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This has been an unusual year.
In total we have only been in our house in Thailand for 4 months.
The garden and the maintenance of the house have suffered somewhat from our absence.
Life in Thailand continues its comfortable course.
The seasons alternate, but never below 20 degrees in the morning in January.
Here Minke shows the entire harvest of mangoes from our own tree (so not from the frangipani behind Minke). |
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Like every year we were back in the Netherlands for Minke's mother's birthday, who turned 97. A few weeks later we drove to Spain in a week with the E-type without any problems. In the Dordogne we also visited Nada, a friend from Bhutan. It's because we can't spread out even more across the world, otherwise a pied-a-terre in the Dordogne would definitely be an option, it's so beautiful. |
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In Salions we bought a kayak because you are no longer allowed to come to most beaches with your boat because of the protected seaweeds. With the kayak we are also not dependent on the opening hours of the club nautico and we can now go and have breakfast at sunrise on the island in front of Vallpresona.
At the end of July we were all shocked when we received the news that Minke's mother was in hospital with a heart attack.
Fortunately, Paula is doing reasonably well again.
She is managing in her own home again with the support of home help, very nice neighbors, friends, family and especially Dorine who visits a few times a week.
It is difficult to live so far away.
Unfortunately, Paula had to cancel her trip to Australia and she could not attend Laura and Will's wedding.
We are happy that she was able to see where they live last year and how beautiful the nature is near their house.
The most important and most beautiful and fun thing for our family this past year was of course the wedding of Laura and Will.
Entirely planned by the future couple themselves, and with their own house and garden as a location, it was a spectacular multi-day wedding with the most beautiful weather imaginable.
We went to Australia well before the wedding and together with Will's family we helped with the preparations for the wedding.
We were looking forward to it because they wanted to organize everything themselves on their own property. Laura and Will had left nothing to chance.
The ceremony was at the largest of all the big trees, a large tent for dinner and breakfast, glamping tents, cocktail bar, music, flowers....
Laura and Will, both busy jobs as team leader at the NSW Health in Sydney and in training to become emergency doctor respectively, have both landed well on their feet and are a visibly happy couple.
Laura is also doing a PhD on the side, part time, but still. We really enjoyed having our family, Peter and Marjan and Ineke and Gideon, there too.
While Dorine and her family organised a festive ceremony in the Netherlands for grandma. The photos of the wedding day speak for themselves and click here on fotoalbum.
The weather couldn't have been better, a fantastic bridal couple and lots of lovely family and friends.
Laura and Will received many trees as a wedding gift, all of which were planted with a nameplate.
Now the trick is to keep them alive.
We have done our best for a few more weeks with watering, 'Bush tidying' and cutting down dead trees and are back in Thailand just in time to wish you all the best from here for a healthy, peaceful and prosperous 2025. |
This page was last updated on 1 January 2025, or 2568 here in Thailand.
After years of being active in the board of our MooBaan, Minke has transferred her functions to others who are going to tackle it head on and not let the administrative rubble that we cleared arise again.
That is good, but Minke would have done it with a softer hand.