I'm a New Zealander living in the north of Thailand since 2002. Between 2002 and 2018 I lived in and around Chiang Mai city, now my Thai wife and I (and our pets) live at the foot of Doi Inthanon, just outside the national park. It's about an hour's easy drive to Chiang Mai city.
We built our home on land that was a lamyai orchard. I'd never designed or built a home but everything went astonishingly smoothly with the whole process. This did include loosing our contractor just prior to when building was about to start. We managed to find a competent replacement and the build was completed in about 7 months.
Rural life in northern Thailand is fabulous. Initially I was a bit unsure about how welcome a foreigner might be. My wife is not from this region and we were not sure what kind of welcome we'd receive. But we were openly welcomed.
If you're interested to see other videos about what we do in our garden please check out our other YouTube channel
youtube.com/@suansook