An American in Asia: His Quest for Cosmic Truth (or at least a Decent Espresso)

 

Rich House Poor House

My Phuket dream house never quite reaches reality.

My fans and admirers may be aware that for the past year I have been funding the construction of a house on a hill on my tropical island of Phuket. Well, forget it. It's history.

As of this week, the developers are on their own and I am no longer dropping my hard-earned baht into their depthless pockets. Do I sound bitter? Hell yeah! However, I don't intend this to be a tirade against developers. It's a problem as old as time and there is little use in complaining about it. Instead, this will be a good ol' American rant about the wisdom of D.I.Y. (that's Do It Yourself to all you heathens who don't speak Americanese).

In fact, I have been party to the construction of two houses in Thailand, one expensive and one extremely cheap by international standards. Guess which one got finished, and which one now stands as a teetering monument to procrastination.

After eight-months-plus, here in Phuket our hundred-thousand-dollar aerie in the Neramit Hill development had well and truly stalled out. A builder friend from England took a look at the place and proclaimed he could finish it in two weeks. Yet, though the developer availed himself of my 10 per cent deposit, his contractors bailed and the house has stood in a state of near-completion for more than two months. The contractors had the unreasonable gall to expect payment, apparently, but the land owner was busy spending our money on other things.

So, I, standing on the bottom rung the capitalist system reserves for consumers, decided to stop holding up the ladder and this week I walked away (not without a signed agreement from Neramit that my deposit would be refunded by the end of August).

If you want to get something done...

Now eight months is a significant figure here. Over that interval I saw the Phuket house managed by professional developers, go from a concrete shell, to a concrete shell with a roof, walls and a smattering of tiles on a pair of future bathrooms.

A flat piece of ground at the end of a dirt road.

During an equal interval, I, a total house-building virgin, oversaw the transformation of a flat piece of ground at the end of a dirt road three hours from civilization, into a complete house with electrical and plumbing.

This house is the same size and quality as the Phuket property. Perhaps even a bit larger and better.

So how did I succeed where the Neramit people failed? You got me there. I don't know. I can only marvel at the amount of effort and planning it must have taken for the Phuket developer to fail so miserably.

In contrast to the total frustration of watching nothing happen on my erstwhile home in Phuket as the developer in charge spent his workdays in feverish bungling, the construction of the house in my wife's home village in the upcountry province of Chaiyaphum was nothing but fun.

The Chaiyaphum house after six months of work.

Even the couple of times when I had to go up and light a fire under a few asses, it was a blast to wrap my mind around the challenge of building a house in another country and another language. Despite the fact that I couldn't speak word one with the builders, with my wife as translator, a lot of gesticulating and little drawings on scraps of paper, I managed to get a high-quality 200m2 house built for a total cost of $15,000 including labor.

While neither my wife nor I have the desire to live at the end of a dirt road in the middle of nowhere (beautiful hills, picturesque rice paddies and a bubbling brook not withstanding), that house will serve me as a writers retreat and, more importantly, as a show of gratitude to my in-laws for raising such a lovely daughter (and giving her to me!).

In a country with no social security system for retirees, children are depended upon to provide for the comfort of their parents in their old age. So when a daughter marries, it is expected that the new son-in-law helps out the parents in some way. And what kind of monster wouldn't help in-laws in need?

What's next?

Now that I've abandoned the Neramit house, I'm grappling with the issue of my sudden freedom. I'm reminded of the Simpsons episode where the glass cage of an ant colony gets broken and the ants spill out screaming, "Freedom! Horrible horrible freedom!" It's a scary thing not to have a plan.

Though I know what I don't want to do. I'm no longer interested in investing in Phuket property. The island's time as a sound investment has passed. Land values are still rising, it's true, but if you ask the people doing the actual selling they'll tell you in whispers that no one is buying. Phuket realtors are well on their way towards becoming world-class thumb twiddlers. They ought to be ready for the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

In the short term, I plan to take a drive around Thailand. We'll hit Chaiyaphum for a stay at our finished house there. We'll hit Bangkok, Chiang Mai and probably trip over to Laos. I need to dip into Cambodia for a bit of research for my novel. Along the way I may dally for a month or three here and there and, who knows, if I find a place I like for the right price, I might take another stab at making a home.

But it will either be a finished house or a flat piece of land where I'll build one myself. No more developers between me and my home.