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