Thailand
Adventure
You have reached Tom and Wan's Thailand Adventure Web site, good to have you here! This Web site contains information about our move to live in Thailand. On our site you'll find family pictures, latest news and events, our favorite links, and information concerning living in Thailand. We hope you enjoy this site. Check back often for updates. Click here to be placed on our update mailing list.
History behind our move decision
On and off over the years, we discussed a possible retirement in Thailand. We had not been to Thailand for a number of years. We began planning a trip for early 2004. Wan told me about one of her nephews that had died of AIDS a couple of years before. She said he had one little girl, who was six years old. The girl's mother had been also diagnosed with AIDS. Out of the blue, Wan asked me if we could look into adopting the girl. The first thought I had was, we were just getting our kids through college and then would be free to do whatever we wanted. Raising another child seemed kind of hard at our age.
So we went on the trip in March 2004. We had a great time visiting all of Wan's family. When that little girl was over visiting, we heard some people calling out "Wan". Wan was curious to find out who they were calling for, as she does not go by that name in a casual atmosphere. It turns out they were calling for the little girl. She was named by her father after Wan. So from now on I refer to her as Little Wan. We visited her mother. She was in very bad health, with a prognosis of about three months to live. Little Wan was keeping close watch on her mother. Wan's older sister is Little Wan's legal guardian. We all went on a small tour of the local area for one day. It was a lot of fun. Little Wan proved to be very mature and independent for her age. After spending a few days with her, my decision on adoption was already becoming a no brainer. It was definitely the right thing to do!
After getting back, we started to look into the proper adoption procedures. It was a very complicated procedure. We continued with our intent to adopt Little Wan. About six weeks after we got back, we recieved the news that Little Wan's mother had passed away. Nobody ever mentioned the the adoption to Little Wan while her mother was alive. She was very close to her mother. Sometime later that year she was told, that "American Man" wanted to be her new daddy. She was apparently excited. She told her schoolmates that she was going to get an American dad. We continued to gather information we needed to make an adoption happen. We kept running into a lot of difficulties due to being a foreign child adoption.
Wan went back to Thailand in September 2004. She talked to all of the government officials she could find regarding an adoption. They all said to talk to the U.S. government to start the process. Government officials here say the process has to start in Thailand. Typical government red tape. We started planning our next trip. We wanted to spend a little more time there to find out as much as we could. We would be able to spend some more time with Little Wan and maybe get more adoption answers. We were both already leaning towards moving over there by then.
We planned our trip to coincide with the Songkran festival in April 2005. It is an annual country wide water festival and holiday period of a few days. It is to celebrate the start of the hot season. When we arrived, Wan's family had Little Wan with them at the airport. When she saw us, she ran up between us and held both of our hands while we walked out. We had a real good time seeing everybody. We spent a lot of time with Little Wan. I had her read to me in Thai, she was doing very good for her age. She even picked up on some English words. One thing we did while we were there is go to a Monk induction ceremony. Our really close friend June's nephew was being inducted during that ceremony. I got to meet June's family. We told them that we would consider living up there, if they would keep an eye out for some land to purchase.
During the summer we heard from June's family that there was some land and a house for sale. It sounded like what we were looking for. Wan and June flew over and Wan purchased the land in September. It is 12 acres of farm land. She got the house at a later date. After that we continued the planning and preparation for moving over.