House Hunting Sucks

OK, just returned from marathon day of house-hunting in Central Bangkok. Brain is aswhirl with information (and beer) and trying to process where exactly am going to live next year. Here are the contenders (in approximate order of possibility so far).

1 USD = 35 Thai Baht

BTS = the sky train (the only thing that separates Bangkok's traffic from Jakarta's)

Mike and Meow's Thailand in the Raw (30000B/mo): Lovely, 3 bedroom place that you reach by walking through a market in a very Thai neighborhood. Huge balcony, cat friendly. Has the most soul of the contenders. However, lacks a pool and is a 20 min. walk from BTS. Still. Still. Love it. It would be a rad hash house. Though possibly an overlarge one for a hasher who is rarely home.

It has a balcony frequented by hummingbirds, and would therefore be Durian's first choice (if I was letting him pick).

The Royal Place II (30000B/mo): 2 beds, 2 baths, trippy atrium cum pool thing, running track, and so close to the BTS you could practically somersault out the door and hit the steps. Can't get more downtown unless you're living in a loft above Siam Square (and who wants that?)

If you stick your head REALLY far out of bedroom two, the view is great!

The Royal Place I (22000 - 28000B/mo): My lovely colleague Heather (from Olmsted Falls, we were probably in Elementary School together) lives here, and her apartment has a sweet-as view of the Bangkok Raceway. I have looked at 12 apartments in this relatively empty building, most of which had views of the construction next door. There are two on the 22nd floor that I like because of the views, and the price is pretty good.

I looked in six of the twelve apartments during a 10 minute mad dash through the complex. I was on my way somewhere else when the receptionist handed me an envelope full of random keys. When I started to take them out, she freaked, and said the security cameras were watching. Still trying to figure the logic of that out. Anyhoo, apartments were every style from mod to Southwestern to freaky deaky with frosted glass doors with water fairies on them (whoa!). Some of these would need a really fantastic housing market to be viable candidates -- unless there's someone (like me) around who will almost rent them for the craptastic factor.

My big thing against this place -- the pool here is in a quonset hut and looks worse than the one at the tuberculosis sanitorium in Kyrgyzstan. The one where they made Jenny and me swim with shopping bags on our heads. I'm serious.

Boss Mansion, Ekkamai (15000B/mo). The place is actually pretty cute! It's in Ekkamai (which is basically the Columbia Station of Bangkok, way out at the end of the BTS line), but the apartments were fairly spacious and done in the style of early American bowling alley. The balcony was PHAT! It had its own bathroom, which I found special.

However, if I live this far out, I might as well live in Nonthaburi (where I currently live in suffering, far, far from the action).

Diamond Court, Phrom Phong (30000B/mo): It's perfect. It has everything. It has a little putting green indoors, a fully equipped gym. A lovely pool. It has a yoga studio and masseuses on site. It's a six minute walk to the BTS station.

I have my own theories about why I don't like it (besides the general air of boredom that hangs over Phrom Phong). It was the only one shown to me by a big corporate realtor, and she was clearly an anti-cat realtor. She was keen to take me around for the day, until I mentioned I had a cat. Then she decided she could only show me one property (this one, because all other properties in Bangkok apparently hate cats), and that even then, I would have to "hide the cat, like in a bag" if I was taking it out, and that even then, "it needs to be a little cat." WTF? Aren't cats the same size, relatively? They're not like dogs where you have Chihuahuas and Great Danes and everything in between.

El Patio, Phrom Phong (20000B/mo) -- Hash friends of mine, Ron and Martha, have a really cute one bedroom place in this southwest style condo. Was very keen to get the same for myself! However, since this place is so popular, only thing they had empty was a bizarre 2-bedroom apartment with views directly into the parking garage. Apartment had no kitchen to speak of. The refrigerator was on the porch, which could only be reached by walking through the master bedroom.

What's the point of 2 bedrooms in a place like this? Why not knock out all the walls and make it a studio? Is this place intended for people who take their kids to McDonalds for every meal?

AND A FEW I HAVEN'T SEEN YET, BUT INTEND TO:

The Religious Guy's House (14000B/mo): This is my absolute favorite. Found the ad on Craig's list and answered. This is his response to me:


Thanks for maling me about my house, I am currently on a mission to South Africa,Central Pretoria and I came down here for a missionary purpose,I need a Clean and upright person that will be able to take good care of the house and the person will make a payment of THB 14000 Per Month, please be informed this initial deposit will be deducted from the house rent. An apponitment date will be agreed upon between us, this appointment day is day in which i will instruct someone to come and take you down to the apartment so as to give you the keys and all necessary documentation via DHL Company which you will be keeping in your possession as the true occupants of the apartment as soon as the payment is been confirmed.We don't know when we are going to return to Thailand and from the look of things, me and my wife has decided to stay in South Africa for sometime so as to help spread the word of God; we are looking at a period of 5 years, so get back to us as soon as possible so that we can agreed on a date you will be checking on the place, so please below are some certain information which you will be providing us.And here is our apartment Below.The keys and the documents of the apartment .

