gejohesch

Makes sense, but sounds a bot drastic. I actually like to keep those decorative bars ???? But thanks for your input!

"Surely the purpose of a boundary wall is to provide physical security or aesthetics and not prevent rain?" Sure, by why not also some protection against the rain? .... and against the heat of the thai day time, by providing some shade? Is there a building code that prohibits that???? "Can you not simply lay a path (concrete or brick) on the inside of the wall with a slight incline down to drain which rain water runs into to divert away the excess water and problem solved?" As said above, there is a pathway between the wall and the house. Its width varies between 1.2m at one end and 1.5m at the other end of the house. I already have some drainage in place. What I'm concerned about is 2 things: 1 - so much rain that regardless of the drainage, when it rains heavily (I suppose you know of the thai weather?), a lot of water washes over the wall (as it is) and in the long run, the house wall gets so regularly drenched that the paint gets damaged etc. 2 - maybe more importantly, as the house on that side faces due south, it gets a lot of direct sunshine. In a temperate climate, that would be a good thing, but (again) with the brutal thai climate, I personally would appreciate a bit more shade than the one provided by the wall as it is. It is for these 2 reasons, and considering that the wall is actually made of a series of segments interrupted by the "decorative" fencing (no shade and no protection against the rain whatsoever), that I am planning a) to close up the fencing sections with acrylic sheets (I have started and it works well); and b) add height to the full wall sections with brickwork (what I believe is called "perforated façade" style). All this may sound long and wordy. A look at the pics I have posted will make everything so much clearer.

"Husbands in the UK cannot just walk out without facing a hefty divorce , like they can in Thailand" Usually in Thailand society, when husbands (official or not) walk out, they walk out with nothing. And btw, very often they don't "walk out" but get kicked out by their wives (official or not).

I was thinking more about the regulations and the distance between a house and the street. Everywhere in this country, one can see roadwork on the way, much of it widening the initial roads. One could not count how many houses were initially located a few metres away from a road and that all of a sudden find themselves that much closer to the "improved" road. That certainly also happens within the villages. It just happens that my wife's street is the widest one in her village, so I can conjecture that going back in time it may well have been narrower - and obviously the house would have been a bit further away from the initial street.

Thanks for your long reply, but I think you misunderstood me, or maybe I was not clear enough? I thought the pics would help making the whole story clear... It's a wall along the street but not a wall of the house as such, and as I said above, there is a 1.2 to 1.5m space between the wall and the house - it's a pathway around the house. My problem is not that the wall "lets water filter through" but that the wall not being that high, a lot of rain gets over it during the rainy season, so the pathway gets very wet, sometimes even flooded. And the damage caused to the house is that the base of the house wall gets very wet also, which with time is not a very good thing either. Further, there is no problem at all with ground moisture coming up. And I never said that I could not add pillars. I just said that there are pillars here and there along the wall to reinforce it, and that I could use those reinforcements as the base on which I could make my brick work wider, hence stronger. For example, the longest wall section (between the spaces with the decorative fencing) is 3.5 m long but that includes 3 such pillars / reinforcements. I add a pic showing the wall in question (light grey). The "decorative" fencing is in blue with details painted gold. I have stacked up a few bricks on the right hand side to check the visual effect I can get, but I have not cemented any yet. I would anyway build the bricks higher, to level up with the top of the fencing. The house is behind (walls in pink / orange).

Thanks, the thing is I want no space between the 2 bricks. With any type of mortar, there would be a join with some thickness (at least 8-10mm I think) and that would make my original design inapplicable, as I want the total height to reach the level of the acrylic sheets and top of the fencing. OK, I can always come up with a different design, there are many variations possible .....

You may be right in theory, but no one seems to care with that around where I live. That house and the wall by the street were built so many years back anyway, if anyone had an issue, we would have known a long time ago! The distance from the house to the street wall varies between 1.5m and 1.2m. It runs at an angle, I don't know why but people don't seem to like straight lines nor parallel lines in this country! They don't seem to care much about vertical lines either, come to think about it.... ????

Thanks. Do I find that in Home Pro or Global House?

