FOUND A NEW HOUSE (AND HAD ANOTHER ACCIDENT...)

I'll write more (and post photos) this weekend but I wanted to let everyone know that we've (finally) found our new house — a three-storey shophouse in Na Kok (นากก) village (moo 5) of Tambon Chalong.  It's in a very nice area with nothing but trees in the view across the street (I can visualize sitting on the balcony outside of the third-floor master bedroom sipping my favorite Tiger Beer while writing on the laptop.  Plenty of space on the ground floor for my wife's restaurant...

The price was right, too — 8000 baht per month; we paid a 10,000-baht deposit today and were given the keys and a hand-written receipt.  On April 1st, we pay the regular rent and receive the 10,000 baht back so it's like getting three weeks rent for free.  The building itself is just three months old but has accumulated a lot of dust in the time it's sat empty so I'm anxious to get in there and do some cleaning before we start moving stuff.  This afternoon, I also paid our last month's rent at Ananda Garden Hills and asked our landlord if we could buy the furniture from him but he said we had to leave our current house furnished as the day we moved in.

I'll post a selection of photos in the next day or so...

I'm very happy we found this house when we did as I was about to give up.  We'd spent A LOT of time looking and coming up rather empty.  We'd even begun to consider renting some rooms in a guesthouse on Nanai Road in Patong as a stopgap until we found something better.

Also, we were involved in an accident on the motorbike yesterday afternoon.  My wife was driving west on Prachanukhro Road in Patong with me sitting behind her on the bike rather than in the sidecar.  She turned left onto Thaweewong (the beach road) towards the Amari Resort going a bit too fast (it's a rather sharp turn made worse by the cones in the middle of the road placed there when Patong went to it's poorly-thought-out one-way routing system).  The sidecar wheel came off the ground and I could feel us going over.  Tim served back into the middle of the road smashing into the rear quarter-panel of a minibus (my right arm and knee as well as the handlebar of the bike took the brunt of the collision).

Of course the collision took place right in front of a grouping of the motorbike taxi-mafia guys so I knew immediately I'd be paying out a wad of cash as any accident is always the fault of the farang even when he's just the passenger.  The minibus driver actually knew Tim so we could have gotten off easy if it wasn't for the mafia guys who insisted that the police (whom these particular motorbike taxi's pay bribes to for their primo spot on the beach).  The taxi driver needed to save face so he suggested that he call his insurance agent and I agreed we needed to keep the insurance people happy.  Smiles all around until Tim took off to look for her friend who was babysitting Alex on the beach.  I started to walk up after her and the motorbike guys thought I was trying to sneak away and started making a big fuss and wouldn't let me walk too far.

Anwyay, eventually the insurance man showed up with a camera.  Tim was still off looking for her friend and son and suddenly the minibus driver didn't seem to understand English anymore.  The insurance man had a digital camera and began taking photos of the front of the minibus (the license plate was slightly bent but NOT from this accident as we only hit the rear of the vehicle) and small dents on the LEFT side rather than the RIGHT side.  At least the driver respected his friendship with Tim (he's somehow related to Jum) enough that he figured out a potential scam and directed the agent to the damage we actually caused (a three-inch dent and some scraped paint).  I tried to point out my spraped and bruised elbow and knee but he didn't seem too interested.

Tim arrived just in time for me to be presented with a bill for 4,500 baht which was a lot less than I'd expected (Tim's last accident had cost me ten times this amount!).  My wife tried to argue (in times like these, I question that she's really a Thai person as she can argue with the best of them — a totally un-Thai-like quality) but I soon quieted her down.  I did make the insurance man (not to mention everybody else) a bit nervous when I asked for a receipt and his card; I settled for a hand-written receipt and the minibus driver's cellular number.  Through it all I just kept smiling.

It just figures that this happened on the one day that I didn't bring my camera along...

I soothed Tim on the drive along the beach road; she was more worried about the money than anything else (why do these accidents always happen right after I transfer cash to put into our local accounts?).  She was very impressed with how cool I was during the entire situation particularly when the motorbike taxi guys began raising a fuss.  We've all heard about other farangs who don't stay calm in similar situations and really bad things end up happening to them (like death in a few cases).  You just have to understand the "system" and accept it when confronted with it; you don't have to agree with how certain things "work" but you must remember that we are still the "foreigners" and a minority of people will always try to take advantage of that...

