Things are moved in. Our few belongings are mostly consolidated in our bedroom, though some of our gear is in the Yellow Room (the 2nd bedroom), and my juggling stuff is in the Juggling Room. I’ve got to admit there is something ritzy about having a specialty room like a Juggling Room.
The house is about as close to perfect as possible, even if we weren’t factoring in the limitations of our budget. The large double-wide front doors are beautifully carved teak and there is a small eye tacked over the front doors to bring good luck the house’s inhabitants. As I write, gusts of wind rustle the thicket of bamboo on the side of the house next to our room. Despite being a minute away from the main road there is a certain feeling of isolation here. The place has the feeling of having been a home, but one that wasn’t occupied recently. There landlord’s tasteful and interesting decorations are still on the walls. In our bedroom there is a strip of old weather worn boards painted with figures kneeling in the grass. In the hallway there is a framed armadillo skin that I am admittedly quite fond of already. The juggling room is bare, as it should be. The decorative wrought iron bars over all the windows seem more like decorations then protective measures, though I have no doubt that they serve as both. Sitting at the large desk in our bedroom I can’t help but to think back to our original impression of the place. There was something fundamentally creepy about our initial visit. It seemed perfect for a writer working on his second novel to slowly and quietly go insane.
Finding this place was not as easy as we had hoped it would be, let’s be honest, what is? Kraum, our driver for the last couple of days picked us up and with a great amount of difficulty we were able to explain that there was one other place we wanted to see before we signed the contract for the place we saw yesterday. We had spoken with the landlords of the new place the night before and it was significantly cheaper than the other place. We were supposed to meet them at the house at two. We hadn’t gotten directions that night, because we figured it would just be easier in the afternoon, when we could let them speak to Kraum. However, every time we dialed the number we would get a string of gibberish and then an English translation, “the number you have dialed is currently not accessible.” Over and over the message came up.
We were already heading in the direction of Friendship Beach Rawai, but had no idea where the place actually was. Sitting up front with Kraum I tried to explain the situation. We stalled by stopping and buying Kraum a coffee. Finally we arrived along the main stretch of road near Friendship Beach, but we still couldn’t get through to the landlords.
It was tense trying to stall in that situation, especially because Kraum had seemed so adamant that we had gotten a great deal on the other house, the one Jackie mentioned as having a stunning view of the ocean. Frustration set in. It didn’t make sense, nor did it bode well that these people’s phone wasn’t working, but at the same time we felt a need to see at least one more place before we forked out 14,000 baht a month plus utilities for the other place.
Running out of options we had Kraum find an internet café. There was another number included in the landlord’s posting in the Phuket Gazette. We called it and someone answered! She spoke some English, but mostly Thai, so we settled the bill at the internet café and passed the phone off to Kraum. The whole way there Kraum was talking to her. We went down a dodgy hill and then started rumbling over some heavily potholed back alleys. To our left was the ocean, but what was really making an impression at that moment was the quarter mile of mudflats that mauled the landscape now that the tide was out. There was a great deal of trash and three dumpsters being rummaged through as we turned onto the street that the house was on. Kraum was obviously not impressed.
When the house came into view though, it was stunning. The heavy foliage and blossoming flowers that encapsulated the front yard were breath taking. The house, facing a half mile stretch of small shabby buildings each filled with aerated cement tanks, was chimerical. It seemed clean, dynamic, and interesting. There was of course the mutual feeling between Jackie and I about the place not being entirely safe. It was really the contrast between the place and its surroundings that made it feel so unsafe. There were the dingy shacks across the street, the dumpsters down the road, the mudflats, the empty swamp field with small tin roofed structures as if made for dogs or ponies, all these things were in contrast to the house, giving it an eerie unsafe atmosphere.
When Jackie and I first arrived and the landlord was still running thirty minutes late. Jackie and I found ourselves bemoaning the height of the wall and gate around the house, which only came up to your chest, hardly a protective structure. We felt that we were in a neighborhood that a place that looked this well-to-do and occupied by farangs would be an easy target for burglar, which happens more often on the southern tip of the island then other areas. Jackie was particularly hesitant about the place. She didn’t think she would be willing to walk around the area at night or by herself. That sort of situation creates a dependency that is very unhealthy in a relationship.
