Adventures in Thai Life: death, karma, luck ...

[Smiles]

Part 1 ~ Inheritance the Hard Way

We took off down the highway in mid-October with renovations in mind. How romantic is that?

About a year before, the ongoing тАШDownfall of Tuan TongтАЩ was becoming severe and precarious: ┬аbut worst of all, inevitable, predictable and fraught with melodrama, regrets and much gnashing of teeth. But yer makes yer own bed in this cruel life and Tuan Tong had folded back the sheets on his many years ago.

Tuan Tong is SuphotтАЩs (my partner) oldest brother, and in fact the oldest male in a household of ten тАж seven sisters and three brothers.
The father of this large brood of тАШThakoengsuksтАЩ died about three years ago and before the body was cold (or so it seemed), Tuan Tong, the oldest male and therefore the newly-crowned and self-proclaimed King/Patriarch of the family began his long and determined theft of everything his father had owned, including the family home (the very same house in the photos below)
The mother, still alive and healthy, received nothing. The two had parted company about three years before, her alone for a year and then a new boyfriend, he to his whiskey his cigarettes and his lung cancer.┬а┬а
He died in hospital of no-breath-left, without a will, but only with the spoken word as to who gets what. And even then the spoken words were few and far between. This informal end to 'everything' is very common in the north eastern land of rice paddies and cassava fields and gossip and village life.

So Tuan Tong brandished his new title, marched up to family members, and told them exactly what they were getting: which was essentially nothing.
He was taking it all.

Suphot's younger brother Suban, although having taken his dying father into his house and looking after him for some years, and apparently promised (by 'The Spoken') a few rai of land lost it to Tuan Tong. A sister didn't get a rai promised. And more ...

But underneath the pillage was a man in trouble ... in fact that was the main reason for his, shall we say, transference of assets.
Tuan Tong over the years had acquired a very large land holding: 5 rai here on the family plots, 10 rai over there in Buriram, a few rai in adjoining Si Saket, 6 more rai in the village, 20 rai in Nakhon Sawan. He owned a very large home ... the тАЬlargest and finest in Nang MutтАЭ (the family village), and he was prone to bragging. He was known to walk around the the village showing other folk there the 100,000 baht he had in his wallet ~ a fat one it was indeed. He wheeled and dealed in the village as a small-money loan shark ~ 1000 baht here to Somchai to rent a tractor, 500 baht there for Nut to take the bus to Groong Thep, 2000 baht for Tam to buy fertilizer, and on and on at 10%.
But his slow-moving downfall was mostly caused by one very specific and debilitating vice: Tuan Tong was addicted to gambling.
Not small gambling mind you ... big money gambling. He gambled a million baht once on the toss of a dice (lost). He gambled large amounts on his cocks (Won often I heard). He could drive to the Casino right across the border in Cambodia with his eyes closed (Lost. A lot).
He started selling land and other assets to gamble . . . or to pay back gambling debts.

Cut quickly to one year ago: Sometime in early 2012 Tuan Tong phoned Suphot and asked him whether he'd like to buy the family house.
A rai of land with a pond, and a house in dire need of renovation, he'd sell it to his baby brother for 200,000 baht (at that time about six thousand Canadian dollars). When Pot hung up the phone and told me about the offer, I thought about it for five minutes: тАЬTake it! Take it now before he changes his mind!!тАЭ

And as Suphot (The Buyer) well knew, this offer was far too cheap a deal for a 'regular' sale, and Tuan Tong (The Seller) was obviously in deep money trouble: the Perfect Storm for a predator buyer . . . and my old man certainly has the odd predator moment. (We calculated that at that price the holding would almost immediately be worth close to three quarters of a million baht even without plucking a single weed, or filling in a few cracks. Much less a wholesale reno).

And that is why we were driving down the highway from Hua Hin to Nang Mut in such good moods. We were off to claim the newly-acquired piece of Thailand.

Everyone in the family was happy that the home was staying in-the-family.
Every one of them ~ especially Mama ~ were well pleased at how things had worked out.
Every one of them secretly relished Tuan Tong's decline: he had treated many of them very badly over the last few years ... he'd lost his face in their eyes, he'd lost their respect. They feared him but they didn't particularly like him, or at least the way he had done business.


Part 2 ~ Blue printing inheritances


Although the ride started off as calmly as driving Miss Daisy, we eventually had to deal with the semi-notorious Thai floods of 2013 (minor really, compared to 2011 which we had also tackled). Barreling through Sa Kaeo Province ~ one of the most beautiful Thai farming provinces in October ~ was a festival of green and luscious marketable fauna on both sides of the road, all standing straight and proud ... one learns far more than one expects to sitting beside the accomplished farmer which Suphot is. Eucalyptus trees everywhere, rubber planations, cassava groves as far as the eye can see, fruit farms of every kind, banana trees with leaves touching the ground, sugar cane dense and sharp (like sharpened knives, they are) ... Sa Kaeo has it all, and beauty to match. The Thais who own land here take care of the 'look' as well as the crop and the homes along the roads here can be very 'new middle class', with garages and great porches, wild colour concepts, and lawns with garden gnomes.
And so far ~ except for small parts of Chachoengsao ~ deep sitting water was hidden away somewhere.