My idea is not to use glue throughout (in which case I understand it would not be that strong). Glue only for to make sets of 2 bricks, and then mortar to assemble the sets (see my pics). Because 1) that would make me get to the desired height; 2) there would be less mortar work, and less messing up of the bricks with mortar everywhere (I want the bricks to keep their original red surface for aesthetic reasons). Understand, I'm not a pro, so less mortar work is better for me, and I can glue the sets of bricks comfortably sitting somewhere, before getting to the follow up work on the wall. I'm not a pro but I prefer to do the work myself even if it takes time. I would not trust a local "châng" to do the work cleanly.

I'm "upgrading" my wife's 2 houses compound. It's very nice and spacious enough, in a quiet and rather clean street in a small village in Isan. The wall by the street is in a good condition but the first house is less than 2 metres from the wall and there are 2 problems : when it rains, too much water gets over the wall and with time damages the house (mold etc); the house is south-facing and when the weather is hot, the wall does not provide sufficient shade to my liking. The wall is actually not a simple, continuous walls. It is interrupted by spaces with a "decorative" style of fencing. The fencing is higher then the wall by a good foot or so - see the first pic. I have started fitting acrylic sheets along the fencing parts, to stop at least some of the rain. The acrylic sheets is what I have represented as semi-transparent panels on the first pic. If I don't do anything else, the result will not look elegant in my sense, the sheets sticking out a bit like a sore thumb. So I have decided to add a few runs of bricks on top of the existing wall, to come up to the same level as the fencing and acrylic sheets. That will also provide extra shade and extra protection against the rain. The brick pattern I have come up with is as shown on the 2nd and 3d pics. Using the standard red bricks one can find everywhere in Isan. The wall varies between 7 and 8 cm thickness (it's Isan-built ????), which is just enough to seat the bricks on. I have modeled the pattern with mortar joints of 1cm thickness. For that pattern, I think of gluing bricks in pairs. My question then (apologies for the long introduction) is : which product to use for gluing the bricks can I find around here? Would any all-purpose glue do, or is there anything better? By the way, one comment that may come up is how am I going to add strength to the bricks? Normally, I think, one would build a pillar at both ends, but that's not possible in this case (again, see the pics). However, the runs will not be that long - they will vary between 1 and 3.5 metres along the wall (the wall is rather irregular, again : Isan-built ????). Also, there are a number of pillars in the wall (in orange on the pics) which provide extra space that I can use to add bricks by the side of the brick runs - see pic 3 - to add a bit of strength. Recommendations re. the gluing product, and other comments, will be very appreciated. Thanks in advance!

as long as the broom handle does not go in unwanted directions....????

Hi! Thanks, also to the few others who replied. I had a look and I find it overwhelming. Any advice on the price range I should aim for? I see stuff starting at 800-900 THB and also above 5000 THB. I know pretty much nothing about that sort of equipment and I'm still concerned I could end up ordering sthg and regret it....

As the title says, where in (or around) Khon Kaen can I find a good bench to use at home, for fitness purposes (dumbbells etc)? Price range say 5000 to 10,000 THB? I've seen 1 in Home Pro cheaper than that but it looks way too flimsy. Alternatively, anyone would recommend a good product I could order online? Thanks!

It would be too much work to scroll through the entire discussion and decide which comment to my OP I should have responded or followed up on, but missed. I'm just going to bring my experience a few days ago, coming back from Siem Reap and entering (this time) on the visa exemption basis i.e. for another stay in Thailand but this time of 45 days (then back to Europe for a few months). The IO this time was a pleasant woman of ca. 30-35 years age. She did not ask any question re. where I was going to stay, only needed my passport + boarding pass + finger scans + shot with the immigration photo system. The photo system did not work, obviously there was sthg wrong and after a good few minutes her trying again and again, I asked in Thai "khreuang tham thai roop sia laeo reu khrap?". She was quite surprised : "oh, you learnt to speak thai?". That seemed to make her even more pleasant. We had to go to another counter, opened by another IO, probably a supervisor. She just commented : "no visa this time?", to which I replied no, now it's on the visa exemption basis, and I said I was going to stay "45 bpii" which means "45 years", a slip of the tongue which I immediately corrected to "45 wan" = 45 days. She laughed, stamped my passport and that was it. She apologised for the delay! All in all, it took 15 minutes maybe but I did not have any problem with that. I'm giving this experience because it was such a contrast to my entry in november with a 60 days TR visa, which I related in my OP. I just find it curious that, for me at least, it was such a breeze entering on the visa exemption basis, with nearly no question asked, whereas I had a more painful experience with a visa before.