LOOKING FOR A NEW HOME

With our lease expiring in early April, Tim and I have begun the search for a new home.  She never really liked our current location in Chalong and our recent water woes has led her into finally convincing me to relocate.  There are two other main considerations:

• My wife has long wanted to operate a small restaurant;


• Alexander doesn't have any friends to play with (nor is there much yard space to play in around our present house)

Because of consideration number one, we have been focusing our search to shophouses.  In such a building, Tim could have her dream restaurant on the ground floor which would save us having to rent a separate location for the business — in the process cutting down on having to hire security and also on commute time since we would be living upstairs.  Of course, this means that we would never be able to completely have a holiday away from the restaurant...  Most shophouses on Phuket are three storeys tall, although the second level usually consists of a half-floor overlooking the ground floor.

We haven't yet looked at any "traditional" houses but I want to show Tim a few before making any decisions.  My requirements for these would be

• a completely detached house (our current home is "semi-detached" meaning we share a long wall with one of our neighbors — there's a small sliver of land and a wall separating us from the other neighbor)
• at least a small yard on at least three sides of the house, complete with grass (a tropical garden would be the ideal)
• must have a large auxiliary water tank already installed in addition to a reliable water source

I really don't have any preferences for location on the island although, for some reason I'm not sure of, I have some sort of prejudice against living in Kathu.

Ironically, our favorite so far is a shophouse on the northern edge of Kathu, near the large open-air market.  It's a four-storey building with fairly large floors.  The ground floor is open with a bathroom to one side and a kitchen/washing area at the rear.  There are balconies along the back on the second, third, and fourth floors and along the front on the third and fourth.  The second storey indeed has an overlook to the main floor below but there's actually enough floor space to house an office or sitting area between the stairs and the overlook (the railing has yet to be installed).  The third storey is a vast open space with large restroom near the rear balcony; it would be an awesome living room and could even be partitioned into two (or even three) rooms.  There's a small bedroom at the rear of the fourth floor and the master bedroom occupies the front half with enough room in between for another living area.

There isn't a whole lot of development (yet) in this area of Phuket and both the front and rear of the house offers wonderful views of the surrounding mountains.  It's on a wide road; turn left and it's a fast way over to Phuket City, bypassing a lot of traffic while you can turn right to get back into Kathu and have easy access over "Death Hill" into Patong.  The price of 30,000 baht per month (approx. USD $880) does seem a bit steep but is still doable (I've seen a few three-storey shophouses advertised for 10,000 per month; we haven't yet looked at any of those).

Anyway, here are a few photos of our current favorite.  Click on the thumbnails to see a larger view.
   
The ground floor features a garage-door style front entrance.  There's a bathroom to one side and the rear area has space for a Thai-style kitchen along with a washing area out back.  There's a pedestal in place for a large water tank.

   
First photo shows the view from the edge of the second-storey overlook; obviously, a railing needs to be added.  I'm not sure why the three windows aren't centered or why they didn't include a fourth...  There's a balcony along the rear of the second, third, and fourth floors, overlooking the small washing area on the ground floor.

   
The stairways seem to be wide enough to carry furniture up (i.e., mattresses, bed frames, large bookcase, etc.) but it's hard to tell.  That's the one real disadvantage I can think of for moving into a shophouse — the sheer difficulty of getting our stuff up to the living spaces...

     
The third storey includes a nice balcony at the front (as well as one at the rear) overlooking the street.  I can visualize sitting up here just watching the traffic go by.  There's a bathroom towards the rear.  The large open holes can be filled either with cinder blocks or large plate glass windows (if it wasn't for the windy conditions during the rainy season I'd actually prefer to leave them open!).

   
There are two bedrooms on the fourth floor separated by an empty space.  We could see that the one at the front included a balcony.  However, the doors to both rooms were locked and a key wasn't available on our visit.  I think they both wrap around since the space in between is half as wide as the other floors.

 
The one thing I really dislike about this particular shophouse is the pink color of the facade (many, many shophouses on Phuket are also pink; I don't know why...).  I think they're going to put in a large plate-glass side door on the ground floor; I'd rather have it as a solid wall with a steel door for security.

Anyway, this Kathu shophouse is the current front-runner in our house search.  I think we'll be doing good to find something similar at a lower price.  We'll be looking over in Phuket City this afternoon (I quite like the areas near Sam Kong School and between Bangkok-Phuket and Vachira Hospitals.