The Songkran fair in Thailand

Every year in April the Songkran fair in Thailand takes place.Wherever you go-you get wet.In some regions like Bangkok it can last up to three days and nights.In fact it's the celebration of Thai new year.
As a "farang",a western foreigner you're a prefered target of anybody with a bowl or a waterpistol.This is by far the most exiting anually fair i've ever been to.
The very friendly Thais turn into kids when squirting water at each other until the cows come home-we are loving it.

Visa run

Some pics of our visa run we had to attend every 30 days to renew our visa:


The boat pier in Kaw Thoung/Burma.

A Burmese temple in Kaw Thong near the Thai border.

Burmese people at the Thai side on their way back home.The boat on the picture is a typical Thai river boat with "longtail" drive.

Kaw Thoung/Burma from the seaside.
The whole visa trip was done in half a day.
We drove by minibus from Chumphon to Ranong at the Burmese border,where we went to the Thai immigration office.There we got a "leaving the country" stamp in our passports.After that we went to pier to get a boat over to the Burmese border.There we received a "in and out" stamp before we entered the boat again to the way back.In the final step back in the Thai Immigration office for an arrival stamp.The 2 hours drive through the jungle of Thailand along the "Istmus of Kra" mountain ridge completed the visa mission for another 30 days residence.Many foreigners lived that way in Thailand,some even for decades.Then the Thaksin government changed this law from one day to another and that was the reason for us to leave.A very very sad decicion from a debatable prime minister.

Our motorbike in Thailand

This was our motorbike in Thailand,a Honda "Wave Z".We bought it new for as cheap as 27.500 Baht(550€) and never had a problem with this reliable and comfortable bike.We will buy this model again when we are back in Asia at the end of August.
Its a 100cc 4 stroke engine with around 8 HP and a very economical fuel consumption.The bike drives 50 km far with one liter gasoline!The "Z" is the version with manual clutch,usually they have an automatic clutch and a 4 gear transmission.
"Wave's" with a 125cc engine and in different versions are also available.

Some other very common housemates in the tropics

This is one of many spiders we had as housemates in Chumphon/Thailand.None of the spiders are dangerous to humans so we just brushed them out through the frontdoor.

The gecko lived in our second bedroom right in this corner hole.There was another much larger gecko in our kitchen.The both are night active hunters and can make a lot of noise when you try to sleep.

Uninvited visitors

Dear readers,
what you see here is a Green Pit Viper,who decided to join us in the evening.Our little son said to us"there is laying somephing,daddy".What a shock!I emidiatelly recogniced the species.It's a poisenous snake with the potential to kill an addult within a few hours.The poison coctail of a viper destroys the red blood cells and leave the victim dying a painfull and terrible death.
My first reaction was to take these pics then grab a big broom to force her out again.The green pit viper turned into a beast and attacked repeatedly when i cornered her.There was no choice than to kill this poor creature in order to protect my family of a deadly treat.I'm still very sorry about that but anything else was just to risky as i'm not Steve Irwin.
I really like snakes and had many encounters with Thai Cobras,Boa Constrictors Banded Kraits,Malayan Kraits and even onces a mayestetic King Cobra while we drove along a deserted jungle road in Koh Phangan where we lived for a year.But to have such a snake in your home is a very intense experience,i can promise you.:))

Preparations And Paragliding pics

We are very busy these days to get all necessary provisions done.Much stuff got allready sold,more will follow.
Today i sold my car,a Ford Fiesta TDCI Ghia and got a quite resonable price for it in relation to the cars shape.Last week we sold a Car navigation,a good drill from Bosch,a child car seat and the harness of my paragliding gear.To quit paragliding is quite a big loss because i just love this sport.The region of Austria where we live is a paradise to fly if the weather conditions are appropriate,what requires a lot of patience sometimes.But then its absolutely impressive to fly over a sea of mountain tops,valleys and little lakes.
We had two years ago very dry air from the Sahara dessert for like a week.That made the cloudbase moving up to over 4000 meters,which was the highest alltitude i've ever flown.The cross country opportunities are very good in this region,too.
Here some pics of paragliding in Kärnten/Austria:

