Journey to Thailand: My house

I said this before, but it's important to keep in mind: My host family is not an accurate representation of Thai living. My family is not poor, and could afford to have this house build for them. (P'Noi designed it herself.) It is so far removed from average Thai living, in fact, that multiple times a year, TV movies are filmed here! They filmed one since I arrived, but it was over the few days that I was on my business trip.

In the picture on the left is one of my family's two maids. Apparently she's younger than me. She came here from Burma a couple years ago, but I don't know much of her story. P'Noi told me not to talk to her too much. I guess the last foreign student (Rebecca) that was here tried to be her friend, and then she started using all of Rebecca's things - including contact lenses! I'm not willing to share to that extent, so I try to keep my distance a little bit.

Note: This house is very difficult to photograph, so there is lots I'm not including. Hopefully this will give you a feel of where I'm living though!

The "garden" and front gate:

Thai people have held on to many historic beliefs that are visible and relevant in everyday life. For example, every building is believed to house spirits that can be either helpful or cruel to the building's inhabitants. In order to stay on the spirits' good side, almost every building has these "spirit houses" where they leave gifts and food for the spirits:

The living room:

The dining room:

The kitchen:

There is another area with another refrigerator for us to use. The maids are pretty much the only ones who use the kitchen.

Going upstairs:

The upstairs:

From left to right: my room, the Buddha shrine room, Benz' room.

My room:

"My" bathroom:

I say it's mine because everyone else has bathrooms attached to their rooms. Plus there are 2 others downstairs. Isn't it pretty? Notice the lack of toilet paper, and the hose to the left of the toilet that is used instead. This is pretty standard in Thailand. I've seen some pretty weird bathrooms (and have them all photo-documented) so I think that will be a post-worthy topic sometime in the future.

And the shower area: