Chang Phueak, Chang Wat, Chiang Mai

Up on the roof of our Airbnb for coffee at sunrise. Last night, we said goodbye to Mom and Pappa Chai at the bus station for their overnight trip home to Ban Pong. For the first time since July we are on our own. It's a strange and exciting feeling. It's been hot here, in the upper 80's and ~65% humidity. Today there is a cool breeze and a forecast of rain. It is the beginning of fall.

It's a typical Thai house with a very small kitchen by western standards and air con in the bedrooms but not in the main living area. What wasn't typical was this lovely rooftop terrace and the swimming pool.

A view down Soi 7.

Plentiful papayas.

Beautiful sunrises.

Sunrise again.

A fish pond full of fish.

And a lovely swimming pool.

This sub-district of Chiang Mai is located just north west of the walled city. It is a great location both for access to the city and for it's local restaurants. We enjoyed several of them but found ourselves returning to one in particular on a regular basis.

This is taken in the restaraunt.

There was a seamstress in the shop next door. She had an old dog that like to lay on her front step so we walked by him. Wurstchen seemed to get along well with him, doing the standard sniff butt and even wagging tails by both of them.

Unfortunately, one time the old dog really wasn't in the mood. He wasn't there to greet Wurstchen and I took Wurstchen back to see if he wanted to say hi. That was mistake #1. The second mistake was when Barbara reached down to pet the old dog on the back. Thai's have small pet dogs that they shower with attention, but the big street dogs they don't seem to touch and neither should we. The old dog was startled by the touch and his reaction was to bit Wurstchen in the back.

It didn't bleed much and Wurstchen was acting like it was no big deal. We took him, on a Sunday, to a vet we had met when we were in search of heart worm medicine. He was gone, but his assistant was there. She shaved the area and we could see it was quite a deep puncture wound. I should say wounds, one for each fang.

This young woman, took such care in irrigating and then filling the wounds with antibiotics and dressing of the wound. She sent us home with pain pills, distemper medication and something to reduce the swelling. She also included the cool monkey shirt below. All for about $15 USD.

During the week we made several accomplishments toward getting settled. We met with Noralyn Frias, the GM of Siam Legal in Chiang Mai. She's Filipino and the Thai's can't say the "r" or the "l" in her name so she goes by Queen. Queen without the crown, 555.

We hired her to help us navigate the changing rules for foreigners who want to stay long term in Thailand on what's called a type O non-immigrant visa. You can get these if you qualify as a retiree, a volunteer or a student. We of course were going for retirement.

The first rule is that you have to have a Thai bank account with sufficient deposits of 800,000 THB. You can get one as a married couple if you will travel in and out of the country together, but if you want to be independent, then each spouse must have a separate account with those funds deposited (see footnote).

The US government is trying to crack down on money laundering all around the world. To do that they tell the foreign governments not to trust Americans and make them prove EVERYTHING about their money. How it got to Thailand and prove that it was ours to bring here. So glad that we're from the land of the free.

The first challenge then was to open the account. We had to have a letter guaranteeing something. I was never sure what. First the bank told us it was a new law and we should get the letter from immigration. The Thai immigration people just smiled and said they didn't know what the bank was talking about, but if Mom and Chai lived here, why didn't they guarantee it?

The bank manager at Bangkok Bank in Ban Pong thought that sounded reasonable. Chai's family is well established and his cousin is the head of the traffic department at the police station, so we had the credentials that most people would not have. She said she just needed to check with Bangkok and would call us.

Nope, they didn't think that would work for them. That's when we reached out to Queen. She could do the letter of guarantee. She just asked us if we had millions and millions of dollars in the US that we would be bringing to Thailand. Uh, no. OK then she can guarantee that to bank. ??????? Anyway, as our friend Jason is fond of saying "this is Thailand".

Once we had the bank accounts established it was just a matter of transferring the funds that we had sent to Mom's account into ours. Oops, not so fast. They can't do that because this is Chiang Mai Province and Mom's bank is in Ratchaburi Province. Oh unless you have your passbook (bank book) and are willing to pay a hefty fee to do it.

Yes, OK, just a little stress, but then Mom figured out she could do it online and with no fee. Even that wasn't smooth of course. First it looked like it would take several days to do it because of the daily limits on transfers. Then Mom discovered she could change the daily limits and the next day the funds were there.

The reason this is important is that we came to Thailand on a 60 day tourist visa. It's our intention to convert that to a 90 day type O visa before we have to leave. That requires the money in the bank and a residence before we can apply for it. We've now met the money part so on to finding a residence.

We didn't want to settle, but we were under a time crunch. Barbara had spent hours and hours searching out what appeared to suitable and desirable homes only to find for one reason or another it wouldn't work for us. One was too remote up a super steep hill and it was small. The place was beautiful and had a pool on site. It looked beautiful, but just wouldn't work for us.

We saw another that had some things going for it, but it was small and dark. It also wasn't completely fenced and was next to a rice paddy (mosquito concerns).

Barbara found some others in our price range. They were beautiful, Lanna style homes with a pool. Getting excited, but sorry no pets allowed.

By now it's Friday. Mom and Chai have left and we are very discouraged. We're talking about taking a very small cheap place for 6 months just to buy some time. Then we remembered one we had found attractive, but our agent hadn't shown us.

By the way we were working with two agents. Khun Gam, a younger woman who was showing us less expensive places and Khun Pattama who had been working with Barbara for a long time via email. We called Khun Pattama, she said that place had just been rented and the new owners were signing the lease today. Wow, just can't get a break. Except, then our luck changed.

We called Khun Gam and told her we wanted to look at others not in the area we had focused our search. While we were talking to her, Khun Pattama was calling on the other line. The deal on the place we were interested in had fallen through. The new tenants had failed to come up with the down payment. Were we still interested?