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

[adman5000]

Smiles - Thank you for taking the time to share this story of real life in Thailand. I always enjoy the insights into the life of Thai families but also think what a frustrating life it must be. No wonder there is sometimes a volcano simmering under that mai pen rai outward face. Add to that the drama and the bad habits of family members and I am sure it makes one appreciate a Thai with a decent amount of common sense such as the one you share your time with.

The country area has always seemed a nice place to visit but I would get bored out of my head staying there for any period of time. No wonder they need alcohol and weed. Fortunately I have always visited it with some good Thais and have enjoyed hearing their background stories, seeing the lifestyle and getting introduced to the simple pleasures. Interesting in small does, but I think I would have to be like you and live close to the beach and in a similar place where you have just about anything you need. I don't think I could take some of the personalities in Pattaya, both Thai and Farang. My dream would be some place more in the middle, not a overactive Pattaya, but not a too serene Hua Hin either.

Thanks for the post. B-)

[catawampuscat]

Smiles, thanks for the link. Well written and the photos really help too.

[morse]

I, too, have to jump on the kudos bandwagon, Smiles. It was a great read and interesting photos of the relatively quiet side of life in Thailand. I have often seen those kind of places from a bus window, but never have gotten off the bus. Some years ago I spent a long weekend with the then bf's family in Issan, but was overwhelmed by all the relatives and silent undertow of life in his small town. I couldn't have made the village my home under those conditions. I envy your situation.

[Dodger]

Smiles my friend, it appears that your new life in retirement, coupled with the serenity of Hua Hin, have unleashed your hidden talent for writing. What a great read!

Your story rekindled memories of the house Thep and I built in SiSaket which gave him a great sense of pride and provided us with a place to escape to when we needed a break from the flashing lights in Pattaya. I, for one, love being in the country, especially during holiday periods when there's some sort of celebration going on. I guess my eyes just need that extra visual stimulation (boys) regardless of where I am.

Phot looks great...haven't seen a picture of him in years. Enjoy your new house...transplant a few banana tees to provide some shade, and tell the family that your vehicle has a maximum capacity for carrying no more than 12 passengers.

Cheers

[Smiles]

" ... Phot looks great...haven't seen a picture of him in years ... "

Well Dodger, here's one from 3 or 4 years ago ... probably my all-time favourite. Taken at Baan Krut ... where we were just a week ago enjoying the pristine-ity of our favourite 'fuck-off-all-farangs' reasonably-undiscovered beach.
He's put on a few kilos since then (as have, unfortunately, myself) being a bred-in-the-bone aficionado of the most important (bar none) and strictly quintessential Thai phrase: one which sets aside politics, red shirts, yellow shirts, corruption, Buddha, the price of gold, The King, idiots-like-Neal, etc etc etc ... the attainment of, not enlightenment, but " ... good eat, good life ... ".

For me at least (and always acknowledging that we all hold our own personal definitions of desire) this photo is the epitome of 'Thai Manly Handsome'. And may well always will be. For me anyway, even if he kicks me to the curb.

I've always thought the Thais have got it right - what goes around comes around.

[newalaan2]

Smiles, thanks for the link. Well written and the photos really help too.

A great piece, as I said in one of my own observational posts this excellent post was responsible for my outpourings along similar lines. I see in drafts I did have a reply to this thread back in Nov, but for whatever reason..........busy with 'something or other' I suspect, I neglected to post it, so thanks to Cat for bumping this superb thread. The example to follow when composing a post of this type. Just wish I had the foresight, patience and skills to back up text with photos in mine, brings the post to life.

There must be more members/readers on this Board with similar experiences to post........if so please consider making a post on things outside the Pattaya/Bkk confines.......many of us here lap this stuff up! Guys like Bao Bao and Christian who have their own blogs, a duplicate piece here would not go amiss. There are many like me who simply don't have the time to go round all the blogs.

After this one I was hoping for more of the same from smiles at more regular intervals......hint hint ...I mean you ARE in Thailand on a full time basis aren't you? and therefore a vast amount of ordinary, mundane, wonderful experiences at your disposal to relay back, now more especially if you intend to spend regular periods up in Issan...... But no pressure though!

