Thai Housing Developments Like Uk Council Estates.

[richb2004]

Sometimes living on a Thai housing estate is a lot like living on a council estate in the UK: we have folk speeding through the <1km long residential road: we have children driving scooters like delinquents: we have noise from thumping bass overdosed stereos: we have dogs barking unchecked: we have houses that slowly change from white to black and rarely back again. On top of this we have many of the Thais taking part in some silent competition to collect the most junk on their drive. The estate started of looking great, with a nice swimming pool a small gym and very nice houses, but has deteriorated since.

I guess that’s just the way it is in Thailand, LOS. I’ll put it down to quirky cultural characteristics.

Before you say it, I know I should just go home.

I’ll get my coat.

[plachon]

Sometimes living on a Thai housing estate is a lot like living on a council estate in the UK: we have folk speeding through the <1km long residential road: we have children driving scooters like delinquents: we have noise from thumping bass overdosed stereos: we have dogs barking unchecked: we have houses that slowly change from white to black and rarely back again. On top of this we have many of the Thais taking part in some silent competition to collect the most junk on their drive. The estate started of looking great, with a nice swimming pool a small gym and very nice houses, but has deteriorated since.

I guess that’s just the way it is in Thailand, LOS. I’ll put it down to quirky cultural characteristics.

Before you say it, I know I should just go home.

I’ll get my coat.

I sympathise with you mate, but just wondering: instead of going "home", why don't you just move? Living on a Thai housing estate is not an inevitability, like living in a condo - it's your choice. Sometimes, I'm not surprised that they all take a running jump over the balcony, when they didn't even have the gnauss to come down to earth the easy way and move in to a beautiful house upcountry for half the price. Still leaves plenty of choice for the rest of us.

Talking of council estates, the biggest and ugliest of the lot of 'em is called Muang Tong Thani. Anybody live there? How the hel_l do you manage it? Would love to know. Even my daugher points to it from the Expressway and says "Daddy, there's the termite colony".

[chippie]

I've got an old tuk tuk you can put up on bricks in your drive, some old pallets to make a fence, half a honda wave to not fix on your kitchen table and hey presto! you're intergrated.

[Thaipwriter]

A negative but stunningly accurate assesment of the possibilities of "your" home being actually worth more that you paid for it in 2 years time.

In Thailand property aint worth 5hit, unless your neighbours are all farangs

[penzman]

We had demented kids popping wheelies and going up to 4 th gear between speedbumps while small children are playing in the park. Drove me insane for a while but surprise surprise! That family was only leasing the new house they were living ( and destroying) in and were told to move on!

There's still a few rat-like dogs to send to Laos and the local repairman's pile of junk around the corner, fridges, scrap metal to weld together in the wee hours.

I get along well with the neighbours, happy here.

[naka]

Just wait till they start dumping their garbage over your garden wall

while you're out !

Naka.

[skylar]

There are many similarities between Thailand and the UK, not just the housing estates

[penzman]

Just wait till they start dumping their garbage over your garden wall

while you're out !

Naka.

They have to get past my dog and the 2 other soi dogs that decided we own them, better be quick!

One of them so far has gutted a Shitzu, crushed a kitty's spine and saved a chicken from ending up on a barbecue by eating it first, feathers and all...

The plastic bags make it to the car park on their own.

[richb2004]

Sometimes living on a Thai housing estate is a lot like living on a council estate in the UK: we have folk speeding through the <1km long residential road: we have children driving scooters like delinquents: we have noise from thumping bass overdosed stereos: we have dogs barking unchecked: we have houses that slowly change from white to black and rarely back again. On top of this we have many of the Thais taking part in some silent competition to collect the most junk on their drive. The estate started of looking great, with a nice swimming pool a small gym and very nice houses, but has deteriorated since.

I guess that’s just the way it is in Thailand, LOS. I’ll put it down to quirky cultural characteristics.

Before you say it, I know I should just go home.

