diary

Building a House in Thailand: From Dream to Digging

My wife Pooky and I started thinking about building a house in 2010. Pooky has a patch of land in the rural outskirts of Bangkok, and it’s beautiful out there. In 2014 we investigated options for getting a house put on that land in the simplest way possible, since neither of us are very interested in construction or house design. The simplest option, I imagined, was a prefabricated house which arrives on a truck. I would point to where we wanted them to put it, have lunch, and come back to see it finished. However when we started investigating costs, we saw that baht-per-meter, prefab is a very expensive option in Thailand.

The next avenue was hiring a house building company. The way this works is by looking at a catalogue and some scale models, choosing the one you want, giving them some money, and waiting about a year for it to be built for you. We found a company that seemed reliable, and got to the stage of discussing with their architects how we would be customising one of the stock plans. However when we realised that we wanted some heavy customisation, including a separate building in which I could teach English and Reiki, we felt that working with their stock designs was too restrictive. And we also discovered that by desigining and building the house ourselves we could get even more for our money.

In 2015 an architect drew-up initial plans for a modern one-storey house with a flat roof and lots of glass that felt minimalist, spacious, and open. This was exactly what we were looking for. Unfortunately, when I researched the ecological aspects of the design, it became clear that in the tropics lots of glass means lots of heat passing directly into the house. It would act like a greenhouse, and would require massive amounts of electricity to keep cool with air conditioning. We were also put-off by the architect’s high fees, and so set-about desigining the house ourselves.

The process of designing the house made us consider what we actually wanted from the house. Through countless redesigns we arrived at a one-storey house design that would function well, only to change our minds and opt for two stories. We bought books of stock designs for two-storey buildings, which were much more varied than the ones presented by the house-building companies, and found one that we really liked. The blueprints for these houses are available, but given the their price, and the amount of customisation that we required, we ended-up finding a new architect who would take our initial concept and make a working house design out of it, including all necessary blueprints and structural calculations.

At this stage of the project we were already in 2016, and things started to speed up. The architect was free to devote all of his time to our projects, and after a couple of revisions we had the complete set of drawings in our hands. While I began drawing-up the model in 3D, we were also researching as best we could how to find a trustworthy contractor. We arrived at a long-list of five, which we soon reduced to a short-list of three. We met these three contractors once, again, and then suddenly we had got to the end of a meeting with a contract negotiated and an offer of his team moving to the site in three days if we felt ready. Three days!

Setting-up the site layout

The contractor came to the site for an initial inspection on October 30th, and on the same day the builders started setting-up their accommodation for the six months that they will be living and working on our land. They will start digging the foundations within the coming week.

How are we feeling about all this? One Thai word, ตื่นเต้น, covers it pretty well: nervous, yes, but excited.

My Diary

I’ve just made a change to this blog which means you can choose what you want to subscribe to. There are now four separate sections in the mailing list:

Diary
Journal
Technology
Photography

The diary is for general updates about my life here in Thailand. The journal is for deeper reflections about life, like this piece about losing faith. Technology and photography are self-explanatory. If you decide that you want to opt-out of any of these sections, just click on ‘edit your subscription’ at the end of any email that you receive.

We’re now in late June, which means all of us have been alive, every single day, for more than half of 2016. We will always be able to make more money, but we will never be able to make more time.

While I can say that I’ve spent a lot of time in stuff that wasn’t worthwhile, I’ve also had some great experiences so far in 2016.

First off, I was invited to be master of ceremonies for a TEFL conference in Bangkok. The invitation made me nervous, but I make a point of saying ‘yes’ to opportunities to practice my public speaking skills. Despite getting nervous every time, I really enjoy them. For this, I also had to learn how to be an MC, and I always like learning new things.

Second was my birthday. Pooky and I took a short trip to Kanchanburi, which is a beautiful part of Thailand that until now I have mostly ignored. It is most well-known for the bridge over the river Khwae¹The spelling Kwai is totally not how it is pronounced., which was built in World War II.

On the morning of my birthday I did some calligraphy by the river:

There are large national parks with waterfalls and caves to explore. And there are also some restaurants in town that float on the river:

Pooky enjoying fried fish in Kanchanburi

I whole-heartedly recommend Kanchanburi.

One more thing. For a few months I’ve been working on a new website for the National Library of Laos. When the site was completed, they asked me to go to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, and train their staff in how to use the site. I’ve never taught technology formally before, so preparing the course took a long time, but my heart was full of joy when I saw the library staff understand how to write updates and take control of the site for themselves.

outside the National Library of Laos, Vientiane

I had a wonderful week there. On the way back to Bangkok, since it’s the rainy season, we were treated with views of amazing cloud formations from the plane.

Day Two of Gruelling Liver Cleanse

I’ve never been interested in detoxes because I feel my body handles toxins well enough. It’s only because I’ve been going to a chiropractor, to address chronic neck tension, that I’ve reconsidered. This chiropractor believe that a congested gall bladder and bile ducts is directly linked to muscular pain and tension in other parts of the body. A series of two-day liver cleanses is the answer, he says.

