Our house in Baan Sai Nam Yen
By the mid 80’s we’d moved away from the ever noisy party at Patong Beach to our little “waterfall house” in Baan Sai Nam Yen.
We had the first house just past the waterfall towards the Wat.
Our little place wasn’t much, a small kitchen, which we rarely used, a small livingroom, a nice bedroom with walk-in closet and the ONLY hot water electric shower in the village!
In additon, we had TWO water supplies, one, the local city water[which could and DID dry up during the hot months before the monsoon hit each year]and plastic tubing that the previous owner[Khun Char, the new F&B manager at the Patong Beach Hotel]put in!
Many was the time when we’d come home and fine the our dear maid, ETT, washing clothes in our front yard, our water never ran out, and others in the village were always welcome to use it as needed.
The house was put in Dang Valentines name, he gave us a so called “deed of use” which supposedly we could use it forever!
It was very nice living in the village, the neighbors were all kind to us, they watched out for us and our stuff even when we were gone.
We never had trouble in the village,cept for the occassional flooding of mud coming down from the steep mountain just across the street and filling our little place with mud and debrie several times per monsoon.
We tried to convince Khun Char[who owned the place behind ours]that if we just put a small cement drain about two feet deep across the front of our place and his driveway to the small creek that the waterfall emptied into and then to the rice paddy, neither of our places would ever get flooded or mudded out again. Even when we got the help of Dang Valentine and the Kamnan, it still couldn’t convince Khun Char that it was best for us all.
Naturally when the monsoon hit next week, it filled both of our places full of mud, but Khun Chars place was lower than ours, so his land/new house became a meter deep pond, while we simply put sand bags up against our front door and not much mud or water came thru this time.
Shots of our land in Karon Noi
With this impasse, however, we decided that it might be best to get that land we’d been looking at down just south of Patong Beach, south of Relax Bay, to Karon Noi, actually on the hill just behind the rice paddy on the extreme northern end of Karon Beach.
Our old friend Mr Sighn, Dang Valentines uncle owned the land, he sold it to a close friend of ours, Andy Anderson & his dear Thai wife Nan, who along with their daughter Nui would sell us a small plot, maybe a rai at most on a graded off area of the hill where we would put a small house!
All the papers and Baht were exchanged, we would have a common well with Andy and another owner who had already built a big house there, just higher up the hill than ours.
The other owner was a chopper pilot Gene and his wife Dara, they always owned a large Chinese junk type ship that they eventually took siteseers on short day trips usually not far, maybe from Patong Beach to Naiharn Beach at most.
Our land on Karon Noi. Simply ideal!
We liked the idea of moving a little farther away from busy and noisy Patong Beach, the construction was going strong and was almost none-stop, the few roads in Patong was always torn up with new water and sewer lines and it was usually a mess, often the torn up area in front of “certain” businesses[bars]would be quickly finished “if” the proper amount of gratuity were given, if not, there could be a huge 2 meter pit right in front of the foolish business that didn’t “understand” the way of getting things done quickly.
In the meantime, Andy had put up a little bar on the beach, just across the rice paddy/pasture from our land on a sand spit. We’d take the Spirit Of Patong down there several times per week, getting to know the locals, Mr Sighn had moved there after he’d sold Valentine Bungalow to Mr Bruce & Mr Bill and we met a few expats there also, it was a quieter area, but a few businesses from Soi Bangla had moved to the area also, our pal Khun Jek, from President Restaurant and the ever lovely Nina, who had a small dress shop in the area too!
Everyone land was in Andys Thai wife Nans& Nuis name, so it seem secure.
Andy had worked for years in Saudi, had many connections and Nan was muslim and she had even more connections! Andy was retired and Nan was hoping for a small “gift shop/bar”, Andy really got around, had many friends and his little shack on the sand spit an northern end of Karon Beach was sure busy for just a beer joint!
We wondered what it would be like to live next to a “giftshop/bar”, so we bought the land, but held off on putting anything up, until we saw where Andy & Nan werre headed with this deal.
The people above us in the big house were never a bother, the guy was often out of country working, the lady ran the junk with a small crew of “friends” and life seemed fairly easy in Karon in those days.
More pictures of our land can be seen on page two…
