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We arrived as usual in the early morning hours; cramped, disheveled, a bit sleep deprived, yet as always, just glad to be home and back together again after a couple months absence by myself getting fixed up supposedly by the medical community in the US, and glad to be off the damned bus really. No matter that the VIP bus is a much nicer way to travel than the normal busses, it’s still a damned bus. Sis was there at the bus depot to pick us up in the new pick-up truck we had recently purchased from my wife’s brother-in-law the cop. After warm and affectionate greetings from Sis and look sow (daughter) we all piled in and headed to the new Surin domicile.

Now I had yet to see this place my wife had rented for us to live in while staying in Surin the next few years. We planned to stay in Surin while our daughter finishes her education, at least until high school, or through high school if the city of Surin educational system meets the needs for our daughter. So I was hoping, praying, that my wife had chosen something suitable where I would be happy as well as they. Sis drove down the sois away from the bus depot. I sat back and tried to relax, wondering where they had rented this time. We had been renting a house in Surin before which I quite liked. Sis drove down a few sois (streets) and there we were. I saw that our new home was a townhouse style on a block off the main soi by the government hospital. The neighborhood was nice and quiet, clean, and presentable. Every driveway sported a fairly new vehicle. It all seemed so middle class; this was not the village, no water buffalo and chickens and ducks roaming willy-nilly around here, no cocks crowing at four in the morning, no PA system with speakers attached to poles for the village boss’ morning diatribe and harangue. Not bad really.

Across the street from the house was an empty lot filled with trees and flowers and potted plants, and a picnic table, almost like a miniature public park. A house diagonally across the street had a small noodle shop and convenience shop and was surrounded by coconut palms and Papaya trees. I liked this already.

We unpacked the truck and brought our stuff inside the house while new neighbors watched and ogled the new farang in the neighborhood, the only farang in the neighborhood to be exact, before or since. I inspected the new place and saw it was laid out nicely, a decent sized kitchen in back with a bathroom and shower, and a back door leading to a small alcove where you could store stuff and where my wife had her washing machine set up, a large living room out front with high ceilings, and wooden stairs leading to the upper floor. Upstairs there were three bedrooms, two large and one small, and another bathroom with shower all tiled and with a proper western style hopper as well, the downstairs one had a squat toilet. The floors upstairs were all parquet wood. The place had definite possibilities with some new paint, polyurethane and some work. One bedroom had an AC, which it turned out was my wife’s and my bedroom. Cool. (I later had installed an AC in the other large bedroom as well.) For 2,500 baht a month (65 USD) it wasn’t a bad place at all. The lady who owned the place was a nurse who now worked in another city. Her best friend, a local high school teacher who lived next door was taking care of the place and had rented it to my wife on the recommendation of a friend of Sis who lived two doors down herself, and whose daughter was best friends at school with out daughter. They had become family friends with my wife and Sis. I met them all that day, and many neighbors.

It was a good choice, and our daughter’s school was not two blocks walk away as well. It had been earlier rented to nursing students for the nearby hospital, and the place was not being kept up and the owner lady wanted a responsible and decent family renting it who would take care of the place. The young nursing students weren’t the best of tenants in her mind, with young men coming and going, missed rent payments and late rent payments and all that which can come when renting to young students.

So here we were; the new tenants. I walked around the place planning my paint and urethane assault with the owner’s friend’s blessing and approval. The walls were sorely in need of paint, and no matter how much one scrubbed the dirt remained, or the cheap white-wash style paint itself would come off as well. The students had sticky tape everywhere on the walls where they had applied their posters and such, the beautiful parquet wooden floors were scratched and needed a couple coats of polyurethane after a good scrubbing to regain their former luster and beauty, as did the stairs and railings and banisters, nothing I couldn’t handle and cheap enough to do really. If we would be staying there for a few years I wanted it looking good and livable. I planned for what I wanted to do, discussed these things with my wife and Sis and found out there was a new store in Surin that had many of the things I’d need to do all this. Great! The day passed and soon enough it was time to get to bed.

We all said our goodnights and went to our respective beds.

(to be continued)

 

Cent
(The Central Scrutinizer)

 

© Written in the year 2000. All rights reserved by the author.