sirineou

I read all these negative posts about Thai woman , I  thought I would post a little bit about my limited experience, and hear some of yours.
I am in the process of building a perimeter wall around our property.For this  I have hired a Husband and wife team, The team consists of the Husband, the wife , a young son, the son-law, and an other unrelated worker.The Husband does all the lay-out, and finish work, The son does very little, the son in-law and other worker helps with the digging and cement block work, and the wife does everything else and is by far the hardest worker in the bunch.
I have never seen a wooman work harder, she mixess mixes cement, puts the steel together, caries block, does everything while her son sits on his motorbike and looks at himself in the mirror all day.
She does all that with a smile, and at lunch time when every one else stops and rests she prepares lunch for them,then when everyone goes for a nap after lunch, she cleans their mess.,I come from a family where my mother was considered a saint, and never worked a day in her life, outside the home,and I am embarrassed to watch her work.
And this is not an Isolated incident, every where I go i watch women work very hard, while men sit around.
Then you have the girls in the sex industry, where they give up their lives in their village, to sell theme selves to strangers, endanger their health and life, to provide for their families. In essence screw them selves (pardon the pun) for their families, and then you have some idiot farang complain that he was screwed by them. If the girl is willing to give up everything and screw her self for her family, what makes you think she will not also screw you for her family, when push comes to shove?
You got to respect these women

Flew to BKK from JFK on Quatar air with my wife, last month, cost $ 1,200 each, economy class. The plane, a new 777 was clean and the seats were very comfortable
The inflight entertainment was great with 100nths of movies, shows and Games. The Food was good, and the service great.,The Luggage allowance was very generous, Two large bags checked in, a small suitcase carry on, and your personal, loptop bag or similar, each!!! between me and my wife we were allowed 4 large bags, 2 small bags plus personal bags, needles to say we never even came close to using all of our allowance.Today we decided we were going to extend our stay in Thailand an other two weeks. Having dealt with other airlines, I dreaded the call, and expected huge, fees and expencive ticket change prices. Called Quatar,Air in BKK,   pleasant girl on the telephone took no more than a few minutes to search for the best return date available to me, as I was flexible with my travel dates, Total extra coasts, $ 240 each.
I must say so far my experience with Quatar air has being great,

Last week I prepared to start on a 2 m high 117 m long fence, I started a thread on 2012 construction wages, to find out what I should be paying  people.You were all very helpful with your replies and I appreciated it. Some of you asked me for associated costs and methods, and to show my appreciation for your very helpful replies I will now share my fence building story with you.

First we needed to clear some of the land,
on the property there is already a small house where my wife's sister lives, an Ideal situation for as, as we love her sister, and she can keep an eye on the house when we are not in Thailand. On the part of the property where we plan to build, some one had , a long time started to build, and had abandoned the effort, so first task was to remove 12  precast columns that were standing up in the property. I was not there when it happened, so I don't have pictures, but you will see the columns paying on the ground in some of the other pictures. I will use them later to build a storage shed and a covered patio for the sister in law. The cost for removing the columns was 2,000 bht
Then on to removing some trees and leveling the land.
First we hired a local farmer with a small tractor to remove the tree stumps and level the land,

But his tractor was too small to remove the tree stumps, he asked for 200 bth for his effort, but we gave him 400 bht as we thought 200 was too litle and we did not want to cheat him.
Then we hired an other local farmer with a big Ford tractor

He made small change of leveling the land but had to work very hard on one particular tree stump that was very large underground, and did not want to give up the spirit.Took him over one hr digging around it and pounding on it until
it came out.

Total  cost for tractor 3000 bht
On to building the fence.
Hired a local Husband and wife team. for 500 bht a meter, LABOR ONLY and I will be providing the material, estimated finished cost 1000 bht per meter.

this is the design of the proposed fence and location to scale of the house we plan to build there, on the other side is the sisters house

First and most important the foundation,

Footings 50 centimeter deep


Steel in foundation, they tried to pure the cement with the steel saying on the ground, and too close to the side of the form, a no-go for me as the steel should not be touching the ground, and should have at least 1 inch cement coverage on the side.

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finally after some explaining we got the front foundation poured, and are ready for some block, and to start on the foundation for the sides.

Notice the rebar connecting the two sections of block., I asked for a longer piece of steel, and on the other courses for block we will be putting a larger piece.

Ok I got to go to work now, will post more pictures soon.

I am starting to build 2 m high perimeter wall around my property, will post storry when I have some pictures, and more time.

Does anyone know where I can rent a small mechanical digger in Khon Kaen. and where I might be able to buy a post hole digger such as this?

Thank you

Back  in Thailand again, stayed away a little longer than I wanted duet to work, but I finally made it back Yeaaa.
Pleasantly surprised to see the Tunnel finally finished and all the new Home improvement mega stores existing and going up.
But a little disappointing to see how prices are going up, especially as it applies to Construction and land coasts.
I know there is an other recent thread on labor costs, and I did tried to do a search, but I got hundreds of returns on "labor Costs isaan) got everything that contains the word, labor, cost and isaan, ,tried it a few different ways, and way too many returns, I would need to spend the rest of my time here in Thailand to scan trough them to maybe find the info I need. so in addition to labor costs, any info on how to find info in this forum would also be appreciated, or links to relevant treads.
As I said I am disappointed at the rising cost of living, and decided to start building soon as apposed to waiting a couple of years, closer to retirement.
Have Land a few minutes outside KKC, 50 m deed by 32 m wide, Sister in law has a small house on one side, and we will build a small home on the other side so that sister in-law can keep an eye on it when we are not there. First project is remove a couple of trees, , clean a lot of junk accumulated,build a perimeter fence, and fill a little dirt to make property more level and smooth.A couple of guys that I talked to wanted 2,000 bht for the day, I of course politely declined. What should I be offering with out offending any one. Also what are the current Labor only costs for a perimeter about 2 m high  about 160 linear Meters.
I appreciate all comments.