I’ll get my coat.

I sympathise with you mate, but just wondering: instead of going "home", why don't you just move? Living on a Thai housing estate is not an inevitability, like living in a condo - it's your choice. Sometimes, I'm not surprised that they all take a running jump over the balcony, when they didn't even have the gnauss to come down to earth the easy way and move in to a beautiful house upcountry for half the price. Still leaves plenty of choice for the rest of us.

Talking of council estates, the biggest and ugliest of the lot of 'em is called Muang Tong Thani. Anybody live there? How the hel_l do you manage it? Would love to know. Even my daugher points to it from the Expressway and says "Daddy, there's the termite colony".

I would move if circumstances were different. I don’t rent the house; I had it built and paid for it with my hard earned cash. I put a significant amount into it and I don’t think that I would make it back, especially with my current neighbors.

I bought the land some years ago after searching around for a ‘nice’ development. Looking back I was a little naïve. I saw many established estates that were full of dirty black houses with over grown gardens and plenty of noise. I didn’t want to move on a place like that. I found this one, which at the time was a brand new development. The land was a little more expensive than lots of others we looked at. The houses were all fairly big and brand new. I checked that there would be no stray dogs allowed on the place and no vendors. The answers seemed positive. I figured that there would be a good class of Thai on this estate (ha, ha!). The estate looked fantastic at the time: swimming pool, small gym, shop, small pond area and very nice looking houses.

What I didn’t figure at the time was that the dirty houses on the other estates were probably the same as the houses here just a few years ago. Little did I realize that in time it seems most Thai villages go quickly down hill. We don’t yet have any stray doors at all but we have plenty of dogs barking in gardens all day. I have also noticed one or two vendors sneaking into the estate. I can only envisage it getting worse.

The worse thing about it all is that I feel completely powerless. In the UK I could report the speeding drivers to the police and ask the neighbors to pipe down. I don’t think that there is such a thing as noise pollution in Thailand. Noise is a way of life. I am sure that they would be bamboozled if I commented on their noise.

Looking back I think I should built on a similar place but with majority ferang occupants. At the time I was perfectly happy to live in a 90% Thai estate. I would now advise anyone doing it to think twice.

I must now consider what to do next. I feel that the longer I stay the less my home will be worth, as the surrounding Thai homes get blacker and messier and more barking dogs appear. I cling to the hope that since it seems Thais are oblivious to noise and mess it may not affect the chances of selling the house, as long as the buyers are Thai. I would however prefer to stay in this house, as I have put time and money into making it comfortable. The other option is to condition myself to the Thai ‘mai pen rai’ attitude. I may have to go for a partial lobotomy.

What is amazing is that my friends that have visited always comment on how quite and clean this estate is compared to their own. The experiences they describe to me of their estate in Bangkok are incredible, and enough to put anyone of Thais for ever.

[Thai Chi]

Sometimes living on a Thai housing estate is a lot like living on a council estate in the UK: we have folk speeding through the <1km long residential road: we have children driving scooters like delinquents: we have noise from thumping bass overdosed stereos: we have dogs barking unchecked: we have houses that slowly change from white to black and rarely back again. On top of this we have many of the Thais taking part in some silent competition to collect the most junk on their drive. The estate started of looking great, with a nice swimming pool a small gym and very nice houses, but has deteriorated since.

I guess that’s just the way it is in Thailand, LOS. I’ll put it down to quirky cultural characteristics.

Before you say it, I know I should just go home.

I’ll get my coat.

Sounds like a nightmare situation you have ended up in rich

I guess the old saying "when in Rome......." dosent apply here.

Where are you actually residing?

[daleyboy]

I feel for you Rich. I had a problem with a dog barking all day everyday in the U.K, one phone call to the dog warden problem gone.

It had got to the point where i had purchased some rat poison and was all ready to go round and give my friendly little yapping mutt a good dose laced in a bit of beef.