Address..
Sukhumvit Suite,Soi 13, Bangkok 10110, Thailand

APPLICATION FORM
1)Your Full Name
2)Your Full Address & Phone Number
3)How old are you?
4)Are you married?
5)How many people will be living in the house?
6)Do you have a pet?
7) pets are allowed
8)Occupation?
9) how long are you willing to stay?

please the package that will be given to you will contain the following
1) Entrance and the rooms Keys
2) Paper / Permanent house form (Containing your reference details)
3) The house documetary file.
4) Payment Receipt...
5) Full address and description of the house. So please let me know if this is okay by you so we can proceed

God, is like trying to visit someone in the CIA safehouse just to have a look! I might give this one a total miss. You're not supposed to deal with out-of-country owners (specific warning from Craig's list - first sign of a Craig's list scam).

Also, am single girl -- not sure holiness of the house would be preserved and reverenced at all times. Can't make promises. Nope.

Penthouse on the River (25000B/mo) Again, this one is so underpriced, you wonder if it's a scam. Still, want to have a look, as really fancy living in a Riverside Penthouse. Waiting for owner's daughter (who has the melodious nickname of NART) to call me back. She speaks no English, by the way. Should be interesting. Instead of Riverside Penthouse, will end up living in Riverside dumpster with cardboard roof.

ARGH! Overwhelmed by complexities of real estate. Going to have another beer and fall into bed, and hopefully dream of the perfect house (which I have not seen yet).

Red Shirts, Yellow Shirts

Hey, All! Sorry I haven't been blogging much lately because for awhile our internet was dicey and Blogger was slooooowwwww . . . but since we've had so much excitement lately, I'll put a few pics up . . . (In case it wasn't obvious, none of these are taken by me! They are mostly from the Bangkok Post).

I won't even begin to try to explain how Thai politics works (not that I ever probably could, as a non-Thai person). Basically everything going on now has to do with Thaksin Sinawatra (click here for more on him). He's the prime minister who was deposed in the 2006 coup, convicted of fraud and now lives in exile in the UK. He's trying to return to power by any means possible.

So the YELLOW SHIRTS (PAD) are anti-Thaksin supporters, and the RED SHIRTS (UDD) are the pro-Thaksin supporters.

Yellow shirts take over the airport, December 2008

Passengers Stuck in BKK, December 2008

On April 8, 100.000 Red Shirts gathered in Bangkok to demand Abhisit's resignation, camping out at major intersections and bringing traffic all over the city to a grinding halt. In a feat of genius, Abhisit declared April 10 a "National Holiday" (but I still had school, meh!).

On Friday, I was headed downtown to the hash and got off the Sky Train at Victory Monument (one of the big protest venues). I walked around in the sea of red shirts and listened to a couple speeches (they were all in Thai, but the zealous reactions of the crowd were funny/disturbing to watch). It was a county-fair atmosphere with vendors selling food and tons of red-shirt wear (I bought a couple T-shirts for my Dad and me). Everyone was very smiley and helpful to me, though I was obviously a rubber-necker and not even wearing a red shirt!

The next day, the protesters headed down to Pattaya to protest the ASEAN summit. Coincidentally, I happened to be headed down for a hash in Pattaya. I went out and got in a taxi to go to the bus station, and the driver said that all the bus drivers had gone down to join the protest (he was right, as it turned out). So I ended up taking a bus from the middle of nowhere, where the drivers were still working.

There were no apparent problems in Pattaya when I arrived - just tons of police standing around.

However, while we were out in the woods having our run and our circle, all hell broke lose in Pattaya. The red shirts attacked some "Blue Shirts" whom they claimed were government supporters, with molotov cocktails and firecrackers. Then they marched to the ASEAN summit hotel, smashed through the lobby windows and occupied the hotel. For video, click here and scroll down. Abhisit declared a state of emergency and called in helicopters to evacuate himself, followed by leaders from Japan, China, Australia and India.

When we got back to Pattaya around nine pm, everything was quiet again, and life was going on as usual. Apparently all the Red Shirts have come back up to Bangkok. No one knows what they'll do next.

Thaksin called in to a Red Shirt gathering around midnight, basically to egg them on to cause more trouble. Grr.

So not the greatest of times in Thailand, but we are all fine and foreigners are not targets of any of the issues, although we've been warned not to go out wearing red for awhile (LOL!)

For the latest news, read the Bangkok Post online.