More on the house thing

Last night myself and Nuth were sitting eating our evening meal in the garden, Nuth glances over at the brand new house that has just been finished across the street and says ‘We not need big silly looking house like that, we only need small house with place to sleep, place to cook and nice place for you to work’. I agree with her, she’s a sensible sort with money, I guess 20 years working on a rice farm and in a factory for less money a day then most people in the UK give their kids as pocket money would do that to a person.

Now she’s being very clever here, she knows I am suffering terribly with my current ‘office’ it’s just so damn hot upstairs in the daytime I have to work in the evening or at night. The addition of the ‘nice place for you to work’ was as good a marketing ploy as any that Coca Cola ever dreamed up.

She fills me another plate of food which I realise with something like an audible click in my head is full of all my favourites. Here it comes I think to myself, something is going on here. She passes me the plate and casually asks me ‘You still like live Phangan? You not go swim for long time or go holiday, you stay house and work, Phangan expensive for just live and not holiday, much cheaper live Surin, you not have to work so hard then’. She’s being really clever now, she knows I’m getting pretty sick of working 10 hours a day or more for the peanuts some of my clients are willing to pay.

I have to admit I’m smiling about this, she’s much more clever than most people would ever give her credit for, she’s worked this all out on her own, I certainly have never complained as I am happy living here even though it’s hard work at the moment. But this smart woman has noticed I’m no longer having the fun I used to when I didn’t need to work every day and she’s trying to find a way to help out.

So I’m chewing my food and waiting for the punchline, she hasn’t presented these two very well thought out arguments for no reason, something is coming next and I’m sitting waiting to find out whilst trying not to smile and give the game away that I’m onto her. I don’t have to wait long, a few minutes later she tells me ‘Me speak Papa today, me tell him you think about build house Phangan but not have money for buy land yet, must work to save it. Him say him have land in Surin can use to build house no problem, him not farm for long time him old now’. So there we have it, the entire piece of extremely well played maneuvering was to try and broach the old subject of us moving to her village in Surin.

We have talked about this before and I always told her sure, we can do that, but not until we are both sick of Koh Phangan, when it’s turned into something like Koh Samui we depart. The plan was to buy land here, live on it for a few years then sell it at a profit and go up country. But I’ve realised she is completely right in some ways. Koh Phangan is a fantastic place, I love living here but in truth I just don’t have the time to enjoy it like I used too, I’m having to work hard as I am living in one of the more expensive places in Thailand, it’s a catch 22 really. So she’s played this hand of cards, she’s pretty much saying we have two choices. Stay here a few more years, work hard and enjoy the place when we (I) have time or move to Surin now, build a nice house with a lot more comfort (thing’s like air conditioning for my office) and live a little more easily.

So I just had one question for her in the end. I asked her if we leave Koh Phangan then I won’t be living near the sea anymore and I like living near water (being a Pisces does this I reckon, probably why I spent a year living on that boat) can we dig a big lake next to the house? She says yes, no problem, can even eat the fish.

So that’s it really, we are now starting to think about leaving the island and setting up something more permanent in Surin, of course there is still the problem of money but things are cheaper there by far. The fact the land is coming pretty much free (need to clear a £500 debt on it) means I only need around £10,000 to build the house, a much more manageable figure, 6 months hard work can probably bank that for me. It’s laughable really to think I can build a house here for less than I can buy a medium sized car in the UK.

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