Now dont get me wrong i love dogs but when you work different shifts, the last thing you want is a dog barking at 4am or 11pm for 2 or 3 hours at a time, and this isnt even on a council estate, this is a middle class normally quiet estate.

This barking had gone on for over 6 months before i found which house it was coming from. As 2 rows of houses face each other down a grassed pedestrian area it was echoing and very difficult to locate.

Anyway what i am trying to say is the dog problem is easy solved with a bag of rat poison and a few cheap bits of meat.

As for the neighbours well i cant really offer any suggestions, i know if i had these problems in the U.K, i would simply go round to their house and tell them to wind their necks in, but somehow i dotn think this approach will work.

[richb2004]

I am close to Rayong.

To be honest the main problem is my neighbors directly across the road. If I came across them in the UK I would call them gypsy’s, but here in LOS I think they are nothing unusual. They have countless broken and extended family members living in the house, as well as many Cambodians and Laos people living there to help with their junk business. This they store in the garden and inside the house. They also have a car and four pickups parked up, and coming and going, collecting and delivering junk.

The other neighbors contribute with their barking dogs, high speed comings and going, blackening houses and lesser clutter collections.

Streets full of children don’t help the situation. Thais seem to avoid taking control of their kids at all times. The parents will happily sit watching as their offspring shout, scream and generally cause chaos without making any effort to rein them in a little. All kids make noise, but normally parents have some respect and consideration for those around them.

I lived on an ex-council estate in the North East of England for 5 years and to be honest the people took more pride in their homes and didn’t make anything like the noise the Thais make. When I had problems with barking dogs in the UK I simply went to the owner and ‘kindly’ asked them to sort it out. With stray dogs I called the warden. There were one or two broken down cars on our road in the UK. It was simple to call the DVLC and report the car as having no TAX: problem solved.

Here in Thailand I have no such powers. It should really be the responsibility of the estate management, but I am sure they are oblivious to excess speed, noise, mess and barking dogs.

We were at Koh Chang for the past week. There we were kept awake every night by a barking dog somewhere near the hut. Eventually I got out of bed one night and gathered some rocks together. I then searched until I found the dog and pelted it. It did the trick, but should not have been my job. It wasn’t a cheap hotel. I then returned home to Ban Chang and at 1am I woke to the vibrations from someone’s stereo. I don’t actually think it was from the surrounding houses. It was either from the next estate across or from a car on the road half a kilometer away!

I think it all comes down to the ‘mai pen rai’ culture of avoiding confrontation and the hesitation to complain or raise ones voice in objection. This combined with the inability to take responsibility make European standards difficult to obtain.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to live on a real Thai village, with the chickens, temple dogs, street vendors and loud speakers. I am sure for some that is the definition of Thai life, but it’s certainly not for me. Each to their own.

[plachon]

I am close to Rayong.

To be honest the main problem is my neighbors directly across the road. If I came across them in the UK I would call them gypsy’s, but here in LOS I think they are nothing unusual. They have countless broken and extended family members living in the house, as well as many Cambodians and Laos people living there to help with their junk business. This they store in the garden and inside the house. They also have a car and four pickups parked up, and coming and going, collecting and delivering junk.

The other neighbors contribute with their barking dogs, high speed comings and going, blackening houses and lesser clutter collections.

Streets full of children don’t help the situation. Thais seem to avoid taking control of their kids at all times. The parents will happily sit watching as their offspring shout, scream and generally cause chaos without making any effort to rein them in a little. All kids make noise, but normally parents have some respect and consideration for those around them.

I lived on an ex-council estate in the North East of England for 5 years and to be honest the people took more pride in their homes and didn’t make anything like the noise the Thais make. When I had problems with barking dogs in the UK I simply went to the owner and ‘kindly’ asked them to sort it out. With stray dogs I called the warden. There were one or two broken down cars on our road in the UK. It was simple to call the DVLC and report the car as having no TAX: problem solved.