Mexico deserves a special positive mention when it comes to entry / exit regulations, at least as far as I have experienced it. I went there with my Thai GF just before COVID. She had a Schengen visa that was still valid, the IO at the airport looked at the passport maybe 1 minute max, stamped at that was it. No question asked. And on our exit, we just checked in with the airline and .... there was no counter to stamp our passports! So we have Mexican entry stamps and no Mexico exit stamps in our passports. I had never seen that anywhere! Besides, Mexico is one of the nicest countries I can think about, and not expensive either ????

thinking of a scam recently reported, add a fake Porsche car to improve the look and feel a bit further!

Did I say the lines I wrote reflected my own thinking??? Could you not get it that I was trying to work out the logical paths of the persons who manage tourism, visas etc???? You are just over-reacting a bit. Jai yen yen! And just for you to know, one does not need to stay at expensive hotels or condos to spend a lot of money in this country. You seem to ignore that lots of foreigners heavily invest via their Thai spouses or long term partners.

But maybe maybe, they don't really like tourists, they only like their money (expenditures being forecast to the nearest 100 baht). There are genuine doubts whether people staying for longer periods are genuine tourists = donkeys loaded with bags of cash ????. Probably, there are stats showing that those are rather likely to hunkering down on the cheap ????- that's not what they want!

Obvious, is it not? When playing with catchy (but empty) slogans like "unleash the nation's potential" or "bucaneering Britain", one should always remember that geography is a key factor in international relations. Like it or not, the British Isles are part of Europe, separated only by a few 10's of kms from the European continent. Geographical proximity in this case is a factor amplified by economy indeed.

What sort of diplomacy? Forget about all the propaganda (foreigner as well as Thai sources). In the 19th century, like it or not, no country could resist the aggression of a western country. The first non-western country that did, if I remember correctly, was Japan in the war against Russia 1904-1905 .... and that raises the question whether Russia was a real "western country".... But I digress... A key factor of international politics in the 19th century was that France and Great Britain had at last learnt an important lesson at the end of the Napoleonic wars : that they had nothing to gain by continuing fighting head on against each other. So they started making agreements around the planet to avoid any new direct confrontation. In Asia, they agreed to keep a neutral zone between their "possessions" : Indochina (France) and India - Malay states - Burma (Great Britain). That was the luck of Siam. But not to forget that in the process, Siam lost its suzerainty over Cambodia and Laos (to France) and had to sign off to GB : Kedah and Kelantan (joining the Malay States) as well as the Shan State (joining Burma). That's hard reality. The rest is propaganda and face-saving.

Makes a lot of sense, obviously.

That's a bit reassuring. I'm "fully" vacc'ed (3 times Pfizer, the last one in Dec 2021). So, no need to get another jab then? Another question I have is, I'm going for 1 week to Cambodia later in January (3d week), then back to Thailand. Will I need to worry about getting tested to (first) fly from BKK to Cambodia, and (second) to fly back to Thailand 1 week later? Shxt, when we were thinking that we could start relaxing a bit about COVID! ???? Now we have to start worrying about all those rules again! ????

I opted for a TR visa to get a 60 days stretch before having to "do sthg", but if Thailand maintain the current 45 days visa exemption period, I will not renew the TR visa experience!

The guy got it wrong, I'm shorter than 1m80! ????

That's nothing new to me, thanks. ???? I have answered several times already f this sort of comment. I am totally prepared to provide documents and answer questions, and btw I do not have the least fragment of racist attitude (to reply to someone above). I just was not prepared for the unfriendliness of the IO and for the extra request for a boarding pass of a flight before the flight arriving to BKK - as far as I know, that is not normally requested.