Our New Thai House
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Another great sunset
We’re very happy to have built this house facing sunsets over the pond.
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Our New Thai House Part 5 – The Blessing Way
The end of 2007 coincided with the milestone of 98% or so of the basic house being completed, so we decided to move in on New Years Day. We invited some monks for a blessing ceremony and they did us up well. It was the first time we were living in a new house. This coupled with the fact that we were one of the very first houses up in the neighborhood and hence kind of solitary made for a strange but very relaxing time coming home after work every day. I mean, in front of the house was our pond and around us was future house plots and rice…
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Home Alone with Max
The nanny took the day off today and mommy had a meeting from the afternoon, so MAx and daddy stayed home and played all day. The highlight if the day was letting Max eat yogurt by himself on the front porch and then hosing it off afterward. It’s been rainy recently but in between storms the sky can be quite dramatic. Here’s a couple shots from not too long ago:
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Third World Concrete Pump
That’s definitely footage from Thailand; that’s the distinctive paint job of a CPAC truck. We see this kind of bucket brigade all the time since they are building all around us.
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Our New Thai House Part 4 – Roof and Walls
The Our New Thai House series must be finished before the subject becomes Our Old Thai House! —————— By the end of this period in September/October of 2007, the house was 90% completed. In some of the photos above you can see a transformer box on the power pole to the right of the house. It took me considerable effort to get it moved from there, but it was of course worth it. Most Thais think its a non-issue, but after I campaigned to get it away from my house, nobody wanted it in front of theirs, either. We kept bothering and trying to bribe the power company to get…
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Our New Thai House Part 3 – Groundwork
Timeline: End of July to mid-August 2007 The foundations have been set to floor level (one meter off the ground) and are being extended to roof level. In this photo, our site is located at the four columns wrapped in wooden supports visible between the man in the blue shirt at the approximate middle of the photo and the first power pole to his right. The beginnings of our house. Notice the use of eucalyptus as framework; this is standard building practice all throughout Thailand for all types of buildings. In other Asian countries, they tend to use more bamboo but there’s not so much of that here. A couple…
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Sunrise from our back porch
Even with houses being built up all around us, the best views will remain.
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Sunset from our stoop
Sometimes the sky here is so pretty it can make you cry. Even Max loved this sunset.
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pink sky morning
The other day we woke up to a pink sky. Not just on the fringes, mind you, but totally and completely pink.
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View from our stoop
In an effort to destroy the cattails, because her son is allergic to the snowy fluff it produces this time of year, the development manager instructed her minions to burn them. On a windy day. With gasoline. Fucking oops. Nam says that once they realized the fire was out of control and blowing towards said manager’s newly-erected wooden houses (as in, houses she built to live in herself) they called out all the workers in shouting distance to form a bucket brigade. That had no buckets. Oops again. Luckily, the fire eventually burnt out when the wind died down. I just I wish I could’ve been here to see it…