Here in Thailand I have no such powers. It should really be the responsibility of the estate management, but I am sure they are oblivious to excess speed, noise, mess and barking dogs.

We were at Koh Chang for the past week. There we were kept awake every night by a barking dog somewhere near the hut. Eventually I got out of bed one night and gathered some rocks together. I then searched until I found the dog and pelted it. It did the trick, but should not have been my job. It wasn’t a cheap hotel. I then returned home to Ban Chang and at 1am I woke to the vibrations from someone’s stereo. I don’t actually think it was from the surrounding houses. It was either from the next estate across or from a car on the road half a kilometer away!

I think it all comes down to the ‘mai pen rai’ culture of avoiding confrontation and the hesitation to complain or raise ones voice in objection. This combined with the inability to take responsibility make European standards difficult to obtain.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to live on a real Thai village, with the chickens, temple dogs, street vendors and loud speakers. I am sure for some that is the definition of Thai life, but it’s certainly not for me. Each to their own.

Rich, I have to be honest with you, as I see you are being honest with everyone here. After reading your first email, I sympathised with you, but after reading your second and third emails, my sympathy is subsiding. I read your emails, see your avatar and think "One Foot in the Grave" with that Richard wotshisname. You're a moaner mate, who can see his situation and knows you're a fish out of water in Thailand, but can't be arsed to do anything about it. Correct me if I'm wrong and sorry if i'm being a bit harsh.

It's obvious you're never going to feel "at home" in Thailand wherever you're based, yet still you stay and allow yourself to get wound up by it all, instead of throwing in the towel and moving on or out. The desire you have for Thais "to reach European standards" gives the game away. If you honestly came out to SE Asia and expected a little piece of Surbiton or Cheam to be found in Rayong, then the joke is on you. This is Thailand which is in tropical Asia, ten thousand miles from Europe and you should have figured that one out before moving here lock, stock and smoking barrel.

As I've said, there's plenty of other provinces and other houses in Thailand, so if your present digs don't jive anymore, then don't fester there any more. However, if it's the tropics you're after and want a sanitised approximation of a European city, with all the public health, smell, noise and lewdness inspectors, then I suspect that Singapore will be more up your street. But don't expect a kowpat for 20 baht or a house for a million over there. Public order costs, and in Singapore's case, it costs more than money.

Alternatively, get some ear plugs, take off your flatcap, go and play with the kids, get to know them, stop scowling at them from behind your net curtains and lighten up a bit.

[GuestHouse]

I rented in on a smalll Thai housing estate in Narklua for many years. All the neighbours except one was Thai, he happend to come from my home town but we were forty years apart in age and I had never known him back home.

The soi we were on (12 houses) was spotless, in no small part due to my Farang Neighbour who swept the place clean on a regular basis. It wasn't long before the Thais where doing the same.

He's been dead now for over three years, but when I visited his family over Christmas the soi was still spotless, it seems an expectation had been set by example.

-----

However, not wanting to risk the theory, we're building smack in the middle of our plot with a clear 45 meters between any wall on our house and any part of any neighbours property. I shall maintain the ground between us as a buffer zone, cleverly disguised as a garden.

[richb2004]

I am close to Rayong.

To be honest the main problem is my neighbors directly across the road. If I came across them in the UK I would call them gypsy’s, but here in LOS I think they are nothing unusual. They have countless broken and extended family members living in the house, as well as many Cambodians and Laos people living there to help with their junk business. This they store in the garden and inside the house. They also have a car and four pickups parked up, and coming and going, collecting and delivering junk.

The other neighbors contribute with their barking dogs, high speed comings and going, blackening houses and lesser clutter collections.

Streets full of children don’t help the situation. Thais seem to avoid taking control of their kids at all times. The parents will happily sit watching as their offspring shout, scream and generally cause chaos without making any effort to rein them in a little. All kids make noise, but normally parents have some respect and consideration for those around them.