I trust this chiropractor. Since my first visit the tension in my neck has dropped significantly, and I’m 4cm taller. My new posture feels strong and balanced, and this has impacted the way I feel and the way I relate to people every day. A physical adjustment has brought a clear psychological improvement. I’ve never felt so strong.

Before trying the cleanse I read arguments for and against it online, with a lot of people saying it is a complete hoax. So when I did it, it was because of my trust in the chiropractor’s expertise. And the first cleanse bought such an improvement. The tension in my neck was reduced, and subjectively I felt lighter and cleaner. After the second cleanse I started sleeping better, right through the night without any wakings.

If it didn’t help, people wouldn’t do it, because it’s gruelling. On day one you cannot eat anything with fat in it (which is harder than you’d think), until 2pm, after which you cannot eat anything at all. At 6pm you start drinking Epsom salts dissolved in water, which basically serve to give you diarrhoea. At 10pm you drink half a cup of olive oil mixed with half a cup of orange juice.

Yes, you read that last sentence right.

And now it’s day two of my third cleanse. Drinking the Epsom salts solution feels like drinking metal, and it makes me gag if I take anything more than a sip at a time. Glass number three is down. I have another glass to drink in one hour. At around lunch time I should have excreted a hefty amount of, well, crap, and will break the fast, and hopefully start to feel awesome.

Right now I feel weak, but strong enough to write. I feel proud of myself for making it past the toughest part of the regimen, and that I’m well on the way to completing the four to six cleanses that the chiropractor thinks I will need.

And I feel happy that I’ve done yet another whacky thing for my health, despite scientific evidence telling me it’s useless. I don’t have a strong enough interest in science to find out why the liver cleanse has such a profoundly positive effect on your health. The how doesn’t matter so much as the results. The same goes for Reiki. It may not work in the way Reiki practitioners say it works, but but I cannot deny the deeply positive changes it’s brought to my life.

It might turn out that mainstream science one day accepts our whacky alternative health techniques, but I’m not going to sit around waiting for that to happen. Health, like happiness, is not something you put off for the future.

If you’re interested, the regimen is detailed here.

fire power

Koh Tao is one of the best places to go in Thailand. I’ve been there several times, and although the trip from Bangkok is long and arduous, after I arrive I normally make the effort of crossing the island’s treacherous network of roads and tracks to the East coast, which has some isolated and beautiful beaches. This time, however, I was with my brother, and he hadn’t slept a wink on the overnight sleeper train, and so we crashed as soon as the catamaran had pulled up to the main beach. And that is where we stayed for five days.

I love this island. Even the most developed place still has a laid-back feel.

My brother and I have both transformed ourselves from pitifully weak swimmers into being able to swim a mile or two without any problem at all. I have to thank the TI technique for getting me to where I am now. The greatest thing about being here was being able to try-out this amazing skill away from the pool. (If you’ve never known the frustration of wanting to swim but being unable to, you may not understand how awesome it feels for me to finally do it well.)

On the second day we slapped on sunscreen, did a few stretches, and then donned our goggles. After admiring each other’s new strokes (he learned in England, I in Thailand, and we had not yet seen each other in action), then set out in earnest. Our destination: as far we needed to go to find some good fish.

I’ve never known freedom like this! We swam on and on, cutting through the water, not tiring. We saw a diving boat ahead and agreed to head for it. When we rolled-up, and then dove down, we saw why they had anchored-up here: we had found our tropical fish. Joy washed through me as I bobbed up and down with the small waves, soaking in the intensely blue water and pale sky.

Come evening, we feasted—as one likes to do in Thailand—and then found a cool beach bar. As we ordered our drinks, we got chatting to a couple of Australians. Settling down on comfy cushions spread on the sand, we enjoyed the fire show.

Of course, I couldn’t sit still for long. As the others continue the conversation, I tried out a new lighting technique. With the camera on a tripod, I triggered the shutter with a cheap infra-red remote control. The on-camera flash triggered a manual slave flash, gelled with +1 CTO orange, held by yours truly. I aimed this hard light directly onto the poi artist’s head.

You can see the difference between throwing some light onto the poi artist (the standout shot at the top of this post) and no light (these silhouettes).

thai national park

Rolling through the backcountry of North-West Thailand, my friend and I found this National Park just outside Mae Horng Sorn. We arrived just in time. All was quiet, except for the rain which came so quickly, and threatened to swamp the tent.

As shower became deluge, we tightened-up guy ropes, closed all zips, and settled-down for a very early night. In the sticky confines of a tent not designed for the intense heat and humidity of the Thai rainy season, sleep was fitful.

But like so many camping adventures, it all felt worthwhile come morning:

I captured an impression of the magic of this morning with a single raw file, which I treated to the HDR powers of QTPFSGUI’s Mantiuk algorithm.

(Be sure to click on the image to get a full-screen rendering.)

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