend lazing around with one night up to Pu Rua ( ภูเรือ ) for camping.  We did go into town and had the famous all you can eat steaks and salads, visited a night market and of course got in a game of pool.  Also visited an old ruin outside town. I’d been before but this time it took some finding, they had not moved it just me having a very bad memory on its location. Rene kindly forwarded me the coordinates for the next time!   Old Temple near Ban Muang
No doubt we will go again as it is an interesting place built in the 1300’s and sort of different to the usual tourist attractions.  In fact I’ve posted on this before but never mind. Always interesting to see things a second time around. Quite some amazing brick work and some of the joining is very clever and precise. Google Street View of Temple

As for the camping. We set off planning on going straight to the camp site stopping along the way to eat, have some coffees  etc. 

Well we got as far as Loei and decided on a small diversion and take in a visit to Chiang Khan.

Chiang Khan is an old town located on the Mekong River. It is a boarder town as the Mekong River is the international separation between Thailand and Laos. SO as you can imagine quite a busy little place. Lots of old wooden building and now of course full of traders selling “t” shirts ad various souvenirs of the place. WE got our compulsory “T” shirts with Chiang Khan stamped all over it…. Just all a bit to much for me. To busy for all the wrong reasons. Yes a good place to see and the river does look good. Would I go back ? Not in any hurry to do so.

So Chiang Khan got “ticked” off and then back on the road to the camp site. We eventually got there after sitting in a traffic jam for 1 hour and arrived in the dark….

It was full, in fact very over crowded to be more correct. This I suppose was to be expected, given it was the main annual holiday. But we found a big concrete area which must have at one time had a chalet on it. Seems everyone thought it was not an allowable camping spot, but we used it ! Had running water and was about 50 meters to showers and toilets etc. (No I did not use the shower. It got down to about 12^oC during the night. So no way was I going to ruin my evening with cold showers).

Had a Bar B Q dinner and lovely campfire coffee in the morning. Managed to get my shadow across the stove in the morning picture ! Never mind. All in all a good time had by all.

Now its back to work and reality.

New Years Eve

Firstly a very Happy New Year to all my readers.

The last 12 days have gone in a blur. We have been busy on the house,  made a new orchid shade area. Its 6 meters by 6 meters, went up to Chiang Mai for Christmas, which was great catching up with a lot of old friends,  while there we went to Doi Interdon highest place in Thailand at 2565 m above sea level. Hardly super high but it is the foot hills of the Himalayas, and then we visited an aquaponics system under construction and now getting ourselves ready for tonight s party. Oh yes forgot.  We bought a small rice field.  Seemed like a good investment located along a small canal so always has water.  Shot a quick movie. Area is about 4000 square meters, about acre. Should be a good investment.

On our travels I saw a custom make chopper motor bike.  That's next years project, after the house, after the aquaponics and after the garden being tidied up and after changing our car etc etc. So maybe I'll make do with the photos of the bike and that project will get put back to 2014...

A few days back the local school had a camping weekend for 10 local schools. Very well organised. The whole sports area was taken with tents on the perimeter and a small fire set up in the centre. During the evening we could hear the singing and general sounds of a massive fun evening being had by all. I passed by to take a few photos. Surprise surprise the girl in the photo is my next door neighbour. She had great fun telling everyone I was the foreigner living next door... I think she got a bit of kudos from it all.

Took the dogs out and managed to tire them out. At least for now. I don't know where Tiger gets his energy. He can run at about 30-35 kilometers an hour.  Good job I'm on a motor bike.

Shade cloth took forever to get right. Kept catching on the concrete posts. Next up is installing water sprinklers and some power. Plan is to have extra storage water tanks and some solenoids to run a decent irrigation system. One more thing to do in 2013. Work seems to be coming a more and more distant thing.... Lets see what 2013 brings in that side of things.

Yesterday we added the lights to the Jetty. One either end. Difficult to see in the photo but they are there. One on left is 6 meters high the one on the right about 12 meters. The 12 meter one is for the UV, which can be seen from afar by insects. Yes I know weird, but the fish love it....

Tonight is party night.  And yes we are hosting it on our new Jetty.... ....Mainly family and a few friends. Just got to set up some lights and music and we're good to go. Others are organising the food and drinks. Wonderful here in Thailand. We need ice and it will be delivered form local shop. Beer and whiskey the same.  Food well everyone brings something.

I think I'll stop there with my ramblings. Seem to have covered enough for today. One last thing. We decorated the outside of our toilet yesterday. There had been a pipe coming through the wall. The hole was patched up with cement morter but Wanna yesterday added a flower to cover it.  Add on a few baskets etc starts to look good. Go on smile.....

Happy New Year.

Easter Break And A Trip Up The Coast

Three days off and a chance to go see something different. We decided to venture up north a few hundred kilometers. Not far at all by Australian standards. Anyway packed up the 'ute' and off we ventured. Plan was simple. We had booked ourselves into a small camping site in Yeppon. 'Big 4'. It was situated on the coast north of Rockhampton. (for those of you who don't know it is only about 150 kilometers away) For those of you who don't care where it is well it's away from Gladstone:) It was packed. Seemed thousands of kids and campers. All intent on having a good time. But after 8.00pm all quiet. Seems a very polite group all intent on respecting everyone else.

We finished work on Friday round lunchtime, and set off. Quite uneventful all in all as a journey. We set up camp and almost immediately set forward to have dinner. Pork chops of course...

The rest of the weekend has gone by in a flash. Bit of fishing, some 4x4 driving in the adjacent National Park sand dunes, attended an excellent Rhythm and Blues afternoon in Byfield, took in a coulpeof pottery places, as one does on such weekends, and all in all just a very lazy time. Great fun. Planning on going away next weekend as well.

One photo I took was in the middle of absolutely nowhere, miles from anywhere, when we came across a collection of post boxes. Just looked so out of place.

Sunday ... Snakes and Bar B Q

What started off as a quiet morning ended up being somewhat adventurous. There we were sitting outside having a quiet coffee and suddenly Wanna exclaims “Snake”.



Sure enough on the steps up to the higher garden area was an enormous snake. Well it was about 5 foot long. Brown thing with yellow underbelly. For me a nasty thing as I have never been used to snakes. In UK we grew up with only small adders which were not really dangerous in the ‘real’ sense. My reaction was to grab the camera. .Wanna’s was to get rid of it. Back in Thailand we could easily ring someone up to come and get rid of it but here we were not sure just who to call. I do remember in Thailand Owen telling me he had a snake crawl up the underside of his car... ugh!!!!
Away after a few photos by myself from a safe distance, Wanna proceeded by spraying it with the garden hose pipe. It finally decided to get away by going back up the steps. Interestingly the magpies were suddenly all over the place and very; keen to peck away at it. Quite extraordinary. Of course after all this our coffee was cold. Made a new one and could feel the caffeine working! Good start to SundayThe afternoon saw us going out to Calliope for a Bar B Q. The ‘camping crew’ for want of a better description invited Wanna and I to a sort of fair well Bar B Q in view of our planned departure from Gladstone. Great afternoon and good fun was had by all.

Music Or Whatever

I've been taking some guitar lessons as I mentioned earlier. (Christmas Gladstone Guitar School Music extravaganza). One of the web sites I subscribe to just included the following :-

"The impulse to do something else instead of guitar is the signal to start playing NOW. You've got the rest of your life to tend to everything else -- and let's be honest, everything else is just details."

And sitting here at work, it made me think of a lot of my friends and guys I know who have other interests. So substitute the work Guitar for your 'thing', be it Golf, Camping, Fishing, playing pool or whatever and the above makes for a good statement.

Have a good day wherever you are, and whatever you are doing.

Camping 1770

Long overdue so a backdated posting.

Camping Outside Gladstone

Another week and ... well been camping last weekend. Couple of 'phone' photos which show poor light for cooking using torches etc. Added a new dimemsion to evening 'Alfresco'! But it was good fun. Believe me. Some of the adjacent campers were well above our budget but that did not detract from our night out.

I went with some friends as Wanna is away in Thailand. They brough along their kids and of course, this upset a lot of the older campers trying to get an early nights sleep. I'm talking 8.00pm. These kids were running around shining lights into all the tents, highlighting people walking to the communical toilets etc etc. You get the picture. Beautiful spot. Will go again and next time be better oganised.

Silence Is Golden

Seems ages since I last posted. In fact it is ages. Over a month. Why I don’t know except laziness and there always seems to be tomorrow when I’ll get round to it. Also life seems to have settled down into a daily routine of work eat and sleep. Something like real ‘Ground Hog’ days.
Well tomorrow has arrived. Time to write something.
We’ve been busy socialising and going out and about for dinners etc.

Spotted an old tractor frame on our job site. Interesting to see something over 100 years old.

Managed to add in a trip to a Country Music evening which was fun. Not the usual guitar and lonesome cowboy routine but complete with a full 17 man orchestra.

Then great excitement, we bought a new tent and fishing rod. So this weekend we are off to the mountains and of course taking our Bar B Q and doing a spot of camping. The tent shown here is in our garden. We had a practice night yesterday. Still a bit cold....

What else. We bought a Toyota Corolla. Lovely little run around.

Went to the Camel racing. Yes, Gladstone has a fully fledged horse racing track. Holds about 12 meetings a year. Last one was special, an addition called camel racing. We went along but...No camel were raced. Just a few walk outs by camels and happy riders. Seemed main purpose of the day was to just have fun, i.e. copious amounts of grog and good cheer. Not sure how everyone managed to drink so much as the queue to the bar was constantly 8 persons deep along the full length of the place time!!! You had bookies so bets could be taken on all Australian races, there was even a fashion show etc so all in all everyone had a great time.

Oh yeah. Hydroponics going well.

Then and only then can I start writing again.... God I’m lazy these days. Need to improve !