I like and I spend a fair amount of time out and about on my 135cc motor scooter locally here in the Ban Chang/Sattahip/Rayong area. Last week while out and about riding, I spotted a new house being built about 250 meters back off the right side of road going from Sukhumvitt in Ban Chang toward Payoon Beach. It was obviously going to be a Thai style house and looked interesting so I road off road back to the construction site. As I approached I could see that it was in fact an unusual house. The pillars of the house were tree trunks. Here are 2 pictures of the house construction site from the Payoon Beach Road.


The owner builder of the house was present and seemed to be supervising the work. He was able to speak passable English and we had a nice conversation about what it was he was building. This is what I could determine from the conversation. It was going to be a Thai style house all made of wood. It was going to have air conditioning and all the nice comfort features. The pylons/pillars were tree trunks of hard wood trees. The name of the hard wood trees escapes me now. Owner/builder said he was then going to build 2 or 3 more in Patters. Estimated cost for purchase according to the owner/builder… a whopping 20million baht. Personally I was shocked at the seemingly excessive cost. Although generally in a nice local, the immediate surrounding area and lots of land did not seem as if they would be accommodating 10, 15 or 20 million baht houses and in fact seemed as if it was more of a typical Thai income area. I’ll wait until it’s done to make final conclusions but at this point, seems way out of the ball park in cost. Anyway, here are some pictures of the house as it was in mid-September 2010.



In the following 3 pictures you can not the elevated floors of the house so as to allow cement/tiled area under the floors of the house for a kitchen, rest area, general open area living space. In the second and third pictures down you can see the hard wood tree trunks being used as pillars and the bamboo being used on the ground where rebar or steel is normally used and where the cement flooring will be poured.