Room to Move

Tight quarters for two adults and a 15-year-old. I mean, this is it!

After 2½ years of literally stepping over each other in “the room,” it’s time for the three of us to stop living like we're in lockup.

The very next day after returning from four months in America, Lian and I begin checking into rental houses in the gated communities that ring Chiang Mai. Quickly we settle on a three-bedroom, three-bath place on the southern outskirts of the city, in the village of Hang Dong. (Official motto: "Stop snickering!")

So they loaded up the truck and they moved to ...

Lian hires a Red Car, which arrives on Saturday morning at 8 sharp. I'm certain that it will be a two-trip move, but incredibly our driver manages to cram the entire household into and atop his small covered pickup in under an hour. The driver lives in “Hong Doong,” as the locals pronounce it, and he knows the back roads that lead out of the city. Our tiny truck meanders through the almost-countryside before arriving at the back entrance of Koolpunt Ville 9, our gated community. We pass through two security checkpoints on the way to our new digs.

We have the truck unloaded just before 10. The entire move takes under two hours and costs 800 baht, less than twenty-five bucks, including tip.

---

Here’s what 15,000 baht (roughly $470) per month buys you in these parts:

---

In our rapture for this house, we might have glossed over a few realities – like the fact that we’re more than a mile inside the front gate and it’s another mile to the nearest supermarket, and I don’t have a car or motorbike. Which means our food options these last two days have been limited to the mini-mart around the corner and the community center restaurant, a 15-minute walk. (On the plus side, it’s a really good restaurant, and reasonable.) Our solution will be to hire a Red Car driver for weekly grocery trips to the Big C Market. Also, there’s probably a bicycle purchase in my near future.

I try exploring outside the gates on foot and end up getting hopelessly lost until an American expat gives me directions back to the compound. He even tells me about some local mates who gather for beers most evenings outside my mini-mart. (I’ve seen them.)

A sign we never saw in the old 'hood.

This is turning out to be a whole new slice of Thailand for me – heck, for all three of us. After years of living among the proletariat and navigating crumbling infrastructure, we’ve moved up to the middle class – to wide flat streets and late-model cars and people toting golf bags and walking their not-feral dogs. Will they accept us?

---

Sunday night I walk up to the restaurant for take-out and order a beer while I wait. Apparently "a beer" in these parts means a 1-liter bottle, and my order is ready almost immediately. So, glug-glug and into the night I go, toting bags of terrific food and feeling no pain. At the mini-mart I stop for bread and get to meet the Thai proprietor, who speaks better English than I do. We chat. His name’s Ed. Ed asks: “You like sausage?” It’s not a non sequitur question: on our first visit, our rental agent enthused about The Sausage Man in the neighborhood. “Want to meet him?” So Ed walks me outside to the beer-drinking fellows and introduces me to The Sausage Man, who’s actually a dude from Tacoma. Handshakes all around. And then somebody asks me: “Hey, are you the guy that got lost? Walt told us about you!”

I’ll join up with these fellows in a day or two, but now I need to take dinner home while it’s hot. I go back in and pay for my bread. Ed walks me to the door.

“G’night, Jeff,” he says.

“See you later, Ed.”

I think we’ll be fitting in just fine.