November Trip to Korat
Greetings, gang - Hope everyone had an above-average Thanksgiving!
We recently visited Okinawa's Peace Memorial Park and Museum on Veterans Day, just before taking off for a brief, week-long visit to our future home in Korat, Thailand. I did a little bit of video'ing, but I don't feel like it was enough quality and/or deliberate footage to make it all YouTube-worthy...so here I am giving a bit of a recap. We arrived back in Okinawa the day before Thanksgiving and had very little planned, so we had some delicious takeout and got a little bit of shopping taken care of.
While back home in Korat, we only had a few things that we needed to take care of - I really wanted to try my hand at driving around the city (did it..survived) and I also wanted to visit a local visa/immigration consulting firm to get our marriage documents translated. With the intent of getting our documents translated so that we could take them to Bangkok on our own (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) for legalization, I was quite pleased when the office offered to take care of it all for us on our behalf (for a fee, of course). Rather than taking the translated documents back and forth to Bangkok, they'd handle it. As they explained it, if the agent in receipt of our documents at MOFA disagree with any of the translation, they will either return it to the customers to handle, or they'll send it directly to the firm so long as there's a power of attorney in place for them to do so. Knowing that we only had a week-ish there on this trip, we opted to go this route, where they take care of everything for about 4,000 THB, and then we can either pick up the documents on our next trip - or they can mail them to us here on Okinawa. This is all goodness because once MOFA's done with their legalization process, all we have to do is take it to the local government office to register the marriage, which will then allow us to work on my Non-Immigrant 'O' Visa either before or right around my retirement from active duty. All good news and very productive. We also paid off a house...that we've put on the market in hopes of getting some land here in the future (all in wife's name, of course...let's not get into the debate of foreign land/home ownership).
Did I mention driving around the city? I waited until Day 2 before getting behind the wheel, and when I did, it was just to get around the village. Driving in Thailand is alot like driving here in Okinawa, in that it's all on the same side...where it differs is in the fact that there are about 10 motorcycles to every car/truck, and they will find a way into any spare inch left in a lane of traffic. To further keep you on your toes, the shoulders of any major roadway become two-way motorcycle/food cart/scooter highways. I'm a pretty hyper-focused, defensive driver to begin with, but this was really next-level...and I've been visiting The Kingdom for 20 years, but being the one gripping the wheel makes things waaaaayyy different. I eventually made trips back and forth across Korat on my own to get out and explore a bit...really just small exercises in independence.
So what comes next? In about seven months, we'll be making our move. In the meantime, we're going to start focusing on minimizing the amount of 'stuff' we have. We've sold quite a few things but there is more to go. Once settled there, we'll be attacking the visa process, acquiring a bank account of my own, and all of those other fun things. As for myself and my journey toward military retirement, I'll start SkillBridge in March and at the same time will be working on my VA/BDD requirements.
We had a ton of delicious food while there in Korat and spent quite a bit of time just hanging out with my wife's family at their on-base shop (really a hub for the villagers' daily necessities). I suppose at this point, I'll attach some of that travel/foodie footage for y'all. Cheers and we'll see ya on the next one.
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