Mrs. Tao's small house behind the mountain.

[Tao]

No doubt many of you will have seen the house plans for our 3 bedroom bungalow in my other thread enquiring about builders. We've actually not decided on any builders yet as the wife's mother passed away yesterday and things are a little hectic here to say the least.

Anyway, since i am hiding away from the rest of the family and the mayhem outside, i've decided to make a new thread and start at the beginning. I'm not sure how far i'll get with this as i'll be expected to sit and drink beer outside with them shortly. It's a hard life.

We bought 23 rai of farmland last year, it is basically a long strip. Main road in front and a klong running parallel behind. The first couple of sections of the land had corn growing on them. There was a small divider in the middle which had been excavated, perfect for a future pond. We then had around 5-6 rai of potatoes (not sure what kind of potato, could be weeds for all i know) at the back, followed by another 3 rai of excavation which was already a pond.

There was also a small 2 room house with toilet in the middle of the rai. I debated whether to knock it down but the wife convinced me that we could use it for relatives. Little more than a shed but good enough for them apparently.

450,000 baht for the land. Located in Isaan, estimated 6-7km south of Sikhiu.

[Tao]

Here' a pic from the front of the land, along the road. This is pretty much from the first viewing last year.

[Tao]

This is the farm road which runs alongside our land. Ours is to the left as far as the eye can see.

[Tao]

Here's a view West from around the middle of the land. I thought maybe we could build somewhere around here in the future. For the time being it's farmland though and the immediate plan is to buld a smaller house at the front of the land.

[Tao]

This small shed was on the land. I believe it was used as an office for someone who bought and sold land locally.

We found a nice little green snake inside the house. The relatives chopped it up though, surprisingly, they didn't eat it.

[Tao]

Vegetables near the end of the rai. Could be cannabis for all i know...

[Tao]

Here's the pond at the back of the land. It's actually a lot bigger than this pic shows. When the picture was taken only half of it was filled with water.

[Tao]

One more... the klong behind. Not our land but i'll get a pump and use it to fill our pond (lake).

[Tao]

OK time to take break. The missus thinks i'm sex chatting with horny people on the net so time to sit outside and get pissed. More to come, these pics where from last year.

[Marmite the Dog]

estimated 6-7km south of Sikhiu.

Where is Sikhiu?

I looked on my map with no success.

[Tao]

About 10km west of Sung Noen, or about 35km SW of Korat City. More or less.

[Tao]

We're about a 45 minute drive into Korat City depending on who's driving

[Thetyim]

Where is Sikhiu?

On my map it is spelt Sikhio


Does the Klong have water all year ?

[Marmite the Dog]

About 10km west of Sung Noen, or about 35km SW of Korat City. More or less.

Gotcha!

Spelt Sikhiu on my map.

[hillbilly]

I'm jealous. I love a challenge and it looks like you have a great project coming up.

Please keep us posted with more pics.

[oldgit]

Wife tells me your Cannabis plant is a root crop that they dry and make a type of flour from it, did you inherit all the Veg when you bought the land or have you planted them?

[Sir Burr]

^
It's called Mun. I have a feeling it could be tapioca.

[Tao]

Wife tells me your Cannabis plant is a root crop that they dry and make a type of flour from it, did you inherit all the Veg when you bought the land or have you planted them?

No, none of the veg is ours. We had to wait a few months before we could clear the corn after it was picked. The cannabis i'm trying to keep but it will go soon.

We'll plant something else once it's gone after we know WTF we are doing. We're not farmers.

[Tao]

Even though the land seems to be OK for crops, we actually bought it to build on.

[Thetyim]

It's called Mun. I have a feeling it could be tapioca.

Correct.
Cassava is the plant and tapioca is the flour made from it.
Also used to make mono sodium glutamate I believe

[Tao]

4:15am. Isaan funeral today. They've fired up the disco again outside and i haven't slept nor sobered up from yesterday. Have they no respect for the dead?

[Tao]

One of the disadvantages of buying cheap farmland out in the sticks is that there was no electric or water supply.

We started on the electric first.

[Tao]

I was really quite impressed with these guys. They came out and did a pretty good job. That's rice on the blue plastic in front. It's not ours, it belonged to the brother in law. After that section of corn was picked he arranged for someone to come with a tractor and dig it up. Of course, his true motive was to have somewhere to dry his rice which came from around 10 rai of land a few kms away.

[Tao]

Not really a lot of point to this pic. You can see the change in season and the difference in the corn compared to the first set of pics. All this corn has been picked at this stage. Just the roots left, so i believe i have some work to do.

[Tao]

Anyway back to the electricians. It looks like they are in the middle of a field here but they are actually on the dirt track you can see in the previous picture. I'm not sure how many of these concrete posts we got in the end. I'll have to count them next time i'm on the land. As a guess i'd say we had about 100m of cable and concrete.