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Just what i was looking for

Cheap housing in Lopburi

When i arrived in Lopburi, i needed a place to stay within the means of our housing stipend. It wasn't a lot of money. My coworker showed me a place - a one room apartment in a concrete box 5 stories high called Moo Ban Somphanya. The room was a little dingy but the building was safe, so i went with it thinking that i would find something else later when i got to know the town better.
Well, months past and i got very use to this place - i can't believe it as i look back on that time that i lived so long in one room. For Thai people of course, this was not a problem. Young couples with a small child were living in the same size room in the building.
Interestingly, about a year and a half after i took this apartment and needed some plumbing work done and had to approach the owner. The apartment, I found out, was owned by a wealthy women who owned and operated the only fertilizer and pesticide outlet in town - interesting if you have read what kind of work i was doing in Lopburi. The story continues - she was murdered a month later and the reported motive was that she was a relative of the local MP who was not well liked. Intriguing. The gunmen were caught escaping on motorcycle but they were of course hired gunmen - poor people who needed money. While they went to jail, there families were taken care of - mabye - by the people who hired them.
But i digress.
When i decided to extend my volunteer contract for a 3rd year, i thought, i have to get another place. I paced the streets of the town looking for a house preferably with many trees and not too many dogs. There is no paper that you can go to when looking for this type of accommodation - you have to walk around looking, or know someone who knows someone. No one that i worked with who had that sort of influence understood what i was looking for. Everyone seems to think that i would want an A/C concrete box house in the burbs with tinted windows. I wanted something old and wooden.
I finally found one that was at the end of a quite soi. It was empty but i eventually found the owners and convinced them to rent it to my for not a lot of money. It needed serious cleaning as it hadn't been lived in for some time. It had a marsh on two sides of it, a wood lot on the other side and a neighbour across the street - virtually secluded! And it was close to downtown so that i could bicycle there if i wanted to. And it was surrounded by mango trees, a chumphoo tree, coconut, tamarind, and a few banana trees. It was so cool.

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Upstairs At Eric's

You have to understand - i was a volunteer. Our monthly stipend was paid in Thai baht and it was based on how much money we needed for basic day to day expenses. It was enough to last to the end of the month (some months were tighter than others). So i didn't have a TV, CDs, microwave, or other modern technology other than a small fridge, my little portable stereo and a shortwave radio. Life was simple - and i loved it. Outside of work I did a lot of reading and exploring.
Pictured is the upstairs of the house. It was one big room where i slept with two little rooms off the side (one a closet, the other a spare bedroom). At night sometimes it woud rain and sound of the rain hitting the tin roof was so loud, like thunder. It was a beautiful feeling to be in bed at night listening to that sound. After the rains would pass and the bullfrogs would emerge wailing their rubber-band-like call. If there was no rain, there were crickets to seranade you to sleep. During the day it got too hot to spend any time upstairs. The house had windows with screens in them so it cooled off enough to sleep very well at night (sometimes with the help of a fan). Sometimes the tukays residing in the house with me would make their 'tu-kay' sounds. I didn't like them or the sh*t they left behind, but their call was very cool.
Evenings in thailand are always long since the it is dark by 6 or 7 pm depending on the time of year. It was nice to set outside in the evening and sit on a lawn chair with a cold Beer Singh or Kloster and smoke an awful menthylated Thai cigarette (they grew on me) and watch the fireflies in the yard.

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Don't fall in.

The Thai Toilet

If you have been to Asia, chances are you have had to deal with one of these toilets. They make so much sense really. It's the natural body position to 'expel your waste'. A water jet to clean up afterward, and very little water used to flush 'er down.
I love the bathrooms. The one pictured is typical of rural homes. Water everywhere, no need to keep the floor dry - they are meant to have water splashed all over. Showers were taken by splashing unheated water over your head and body. This was hard to do on some mornings when the temps dipped below 20C - i would stand there holding the water bowl trying to build up the courage to dump it on my head. Temps in Lopburi were never terribly cold or even cool, and this 'problem' of cool weather only blessed us a few days per year.
I once had a foeign visitor that thought my water cistern (on the left) was the bathtub and climbed in.
At the end of September 1996, i found out why this house was vacant when i found it a few months earlier. The rains came and the water crept under the front door and soon reached the stairs. I came down the next morning to see my shoes floating around the room. i was able to continue living there, wading around in ankle deep water and showering while standing in a couple of inches of brownish water, but once the toilet overflowed, i had to find other accommodation for a short time. That short time turned out to be more than 2 weeks. I waited but the water level didn't recede. After that i left town for a couple of weeks - i figured that it was a good time to travel since i couldn't live at home.
During mango season (Feb-April) i was swamped and brought many of my own delicious 'mun' -flavour mangos to my neighbours and office. I ate sooo many.
I was able to get some bananas too but not many. I tried my hand at transplanting them too.
I was sad to leave this house - i loved it so much. But i was moving to Bangkok to another great house and a new and challenging job, so i was ready to move. When i went back to Lopburi to visit in the months and years after, no one had moved in as the flooding become worse and affected the structure of the house and made it unihabitable.