Hanging out in Sydney

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Farewell Thailand

We left Koh Samui last night, and spent our last day in Bangkok today. A little shopping and some meetings with the lawyer and accountant kept us busy. We're now perched in a little cafe in the airport, chosen because it has Thai food and free internet.


Fortunately we're leaving with less luggage than we came with! Just 2 suitcases between us (around 45kg), which reminds me of our arrival in Bangkok last year - with more than 80kg!

The Hill Tribe "leaving drinks"

Our last night in Samui - hanging out with our neighbours (The Hill Tribe).

Big thanks to Anna & Paul from Samui Pureshores for hosting the party and organising the food & drinks! Next time you're in Plai Laem, drop in for a drink...

6:30pm in Samui

We can have such contrasting weather in the tropics! The first photo shows a beautiful sunset view from our terrace last week, and the second one was taken at the same time last night - just as a storm was approaching!

Indulging

We treated ourselves on the weekend, and got a masseuse to come up to the Villa.

Our last weekend in Thailand

Yes, that's right. We're leaving Samui, and will be 'down under' next weekend. We've got a very long to do list (to get the house in order & our stuff packed), and quite a few "last things" to try before we leave. Ian's just gone to get takeaway dinner from the "One Dollar Cafe"... one of our local cheap eats.

We're looking forward to new adventures in Australia... and always knowing we can come back to our little piece of paradise in Samui.

Hope to find time in the next week to make the last few posts on our year in Thailand.

Our very first post box!

We received the official house registration document yesterday (signifies house ownership, and that our house has been legally built). It's quite exciting, because it also includes the address... and we are house number 8/53. The house numbering in Thailand depends on when your house was built... not sequential street numbers like we are used to in Western countries. So we are the 53rd house to be built (and registered) in our area.

It also meant we could finally sign up for cable TV and house insurance.

Note, I'm getting pretty good with the power drill - the post box is one of the latest additions to the house that required my DIY skills :-)

Gardener

We have a really cool gardener at the moment, he comes twice a day to do the watering (part of the landscaping deal for the first month).

I love his sunglasses!!

Security Hut

We have 24 hour security on 'The Hill' where our house is located, and in fact the security hut (or 'shack') sits on the corner of our land. We always get a salute whenever we pass by.

Water, water - everywhere!

Finally the water feature takes shape... and other than a few leaks (?), it works!

How's the serenity? (chuckles from those who have seen The Castle).

Bamboo Fence

As mentioned in the previous post, our neighbour has just started to build his house. So we've put up a little bamboo fence so we don't have to watch the whole process.

Here's some photos...

BEFORE...
















AND AFTER...

A little warm

Our Samui friends and neighbours came around last night for the Housewarming Party! A great time was had by all.

We were busy with all the last minute decorations in the morning (putting up wall hangings and paintings), and preparing for the party. However, I was really happy to see our water feature working (albeit for a couple of hours, because it still leaks), and also for our bathroom mirrors to turn up at 5pm.

Our garden is finished, and we now have a lovely bamboo fence to give us more privacy on the pool terrace (our neighbour has just started to build his house, so we have a crew of workers hammering away from 7:30am every day... for the next 7 months).

Only 10 days left in Samui, and we have a huge to-do list...

Photo's

It's a gorgeous sunny day, and instead of lazing by the pool - I've dedicated the afternoon to uploading a few photo's of our house onto the blog, for your enjoyment! Scroll down...

Upstairs - the main living area

The living room






























The kitchen
















Our bedroom - but it's not our bed! The bed we ordered is on a slow boat from China, and might arrive the day before we leave Thailand. The shop has kindly lent us this one for the interim.
















Our bathroom

Upstairs Terrace

Downstairs

Sorry, I haven't made your bed yet...

Swimming Pool & the Sala

Garden

The front garden, taken from the upstairs balcony.





















Ian's hard work - stone steps in the grass!

















The downstairs garden. Almost finished.
There's a few pebbles, so I'm calling it our Zen Garden!

First swim

Outdoor living

We've been promising to put some photo's up for the last week, and I just realised we haven't taken any photo's from the inside of the house. So you'll just have to make do with a few pictures of the terrace, swimming pool and the garden! I'll get some more up soon.

Here's our favourite.. sunset over the swimming pool.
















Our first meal on the terrace...















Relaxing after a hard day...















The garden... starting to look green!




















The 'sala' on the pool terrace... at sunset.

Just moved in!

It's 7am on Sunday 19th August...and we're sitting on the balcony surfing the web in our new home. Most of the furniture was delivered yesterday, so we decided to spend the night. The swimming pool is full of water and looking very inviting. Just waiting for the sun to warm it up.

Last night we lazed on our new sun loungers whilst watching the sunset, along with a couple of drinks.

There's still quite a long snag list, so the workers will be around for the next couple of weeks - replacing chipped tiles, fixing windows, touching up the paint, etc.

Stay tuned for some photos.

Nearly a house

Officially our house 'should' be ready in 2 days time (15th Aug), but we think it might be another week before it's ready for us to move in.

We've been running around like mad things over the last week. One of our achievements was choosing the landscaper (Mr Chai). Several trucks delivered the big trees today, and it's starting to look less like a construction site. We also bought a garden hose and fitted it with the necessary accessories... and it works!

Yesterday we did our last 'border run' down to Malaysia for the day, to renew our visas. You get up at 3am, to get a 1.5 hour ferry to the mainland, then drive for 3 hours to the border... walk out of Thailand, walk into Malaysia, and then walk back into Thailand - all because our visas only run for 90 days at a time! One of the perks of this trip is going to the Duty Free store and buying cheap Australian wine! :-)

Here's some photos of the garden today. It's difficult to see in this photo - but there's some Thai Palms in front of the pool (2-3m high). The bamboo will go along our border, to form a natural fence.
















This photo was taken last week, before the Digger tidied up the site, along with 8 trucks of dirt.
















Our nearly finished fusion kitchen. By fusion, I mean half Thai-half western design... which is probably how our cooking will be in the future! However, we are looking forward to using the smeg oven, having been stuck with a 2 ring gas burner for the last 11 months.

Wedding video

Just a quick note to let people know that we've managed to post a short video of the wedding day on the wedding blog: http://samuiwedding.blogspot.com/ Enjoy!

Looking more like a house

Only another week or two, and we'll be moving in. Yipee!!

This picture makes it look like we're on a plantation.
















Here's Ian resting on the new balcony rails...
















Side profile... the stairs have been sandwashed, and the balcony rails are almost finished.
















Look! The sliding doors are in...
















It's 5pm, home time...

Taking it easy

We went to Koh Tao for a few days last week, to escape the world. We stayed in a small resort in Mango Bay, and did loads of snorkelling!

Koh Tao is only 2 hours by ferry from Samui.. and very popular for diving! Being a much smaller island than Samui, we had to take a small ferry from the main town to our resort (no road), and we only had power at night time (generator).