Good luck on the possible month-long stay up there, I am still in the 7-10 days max at one hit in Issan and I'm a country boy from the 'sticks' back in Scotland who feels perfectly at ease and relaxed when at bfs village, but as I am in 'holiday' mode after a while I crave just another kind of relaxation, be it beach, big city or fun/sin city. Mind you I'm like that at home too.

PLEASE keep them coming 'smiles'.

[rochanasaze]

Though I'm not really sure whether this write-up is meant for literary expression or a simple act of sharing one's story in a superfluous way, it makes for a good read. You should try to get published. This can be one of those slice-of-life short stories for Thai students trying to learn English.

[Smiles]

Wow ... where on earth did you find this thread? What were you looking for? I wrote it in 2013!

Well, while I'm at it, there was a denoument to the above story, so if interested I'll write here ~ in this old thread ~ for the newest regarding not one house but two ... also Karma, Luck, but thank god, no Death.

So this was the original plan (described in the opening post): to buy this house at a wonderful price (thanks Luck) and spend some time over the years to renovate it into a liveable structure. It needed a lot!

And this is that place, on one rai of land, out in Klog Charoen Village in southern Surin Province, fairly close to the border with Cambodia, deep in the heart of rice country:

Skip now to 2017.

On the right hand photo is the original house of which this thread (but not this post) was all about.

On the left hand photo is the house we ended up buying at the end of the day, four years later.





The original house still stands, but it's a bit of a mess, and we still are not sure exactly what we will do with it.

But the real story is the right hand home. Quite stately in a proletarian kind of way, it was built about sometime around 2015 by one of Suphot's huge tribe of nieces and her husband.
I had visited Klong Charoen many times . . . seen this house, had raucous Thai-style parties outside (and in) there, and even mentioned to Pot that this was a pretty damn nice house. It needed lots of renovations mainly for its ghastly tiling and paint work, but it had good strong bones. The parties were great, beer and whiskey flowing, morlum music ubiquitous and I made friends with his niece. She liked me, I liked her ... and that's important in my life.

Jump to 2016:

Lying around in our on-the-sea home in Hua Hin watching CNN and Trump spewing his 'anus horribilous' over everything he touches . . . and Pots phone rang. It was his niece, the same niece as above. The phone call was about half an hour and I was paying no attention. After hanging up I asked what that was all about. (He was always on the phone with his family.)

The conversation went something like this:

Me: "Who was that?"
Him: "That was my niece"
Me: Oh really. What about?"
Him: "She wants us to buy her Klong Charoen house?"
Me: "What? What? What? They just built it! How much?"
Him: "One million Baht"
Me: "Say YES, say YES!!"

And that dear readers, is the best way of buying a house. It turned out that his niece and her husband wanted to move to Bangkok and open a restaurant . . . myself pointing out that there is about 6 million restaurants in Bangkok made no headway at all, but after a few minutes of thinking I thought that here's the Perfect Storm: they wanted to open a business, but had no money. All their equity was in the house. So sell it. Sell it to us.
Back on the phone after another half hour we owned the house you see above.

Bottom line: we spent about half a million baht on the renovations. Pot re-tiled and painted the whole house in and out. I used a wheel barrow a lot! Here are some photos apre/renos. I love the place. The peaceful quiet out in the rice paddys is stunning in its own way.
We'll always live on-the-beach in Hua Hin. I love it there as well, the sea lapping at my toes, reading the hundred or more books I have on my tablet ... me and my "Leo yai", dropping into the only gay bar left in town and playing snooker with the boys there.

Our monster patio. I spend a lot of time out here and watch the huge bamboo trees dancing in the slow motion breeze.





Suphot and Mama.




Kitchen, laundry, our bar, beer fridge well filled.








Everybody happy ... ghastly shorts notwithstanding.


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[Smiles]

" ... But the real story is the right hand home ... "

Oops, I screwed up on an important point which may have any readers scratching their heads.
In the first photo in the above post ~ the one with a double image ~ shows our newest home, the one on the left, not the right.