Building a home, Thai style!

 We are definitely starting from scratch....Tik's home, well I don't even want to go into his living conditions online pre-moi but I can say I would have preferred a tent in the forest compared to his diggs.

After days of cleaning and scrubbing, it turns out Tik had the foundations in place for what could be a beautiful home. With the right amount of time (of which we have little), money (of which we have none) and optimism (of which we turn to a lot lately) we are slowly tearing down old walls and building new ones, literally, roofs too!

Pictured left: Tik's traditional Thai toilet, a perfect example of a perfect fixer-uper. The flooring is nice; a thick marble tint slab and a foundation made of local stones and fossil shells. The new wood peeking out behind the decaying walls has already been installed, and the old 'blue' wood will be recycled into shoe shelves outside our front door. The shower head is easily replaced and while low on our list of priorities currently, we do one day plan on switching out that squat toilet for something more western-friendly....who knows when.

 We've started at the very beginning, building new walls and repairing a roof that suffered heavy damage after years of monsoon seasons. I'm currently hiding the uglier parts of our temporary roof with some of Tik's old sports team flags; this too will be taken down once the wood is painted and shiny! Our walls are bare, but they'll fill up before we know it!

Our home will also become the main office of our climbing shop, Tik is currently submitting the documents for a name and address change. Once our home/office front is set up we will have a presence on the mainland as well as Railay, which opens up possibilities for more marketing opportunities and clientele.

Pictured below left, is the view from the front door. Tik is busying himself being handyman and carpenter. In his words: "I'll do anything, but the electric." Tik had a bad, unspeakable bad, experience being electrocuted before (this explains his frizzy hair!) We have a pretty dodgy electric wiring system that needs to be replaced asap, but as it's the end of Ramadan holy week it's been a waiting game until the electrician is available for work.

I have always dreamed of having a Thai style sitting room/ lounge area...and while Tik and I made our first purchases on pillow sets and back rests, we're still a little ways off until I get my dream set, below right!  Tik and I dine like KINGS on the mainland, where we are saving 40% on food and up to 45% on rent since we moved off of Railay.  The menu last night: stir fried rice with tuna, spicy tuna salad chili dip, squid curry with red curry basil, some deep fried chicken on a stick with sweet plum sauce, and 'gow lao' a plain soup with beef broth, mushrooms, greens and boiled tomatoes....noodle soup minus the noodles.

 Here are the office pictures: our brand new beautiful sign and logo on the front door as well as its Thai version which will be installed on the shop walls in Railay.  The office space will moonlight as our kitchen in the evenings after work and a coffee corner for business meetings and clients. We have absolutely nothing installed for a kitchen yet, but hopefully in the next few months we'll be able to save up for some gas burner stoves and a sink!  (Since this photo, the metal monstrosity on the right corner has been removed and its items sit nicely on new wooden 'polished' shelves Tik installed last night.

Tik and I live in a nice, quiet neighborhood located just a two minute walk from the boat pier to Railay.
We are lucky to have friends with cars and motorbikes, which we borrow frequently as we do our mad sunset-runs to the wood working shops and home supply stored. Once we get off of work at 5 pm, we usually have about 2 hours of light left in the day to get anything done before we succumb to our hunger, feast, and pass out watching movies on my laptop.


I am slowly settling into a routine here. It fits. In the mornings we wake up at 7, and Tik is off first thing to the shop to open before 8:30 am.  I stay behind, run a load of clothes in the washing machine, tidy up the bed and the house, shower, hang clothes to dry, bag some meats/rice/curries and fruit in plastic bags to carry for lunch later on in Railay. I proceed to walk to the boat pier at 9:45, which allows me 15 minutes to enjoy a coffee in the pier while watching the busy morning boat traffic. On the way our neighbors are making papaya salad and pounding chilies in their massive mortar and pestles, and I shout out the local "Bang!" for greetings brother, and "Ja!" for greetings sister as it is the polite thing to do in these parts. And forget the Thai 'Sawasdees' in this part of town, I only receive and give the Muslim 'As salaam alay kum' which translates to peace be upon you. I get big nods and smiles of approval for those small gestures.

My boatman nods and smiles in hello, and I am happy to have recognized him! Tik has made special arrangements with individual boat drivers for our daily transfers to and from Railay, and I have a hard time keeping who's who straight in my head! I sip my 20 Baht Nescafe, no sugar, creamer only, and take a second to remark that I now have to take a boat to work every day.

Cheers,
from Real Rocks Railay :)