Even Kraum said the place was dangerous. In broken English he explained something about a Muslim being buried on the beach. He drew his finger across his neck as if to signify that the man had been beheaded. Our imaginations running wild, we began linking the three statues out front of the house, two tigers with heads and one unknown animal without a head, to something very sinister. With ample miscommunication Jackie and I were suddenly under the impression that, recently, a Muslim man had been slain and buried in this area. Kraum said he would show us. We hoped into his SUV and turned around. Slowly we crept past the rows of low-lying buildings and past the desolate sand field with the dumpsters. Kraum pointed at the walled in swamp fields, their tall grass reaching up to towards the tops of the small sheet metal roofed structures inside. Lots of Muslims dead here. He swept his hand over the whole area. He wouldn’t like to live here. Maybe us, yes; but him, no, no he wouldn’t live here.
“Pee,” he said in Thai moving his hands like jellyfish.
Ghosts? The area was full of Muslim ghosts? Well, at least we knew what he had meant by dangerous. Of course he wasn’t going to have to pay for the house, so avoiding the possibilities of ghosts for an extra 3,000 baht a month had to be worth it to him.
Later that day, after we had decided on the house, despite some reservations, I brought up the idea of buying a taser. I was worried about Jackie not feeling safe and I wouldn’t mind having it around either, despite the fact that they scare the living shit out of me. (After being hit with enough electricity to take me off my feet twice during my stay in Egypt I have developed a serious fear of electricity.) We should have felt thrilled, not only was the landlord very nice and genuine in person (over the phone it’s much harder to deal with people not speaking a language well, be it Thai or English), but she had actually dropped the price on the house for us from 11,000 to 9,000 a month.
But Kraum’s opinion of the place still lingered with us as did our own concerns about safety. Jackie was particularly unsettled about the decision. We were hungry and we had just dealt with Kraum. Our landlady told us that he was actually demanding that she pay him money for bring us to the place as if he was a house hunter instead of a taxi service. In many ways he actually was functioning as a house hunter, but we had hired him as a taxi. Originally we wanted to rent a car ourselves and just tour the island, but we had bumped into Kraum and he had talked us into letting him drive us around, all for a great price. So when we had worked everything out with our landlord and we were told about Kraum’s side hustle I felt a need to deal with it. We told her not to worry about him and that we would pay him. Of course we had no intentions of paying him the amount that he was probably demanding from her, but had been trying to scam us behind our back, which was probably why we hadn’t been able to get many of the other places we had looked at cheaper. The whole ride back I talked to Jackie with a bizarre rapid speech pattern so I could figure out exactly what we should do. I wanted to take care of the issue and not just ignore it and then have him harass us or the landlord. The entire way I went over what I wanted to say. I based my plan off of the section of Culture Shock that dealt with managing a business as a farang in Thailand. Direct confrontation is not done, nor is criticizing. So when we stepped out of the taxi I told Kraum:
“We talked to the landlady. You are our taxi driver so I will pay you. You are a very good driver, so thank you so much.”
And then I gave him 1,000 baht, 400 more than had been agreed upon for his services for the day. Even after talking with him I felt a little jittery, the prospect of conflict can really get me sometimes.
Jackie and I both a little unsettled decided to actually take the rest of the day off. We had been in Phuket for three or four days and still hadn’t jumped into the ocean or just relaxed and acted like we were on a holiday. We went to a restaurant by the beach and played some cards as the Australian Wallabies played New Zealand’s Blacks in rugby. My fried rice was hidden inside a pineapple, which was adorable and very confusing. (I had been worried that I miss ordered and had ordered an entire pineapple). We even got a couple of milkshakes. Afterwards we played in the ocean, Jackie got a new dress, and we returned to our room to watch a movie. It was exactly what we had needed.
There has been a lot of talk about the lack of safety of our place. What’s funny is that even now a day into living at our new place and with an understanding of what’s around us the place doesn’t seem so unsafe (perhaps still a great set for a psycho-thriller). The low-lying buildings with the cement tanks are actually part of a prawn farm! The graveyard is a graveyard and after talking with our landlords, who are very straightforward and honest seeming people, the surrounding area really doesn’t seem that unsafe at all. When the tide is up the ocean is beautiful and when it’s out locals are walking through the mudflats collection something or other. All in all, the place feels perfect for us.
Here is the long promised link the a photo album with pictures of the house:
I wouldn't say the house looks scary at all! It's beautiful! Still waiting on those firetruck pictures ;0) Love reading the stories, keep 'em coming!
ReplyDeleteWow! What a house! Michele
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