Emberger Alm in the Drau valley of Kärnten/Austria

Greifenburg below the Emberger Alm

Weissensee in the Drau valley

It's unfortunately not possible to fly in Cambodia.Many deserted parts of the country are still full of landmines and the mountaintops are overgrown with jungle.Also the neighbor countries are not what anybody would consider as a pilots paradise.But there are other things to do.I've to get over it.
I saw in the internet that a guy does paramotor flights in the region of Sihanoukville.I'm looking foward to meet this fellow.:)

Thai food

Despite all doubts about proper preparation of streetfood you can buy all over the place in countries like Thailand we would recommend to give it a try.
Make sure your vaccinations are valid.
We just tried literally everthing and never cought any serious kind of infections or sicknesses.Of course sometimes stomache iritations occur,but everthing what you survive makes you harder.:)
Often unknown food looks really strange and you're maybe asking yourself-what is that!
We avoided asking to much and just tried.After a while we got so many new favorite meals that we just could say many dishes in Thailand are a potential winner.
The spicy thaifood takes some time to get used to.
Try this method:
Order a Kao Phat Gai(fried rice with chicken),which is a mild meal and put the chili aside.While enjoying the meal you just add with every fork some chili.If it becomes to spicy on your tongue just eat some rice without chili to lower the effect.After a while you'll see that your taste buds can take a lot more than before.
When you can finish a "Somtam Phet"(a very spicy papaya salad)without smoke coming out of your ears you reached your objektive and you gained the ability to enjoy all the goodies of the Thai cousine.Go ahead and try a original made tom yam gung for instance-you will love it!

Beach life

The Tung Wua Len Beach near Chumphon/South Thailand.It's a 2 kilometer long bay located half an hour away from town.That's where we loved to hang around,where we did meet nice backpackers from all over the world.A good place to relax,take a walk on the beach and just enjoy the simpliness of life-what a place!

Memories

Chumpon in the early evening.
All streetvendors are allready awaiting the hungry ones and everybody is "on the weels".Yes,the food is awesome.A wide variety of meals and deserts for a very affordable price.

Assimilation and enlightenment

The economy crisis efected us badly from the beginning on here in Austria.I lost my job as insurance adviser and was running around like a dog without a bone to try to get a new job.After doing this and that to make a living i decided to establish a detective agency.That's what i worked in Germany from an age of 19 until i left this country for the second and last time 6 years ago.
The Detective Agency started slowly providing a decent income when i ran into trouble with a business partner,who refused to pay his liabilities.I had to force him to pay by passing the case to an attorney.Finaly he payed but complained about me at the "Bezirksdirektion" of Austia and accused me of improper handling of my dutyweapon.The "Bezirksdirektion"-these morons cancelled my consealed carry weapon permit without even listen to my statement.They just did what every pseudo socialist government would do and took my guns.
That just showed me clearly in which system i migrated.That made me emidiately thinking about the following quotation:

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.So throw off the bowlines.Sail away from the safe harbor.Catch the trade winds in your sails.Explore.Dream.Discover."
– Mark Twain

The power of Impressions

The impressions i made when i lived for serveral years in Thailand influenced my whole live.The life on the streets,the food,the pleasant climate and just the indiscribable intense feeling in the daily life.No need to mention that i miss it since i left the country allmost 4 years ago when the government changed the visalaw to all expat's disadvantage.
I was shocked when i did read it in the internet while living with my family in Chumphon.The new law was imidiatelly valid and we thought about our options.
We did consider to move to Canada,the US and Austria.What should i say,we decided for Austria and left the "land of smile" within 3 weeks.
To board the plane to leave Thailand was for sure one of the worst pain i've ever felt in my entire live.I wouldn't wish this emotions to anybody,even not my worst enemy,if i would have one.
But there was no time to cry,we had to move on with our life in Kärnten,where we seddled.We moved to Europe,but we never really arrived here if you understand what i mean.We just had to swallow what the life had thrown on us.