Thai wood houses with ghosts
I have enjoyed reading many of the excellent posts describing recent efforts to build or rebuild wood houses with deference to Thai tradition. I have lived in and loved three wood houses over the years in Thailand. While I appreciate some of the conveniences of modern life, there is something deeply satisfying about these houses, something that you could never get from the tract houses I later occupied in California or a condo or a car and maybe even a woman. These houses improve with age, take on aspects of the character of the occupants, and I’d like to show a couple of pictures that suggest this. First, in this post, a house that I occupied from 1964 to 1965 in a village in the hills in Korat province, this was the village:
https://teakdoor.com/Gallery/albums/u...2.08.42_PM.png
A young and very inexperienced architect who worked for the Royal Irrigation Department designed the house following and he told me that it was “temporary”, being made of inferior wood that would not last long. My oldest daughter who turned fifty two months ago learned to walk on that patio in front of the house and soon enough was happily off with our cook to market in the early morning. She never had a single childhod illness back in the US, her doctor said she had some strange immunity.
https://teakdoor.com/Gallery/albums/u...1.42.40_AM.png
Today this house still stands, though when I was last there no one was living in it. I did not find a spirit house there, but being on government project land it has a fire extinguisher. Some of the exterior posts and deck had been replaced over the years but remarkably the place was still as liveable as it had once been half century ago. I like to think that when I am gone my ghost will still flit through the evening shadows in the hills above this place.
https://teakdoor.com/Gallery/albums/u...1.42.53_AM.png
This is the first of three "ghost houses". Two more to follow later.
By the way, would someone please advise how I can increase the size of these photos a bit? I get the link from my teakdoor gallery, but the pix I upload are bigger. Thanks much.
