Easy Adjustment to Village Life

Adding a tad of civilization

It's been two months now and still enjoying living in the sticks. Honestly, I don't know why three years passed without even attempting to live with the in-laws for more than a week or two. Every day is relaxing and I don't miss the hordes of tourists or the traffic. This will be our second home now and expect to stay here intermittently throughout the year for months at a time. Our beach place is fun and I'm sure with time I'll miss it more. For now though this arrangement in the sticks is working for me.

I claim to live in the sticks but in actuality I have transformed our bedroom in Deuan's sister's home into a modern abode. First I got high speed internet which turned into a high speed dial-up service. The nearby city just got 3G and as of May 1, speedy Internet is now reality. It doesn't compare to speeds in America but I'm satisfied. After the Internet, I added a flat screen and have thousands of movies and TV shows on my hard drive or friends' hard drives. Almost forgot, I added an AC unit to bedroom the week prior arriving. Without AC this month, I wouldn't have survived. August in Phoenix is similar to weather here in May.

Lastly and most importantly ( other than the AC), I remodeled the bedroom which was a cave because the windows opened up to a smelly shack and were always closed. A cobra that they were unable to kill also lived in there which gave me little incentive to clean it.

Below is a pic of the adjacent shack which is in much better condition than the shack behind our room. I paid some vilagers to knock it down and don't have any pictures. Take my word – it was disgusting. The cobra got away again and slid under an old sewage container.


Deuan and I then cleaned up the area. In lieu of taking construction waste to the dump the common practice is to dig a large hole in the back and dump everything into it. It took a full day to clear the area of all the crap that was just under the surface. We hired two kids to help because I have sissy hands and within 3 hours were a bloody mess. Not a bad thing being that I now was forced to hire people to do all the tasks requiring the use of hands which ultimately was everything.

Thais in the village are definitely handy when it comes to construction. The going rate is $8 a day for a general laborer and up to $15 for a specialist. All are undependable and most drink heavily. I was in no hurry and was fine with the arrangement. In the end I must have hired 15 different villagers to help. Unlike America, the economy is humming and you hire who isn't working that day. You are also expected to buy whiskey on top of the wages. All in all, not a bad setup and preferred over employing sub contractors in America. During the housing bubble they wouldn't show-up or charge outrageous prices. Not all subs but this was often my experience.

Once I started the project it consumed me and I was determined to transform our cave room into something special. Sure not special compared to the spacious gardens back home but I had very little to work with. Below was my to do list on April 20.

Knock down shack in back of bedroom
Clear area and purchase dirt for garden
Build outdoor shower with toilet
Add pond ( use cement sewage container – onwer unknown ). Careful – cobra escaped underneath
Add class bedroom door opening into patio and window
Purchase plants to border Patio Garden
Add fence around Patio garden
Build/buy table
Extent patio with cement slabs

My must haves were the bedroom door and the outdoor shower. Running in this muggy heat is a sweaty experience. After my runs I had nowhere to strip off my clothes and wet myself down. The only entrance was through the front door next to their food shop with all the customers and family around. The shower would provide a space to get out of sticky clothes and cool down.

Today is May 1, 10 days into the project, and somehow I've managed to clear the list without stressing. The project would have taken months back home but I improvised and utilized labor, materials, and plants that were all around the house. Also didn't have to worry about building and waste disposal permits which are time consuming.

There are vegetables growing all around and we just replanted some of them in our tiny vegetable garden, her usually drunk oldest brother helped perform monotonous tasks that take a limited amount of brain cells, our patio backs up to a house that was just built and we had access to all the wood from the old house, and many others items laying around were transformed into tables, pond, etc.

Below is my humble garden and outdoor shower. Total cost of $1,000 give or take $100. The table was an old huge water jug that had a leak and an old door that was sawed in half and painted. The pond was an old underground sewage container that was laying around, and the plants were all gathered from around the house. I used an old stairway to make the fence to keep the ducks and chickens out.







The shower is wonderful and drastically improves my after run experience. It is hard to imagine what state I'm in after running 10-15 miles in this heat. The locals always ask what happened to me because of the wet rat appearance. Now I get back from my runs and turn on the AC prior to showering and getting out of my running gear.

The room backs up to a newly built house. The owner coincidentally is a friend that lives next to our beach condo in Southern Thailand. Small world and a story for another time. They use the place a few weeks a year and we have quite a bit of privacy other than the kids that randomly visit. A couple of them call me Dad which is cute but they are serious which I assume will be problematic. They are related to Deuan and their parents live in Bangkok. I would guess they see their parents less than 10 days a year. Sad but all to common here. I'm sure I'll be paying for any large medical emergencies or other bills that are a necessity. Oh well, life goes on. They are adorable and definitely not shy.

Kat and Nui





Besides the remodel, I've also made life easier and fun of late by purchasing a Android tablet PC to replace my Ipad. I'm glad to have purchased the Ipad because of the mobile convenience it offers but now there are much better options. Here goes my Apple rant – HaHa. I can now do what I desire without the hellish restrictions Apple places on users. Ipad is so limiting a baby could use it. They have sold everyone on its simplicity and setup a distribution network second to none. Their product is mediocre at best and mark my words, Apple will crumble as it did in the late 80's. They are using the same strategy and history will repeat. Window toppled Apple with software that wasn't hardware specific. Android will do it this time around. Hard not to respect the run they are having and doubt there will be another marketing or distribution network as successful for a long time.

An incredible sports stadium was completed last year and odly enough Buriram has the best soccer team in Thailand. It isn't even close and they are also one of the strongest clubs in all of Asia. Thais love their soccer (futbol) and games are big draws. The health club is empty on game nights. Plan on attending a game this month and try to comprehand thailnad's and world's infatuation with the sport.



To end this post, I've included the video of a bike ride During Songkran ( Thai New Years celebration ). It usually begins around April 10 and last 3 to 14 days. It all depends on the location and the government. During the riots and finacial crisis it lasted 2 weeks at our beach town condo. Almost everything is shuttered and parties rage in the streets form 9 AM to dusk. Drinking and drenching everything with water are the central themes and just having a great time. It was relatively tame here compared to what I've experienced in the big cities or tourist detinations but still quite impressive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKX0GqsCoLo