I lived on an ex-council estate in the North East of England for 5 years and to be honest the people took more pride in their homes and didn’t make anything like the noise the Thais make. When I had problems with barking dogs in the UK I simply went to the owner and ‘kindly’ asked them to sort it out. With stray dogs I called the warden. There were one or two broken down cars on our road in the UK. It was simple to call the DVLC and report the car as having no TAX: problem solved.

Here in Thailand I have no such powers. It should really be the responsibility of the estate management, but I am sure they are oblivious to excess speed, noise, mess and barking dogs.

We were at Koh Chang for the past week. There we were kept awake every night by a barking dog somewhere near the hut. Eventually I got out of bed one night and gathered some rocks together. I then searched until I found the dog and pelted it. It did the trick, but should not have been my job. It wasn’t a cheap hotel. I then returned home to Ban Chang and at 1am I woke to the vibrations from someone’s stereo. I don’t actually think it was from the surrounding houses. It was either from the next estate across or from a car on the road half a kilometer away!

I think it all comes down to the ‘mai pen rai’ culture of avoiding confrontation and the hesitation to complain or raise ones voice in objection. This combined with the inability to take responsibility make European standards difficult to obtain.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to live on a real Thai village, with the chickens, temple dogs, street vendors and loud speakers. I am sure for some that is the definition of Thai life, but it’s certainly not for me. Each to their own.

Rich, I have to be honest with you, as I see you are being honest with everyone here. After reading your first email, I sympathised with you, but after reading your second and third emails, my sympathy is subsiding. I read your emails, see your avatar and think "One Foot in the Grave" with that Richard wotshisname. You're a moaner mate, who can see his situation and knows you're a fish out of water in Thailand, but can't be arsed to do anything about it. Correct me if I'm wrong and sorry if i'm being a bit harsh.

It's obvious you're never going to feel "at home" in Thailand wherever you're based, yet still you stay and allow yourself to get wound up by it all, instead of throwing in the towel and moving on or out. The desire you have for Thais "to reach European standards" gives the game away. If you honestly came out to SE Asia and expected a little piece of Surbiton or Cheam to be found in Rayong, then the joke is on you. This is Thailand which is in tropical Asia, ten thousand miles from Europe and you should have figured that one out before moving here lock, stock and smoking barrel.

As I've said, there's plenty of other provinces and other houses in Thailand, so if your present digs don't jive anymore, then don't fester there any more. However, if it's the tropics you're after and want a sanitised approximation of a European city, with all the public health, smell, noise and lewdness inspectors, then I suspect that Singapore will be more up your street. But don't expect a kowpat for 20 baht or a house for a million over there. Public order costs, and in Singapore's case, it costs more than money.

Alternatively, get some ear plugs, take off your flatcap, go and play with the kids, get to know them, stop scowling at them from behind your net curtains and lighten up a bit.

You are probably just about spot on there.

I am not going to change Thailand and Thailand is not going to change for me, or at least not any time soon.

I must practice my Buddhist meditation and learn to live with it, or move on.

Cheers.

[plachon]

I am close to Rayong.

To be honest the main problem is my neighbors directly across the road. If I came across them in the UK I would call them gypsy’s, but here in LOS I think they are nothing unusual. They have countless broken and extended family members living in the house, as well as many Cambodians and Laos people living there to help with their junk business. This they store in the garden and inside the house. They also have a car and four pickups parked up, and coming and going, collecting and delivering junk.

The other neighbors contribute with their barking dogs, high speed comings and going, blackening houses and lesser clutter collections.

Streets full of children don’t help the situation. Thais seem to avoid taking control of their kids at all times. The parents will happily sit watching as their offspring shout, scream and generally cause chaos without making any effort to rein them in a little. All kids make noise, but normally parents have some respect and consideration for those around them.

