Last week, here in Thailand was Songkran, the Thai New Year when the whole country travels back to their home towns to celebrate the biggest holiday in the Thai calendar with their families and for us, that meant a trip back down to Samui.
The up and down will be constant for the next few months as I get jobs done on the house to get it ready to move into so for the time being, that's how it needs to be.
Songkran was still very low key this year with the famous water fights officially banned but in my opinion, that made it infinitely better with time spent with family the priority and not getting soaking wet as some pissed up Thai oik threw a bucket of water over you and your toasted sausage and cheese sandwich as you came out of 7/11.
For the three days of Songkran itself, it meant an almost constant party which for me, trying to get a few jobs done on the house, and not being the most social of people was a bit of a pain but I managed to avoid the day trip on a longtail boat to Pig Island for fishing and the annual family 'cook what you catch day'. A two hour boat ride on an open long tailed boat and the rest of the day eating freshly caught spiny sea urchins and sting ray on an almost shadeless island inhabited only by wild pigs didn't appeal. Yes, I am a proper miserable bastard.
You see, I'm not that miserable. I did turn up for the day two beach party. I couldn't miss out on all the beer although one of Fon's auntys drinks like a fish and was trying to get as much down her neck as possible when she saw me turn up!
The alternative, trying to clean floor tiles covered in paint by shabby builders was preferable! The wife's parents went and had a great time, but the wife is as miserable as I am except she just sat with her feet up tossing it off!
They are supposed to be matt grey with black grout. Useless cowboys.
Anyway, as well as trying to clean tiles, which will be worth a post in the DIY community on its own at a later date (spoiler alert, I used Thai WD40, Scotchbrite scourers and a lot of elbow grease) I did some gardening. I planted some privet-like bushes along the disputed boundary wall. So much for an easy life, they're going to need some watering and at a future date, I'll have to buy some hedge trimmers and cut the damn things.
Newly delivered Privet bushes ready to be planted.
So it doesn't deserve to be 'post of the week' in the gardening community but its a start.
This is the £1 a bag of composty stuff the garden centre 'assured' me I needed to plant them in.
The garden centre, rather surprisingly, had Leylandi and the temptation was to buy a load, totally surround the house in an attempt to keep visitors away and just let them swamp the damn coconut palms but this plan was quashed by 'her indoors who must be obeyed'.
Some of the wife's clinic stuff turned up this week too so that went straight into the clinic section of the house. A doctors couch thing and some of the soft play stuff for the padded cell soft play room.
That's almost 500 quids worth of cheap Chinese imported medical examination bed! Seriously! I wanted to 'christen' it properly but the wife wasn't having any of it. The plastic is staying on until she gets her precious license and then she's selling it!
'Soft-play' blocks. According to regulations, the whole room must have 6 inches of padding on the floor and 6 inches on the wall to a height of 1 metre to stop the kids head-butting the bare walls. To save money, I'm going to try telling them that 4 inches is actually 6 inches. This trick has never worked yet, but there's a first time for everything...
As part of this, a sheet of 8 x 4, one inch ply and some plastic bolt-on handgrips arrived which need to be stuck to the wall to create a climbing wall. Another job to do simply to adhere to the government licensing requirements.
An 8 feet tall climbing wall in a room with a 9 foot ceiling... kids will come for therapy, and leave with huge bumps on top of their head as they play 'lets climb to the top of the wall'.
I also had to clean up the road as the neighbours were complaining. Again. The thousands of tons of red soil I had to buy to backfill the land around the house hasn't quite settled yet and its been raining heavily which has washed about 200 quids worth down the road. As if I haven't enough to do.
Hundreds of quids worth of my soil washing away down the road...
I also picked up a load of fallen, rotten mini mangos and cleared away unwanted coconuts. If you don't pick stuff up, it just grows! I'd have come back next month to a load of mango tree seedlings and even more bloody coconut trees.
OK. So I had a bit of help. Might as well put the wife and mother-in-law to work. This lasted all of 10 minutes.
Coconuts everywhere. I'm going to build myself a trebuchet and fire them at the annoying neighbours and family.
Then to cap it all, someone (I know who you are...) stripped my beloved green passion fruit bush, which the last time I was down was almost ready to harvest, of all its fruit.
How I remember them last month. Almost ripe and awaiting my return. Thieving gypsy bastards.
Don't get me started on bloody bananas. The people who delivered the soil were supposed to dig out two wayward banana trees but just chopped them down and covered the root ball with soil. This visit, the damn things were already re-growing through so half a day was spent digging the roots out.
Gardening in 37C heat, I will never moan about cutting my old mum's lawn back in the UK again. Happy days!
Cool to see all this ... I hope this garden works out good soon :)
Thank you. The front garden maybe 'soonish' but the three acres of jungle behind the house may take some time!
4 or 5 years and they are big there this trees :)
I am happy to see a moment of gathering with family, is it a family?
Hi, thanks for dropping by! Yes, its all my wife's family. Four generations of them :-)
You are becoming a curmudgeon 🤣
That garden will be great, is this the town where you wife and her family are from?
I was born a curmudgeon lol....
All her family are from Koh Samui, grandma and her mum and three aunts all live within a square mile of each other...we are next door to mum and dad.....my wife's sister had the best idea. She's lives in Scotland!
Bloody hell,no escaping the family then!
Oh does she really, I bet she got a shock with the weather!
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STOPAwh!!!! You're so sweet, you know I can never get enough Thai sunset 🙃
You're always in my thoughts 😂🙏
Yay! 🤗
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