Not so in the next province, Buriram. The road ahead seemed to shimmer strangely in the sunshine as we approached, and soon we could see why.
The road disappeared and become simply part of a deep, heavy and fierce rush of water from the left ~ from what was once a placid lake ~ to the right, which was once low lying rice paddies.
I was the passenger here, and it looked disturbing, entering this deluge, feeling the strength of the water movement from one side to the other. One could just make out the faint yellow line of the lane divider in the middle of the road, our one and only guide except for the traffic ahead of us, none of whom had yet ended up in either lake. So follow them!
Needless to say, I was barely amused ... but kept quiet. We survived.





And made it to the castle. Finally.
This is the home we purchased. Suphot put a much-needed new roof on the place last summer while I was back in Canada, and had cut down the surrounding foliage around the house. It had been sitting abandoned and becoming more and more jungalized over the last two years.
A new well had to be excavated, the old original well now on one of his sister's property. So those two parts of the renovation had happened before I had had a chance to put eyes on the place.

This is the front wall of the place and there will eventually be a three meter wide cement and tiled veranda along the entire length.
The open room beside the car port used to be the original kitchen, and will now be walled up and will become the master bedroom.
The small porch on the other end where Suphot is standing will also be walled in, to end up as the kitchen.




Mr Suphot with his beloved money printing machine: the income from which he obtains the means to participate heavily in the costs of buying and renovating his new home.
Gives me a fiduciary break as well ... for which I am grateful and feeling just as lovey-dovey towards the well put-upon Toyota Vigo as he.





The old dirt road in front of the house took a beating this autumn as the southern parts of Isaan were hit heavily by rains after rains. The local officials order up graders and heavy trucks to help out with this, but the workings are slow and they often react only to Thai folks phoning them up with dramatic complaints and crying and tearing out of hair. This works (as everyone knows it will) and the roads become usable one more time.
Until next year that is, when the phones start ringing all over again. It's the Thai Way.





This is the back wall of the house. I stood on Pot's sister's property to take this, and the property line is actually only about 2 meters from the back wall. Not much you can do in that small a space, so the main water lines from the well will run along this side, with a line of planted (and speedy growers they are) bamboo trees.
All the windows will be replaced with modern sliding screened ones.




This is the view looking from Pot's property towards that dirt road in the front, with the neighbour's home across the road also being renovated, a part of which includes a new fancy stone wall along the road face.
That place belongs to Pot's younger brother's in-laws (their daughter being Suban's wife), and I remember seeing their home many times over the years unkempt, very poor, half falling down. But here, this year, a new home has been raised: just one more small example of the Thai countryside being modernized and becoming richer ... in small steps for sure, but gradually rising up. This is a decidedly Good Thing for Thailand in general.


┬а


As we were inspecting and planning and walking around and inside our new house, we heard some banging and crashing and raised voices coming from the road outside, just up aways.
So here, totally coincidently, I introduce to you Suphot's younger brother Suban. That's him with his ass pointing at you ... a rather nice one I must say.
He's a bit of a workhorse, a bit of a laze-about, a bit of a gambler, not much of a drinker but likes weed, an excellent father of a boy and girl, and a really sweet guy. We get along like houses on fire ... always a good thing with one's old man's family.
He's been sorely ripped off by his older brother (as explained above) but he seems to hold little anger (unlike Suphot, who is very angry with how things have turned out, and hurt his family).
Suban will never leave the farm. He cannot read nor write well. Unlike Suohot, he was taken out of school very early by his father and never looked back. Farming is it for him: unless things change of course ... (with Thais, you never know for sure.).

But anyway ... this time he's cutting logs up from a tree just felled. Piling them into the truck. Taking them who-knows-where for baht.







This is a shot taken looking out on the back yard. Pot planted some banana trees about six months ago and they've grown great guns and so far one of them has already produced one bunch. These trees were presented to Suphot by his mother who seems to plant her own banana tress on every inch of property she is able to. Obviously banana tress are more than fruit to her, and I suspect that worshiping that good old Thai favourite spiritual/mercenary human attribute, i.e. 'Good Luck' has got a lot to do with it. Also, Suphot is much loved by Mama.

There is a small plot of cassava there as well, newly planted.
In the background you can just see a portion of the pond, the back side of which is the back property line.





A larger shot of the pond.
There is lots of worked needed to clean things up on this property ... certainly one being around the edges of the pond. It will be very low ~ possibly even empty ~ by mid April, but then it will start to fill up again in July when the monsoons start again.





Another shot looking out across one of the neighbour's property.





And last but not least: our newly purchased Death Mobile.
I've been humming and haaaing over whether we should buy a motorbike for a number of years now, but we got an excellent price on this new 110cc Suzuki. Just as a Honda is a 'Wave', a Suzuki is a 'Smash'. Now isn't that just a fine name ... a couple of different letters and would be even better ~ not to mention ironic ~ i.e. a 'Crash'.

But whatever, saving 4000 baht by simply just purchasing it out in the boonies sounded good to me, so I sat around and downed four or five beers ... and bought it! I'd always hoped that, in retirement, I'd make 'spontaneous' my middle name. (Better than 'drunk' I suppose.)

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