I lived on an ex-council estate in the North East of England for 5 years and to be honest the people took more pride in their homes and didn’t make anything like the noise the Thais make. When I had problems with barking dogs in the UK I simply went to the owner and ‘kindly’ asked them to sort it out. With stray dogs I called the warden. There were one or two broken down cars on our road in the UK. It was simple to call the DVLC and report the car as having no TAX: problem solved.

Here in Thailand I have no such powers. It should really be the responsibility of the estate management, but I am sure they are oblivious to excess speed, noise, mess and barking dogs.

We were at Koh Chang for the past week. There we were kept awake every night by a barking dog somewhere near the hut. Eventually I got out of bed one night and gathered some rocks together. I then searched until I found the dog and pelted it. It did the trick, but should not have been my job. It wasn’t a cheap hotel. I then returned home to Ban Chang and at 1am I woke to the vibrations from someone’s stereo. I don’t actually think it was from the surrounding houses. It was either from the next estate across or from a car on the road half a kilometer away!

I think it all comes down to the ‘mai pen rai’ culture of avoiding confrontation and the hesitation to complain or raise ones voice in objection. This combined with the inability to take responsibility make European standards difficult to obtain.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to live on a real Thai village, with the chickens, temple dogs, street vendors and loud speakers. I am sure for some that is the definition of Thai life, but it’s certainly not for me. Each to their own.

Rich, I have to be honest with you, as I see you are being honest with everyone here. After reading your first email, I sympathised with you, but after reading your second and third emails, my sympathy is subsiding. I read your emails, see your avatar and think "One Foot in the Grave" with that Richard wotshisname. You're a moaner mate, who can see his situation and knows you're a fish out of water in Thailand, but can't be arsed to do anything about it. Correct me if I'm wrong and sorry if i'm being a bit harsh.

It's obvious you're never going to feel "at home" in Thailand wherever you're based, yet still you stay and allow yourself to get wound up by it all, instead of throwing in the towel and moving on or out. The desire you have for Thais "to reach European standards" gives the game away. If you honestly came out to SE Asia and expected a little piece of Surbiton or Cheam to be found in Rayong, then the joke is on you. This is Thailand which is in tropical Asia, ten thousand miles from Europe and you should have figured that one out before moving here lock, stock and smoking barrel.

As I've said, there's plenty of other provinces and other houses in Thailand, so if your present digs don't jive anymore, then don't fester there any more. However, if it's the tropics you're after and want a sanitised approximation of a European city, with all the public health, smell, noise and lewdness inspectors, then I suspect that Singapore will be more up your street. But don't expect a kowpat for 20 baht or a house for a million over there. Public order costs, and in Singapore's case, it costs more than money.

Alternatively, get some ear plugs, take off your flatcap, go and play with the kids, get to know them, stop scowling at them from behind your net curtains and lighten up a bit.

You are probably just about spot on there.

I am not going to change Thailand and Thailand is not going to change for me, or at least not any time soon.

I must practice my Buddhist meditation and learn to live with it, or move on.

Cheers.

Good on yer Rich for not reacting defensively or aggressively to my semi-provocative post. I do believe your meditation practice must be working, and you're learning the meaning of 'anijang' - something like passivity in the face of annoyance. that is one of most Thai peoples strenghts you must have noticed - when there is chaos all around them, they still manage to go on seemingly oblivious to it all. The average European is much more 'jai ron" and snaps well before the Thai, therefore further disturbing the state of chaos and not necessarily solving anything. Of course, there are exceptions to both, with the phenomenon of Thais behind the wheel of a vehicle being one obvious one. :

Anyway, if you can keep things in your immediate environment clean and tidy, like in Guesthouse's example, there is a good chance it will eventually will brush off on some of your more observant neighbours and improve the state of the whole in the long run. In the meantime, finding out who else in the street is sick of the mess caused by Steptoe and son opposite, then building up a base of allies and presenting a joint case to the estate management, might get a bit of action done in them cleaning up their lot. Just a thought.