Entries Tagged 'Uthai Thani' ↓

The Neighbors chewing beetle nuts part I

The Neighbors chewing beetle nuts part II

The land department person was also cheering them on and said “You have so many rai way don’t you give your neighbor some.” This is a typical Thai small village mentality and it drove me nuts. It was the same problem when my friend had a motorbike crash into her car in Phuket. Of course, it was the motorbike’s fault but the police say “ahh Khun Ying you have big car and big money, motorbike now have no money. Its ok he does not have to pay.”
The guy from the land department said that he was leaving now and he was going to write in the report that my girlfriend and the chewing lady can not agree, so he cannot do his job. He said that we wasted his time. We had been there for two whole hours.

My girlfriend got very angry by then and with me as her only back up (and I do not speak more then a few word Thai), she asked the land department person what he actually came there to do. He made her have a fight with the next door. He said, “I am sorry I can not measure your land I do not have the right equipment.”
My girlfriend said “What! Why did this entire crowd come here today then?
You can not measure it anyway?”
The orange shirt said, “No we only have one camera and we gave it to another land they doing 60 rai you know, very important. “
I thought to myself yeah and he paid you a handsome kick back for it too I guess. The land department could therefore not decide who has the right to the dyke and we said we do not care we just want the right person to have it. However, they said they had enough and said that they will make a new appointment but it will be two months later for us. He also said that he would not be coming and I think that was the best thing he said the whole day.
Some people think you should give the department some money when they leave and the staff thought so too. She also thought that we should give some money to the neighbors because they had come all the way to look. But I was thinking, where can I dispose her body? Maybe in the pond and then hope for some more rain.
This is also typical small Thai village mentality, by spending your money for any reason so that she can gain face. Moreover, that is very important even more important than getting the money. If you have a girlfriend from up country she will sometimes order food for the whole year, give your money to the monks, buy drinks she will never drink, give tip to anyone even if it was a crap service as long as it’s YOUR money. Next time she will come to this place without you she will then gained face.
Back to the story, the land guy went off in his pick up truck and we went to the land department to book a new time. After saying our goodbyes to the beetle juice ladies we called some friends we had in the village and they said not to complaint it will only make it worse. The land department guy will loose face and next thing we know the land had shrunk. I asked my girlfriend if she still wanted to tip the guys before we left for Bangkok, now was the chance. She just looked at me.

Epilog
The department came over once more two month after and they told us they did not like last person that was so rude either. They had the measurement camera with them and I guess when the next-door screaming women saw that they did not even showed up.
Their mother came one week after and signed the papers and one month after when we start making a fence some of the pole got kicked down one night. The guys that put the poles up for us went to their house and told them to stop this silly stuff or they would go to the police. They stopped but they came back two months later screaming at us one time from the other side of the fence. They had already signed the papers it was to late to change anything but I guess she needed to tell her story so we told her to tell it to our dogs. She stayed there screaming at our barking dogs for twenty minutes then she went off. We have not had a problem since.

But let’s get back to my day trip with the land department. We already paid the fee of 2,100 THB to have our land measured and we have informed the land department as to who owns the land next to us so that they, our next doors neighbors, can come and sign the land agreement. The procedure to book the time made me think of Thailand as a very bureaucratic country and when you think of that the bureaucrats in Thailand have the most holidays in the world (more than 200 day offs), you start to wonder if they ever get anything done. First, you have to book the time, bringing all the papers and I mean all the papers. If you forget any, you will have to go back to Bangkok and get a new one. Then you wait for one more month and then come and pay and I mean come and pay. You can not send them money by bank, you can not ask some friend to come and pay, you can not write a cheque and of course, you can not pay the money there and then. You simply have to come back to this office and pay that person later. My girlfriend had gotten an advice from her mother to tip each guy 500 THB or something when they have finished their job. I thought that was a good idea IF they turned out to be nice and good people. I am always in to tipping honest people in Thailand but as soon as farrang money comes in the pictures, it always goes sky high. If you tip Thai people too much, they just think you are stupid and they want to get more from you. Try to be moderate with tipping so they can make a better service next time.

Two months from that day, we got our booking and we were told to pick four people up from outside the land department office. That made me think, this is not going to be ok - this is going to be hell. Some guys who had been measuring lands around this area all their lives do not even know how to get to our place and we have to lead them to it?

Normally you do not need to measure the land if someone has done it before. There should be concrete blocks or pillars showing you where the land starts and ends. However, sometimes when you are not there the blocks disappear and your land can shrinks from year to year, making it impossible for you to say where the original land starts and stops. If you are doing rice farming maybe it’s not that big of a deal, but if you making a fence around your house and the fence ends up of the other side on the not so nice neighbors, then you are in trouble.

When the four people in the pick up stepped out of the car, you can see that the boss was not a happy man, this was not his day. I can understand him; the land was like a moon landscape but with water. Grey clay and mud as far you can see. Of course, I did the only right thing and went barefoot, but the land department person did not even have that in mind.
What did he expect, it had been raining for 5 days and this was a new land, of course it was going to be muddy. He was lucky we had made the road otherwise he would have to walk through the rice field full with water. He sent out his staff to go look for the poles, as I understood. He did not move an inch from the safety of the car. Of course they did not find the first pole, they did not find the second pole and they thought the third pole was in the middle of an ant nest or at least that’s what one of the beetle juice chewing neighbors said. She also mentioned that boundary could be set on our side of the ant’s nest, that was very nice of her, but I told her that in the middle would be much better. However, she was sure it was on our side.
The land people left that pole as well and found another one. And if I draw a straight line from that pole to the ants nest, then to the next pole, we would be all set and according to the map that the land people had done 20 years ago.

Then the youngest of the 3 beetle chewing ladies turned up. Her mouth was dripping with black gunge when she said the words “I know the line is on this side of the kun nah (a dyke to separate the different rice fields). If you were looking on the map, the line was straight, it was just to make some new poles, and we should have been done. The dripping mouth continued “I saw the guy who filled up their land, he took the pole away.” (I could swear that she took it away herself the night before). Everyone was only standing a few feet from each other and she, the three neighbors with beetle juice dripping down their mouth were screaming to everyone. They were not angry; they just talked this way, screaming normally. You might have seen them sometimes, selling stuff on the street screaming at each other. You can be sure they are not from Bangkok they are upcountry girls. Personally I hate it, I can not stand the way they scream at each other (sorry talked). I was wondering where the amazing and smiling Thailand has gone.
The land department person was ready to go home after accomplished absolutely nothing. More beetle juice down their clothes and lots of arguments later with the rest of the village (by then there were 20 people screaming at each other when I could normally whisper); the neighbor said that we could draw the line on the side of the dyke and not in middle, as we should normally do. All the villagers start cheering her on even my girl friend’s staff (she happened to be from this village). I was getting very tired of the staff and told her that she put mak (talk too much or shut up in a rude way). If she was my staff, I would fire her on the spot. The problem was the staff. She has some kind of debts (kreng jai) to pay back to her own village and it will always push them to say and do things they normally would not do back in Bangkok.

The Neighbors chewing beetle nuts part I

The Neighbors chewing beetle nuts part III

One not so rainy day in the middle of the rainy season we had an appointment with the land department. We had hired them to measure the land my girlfriend had rented from her brother.

The land actually belongs to the family but it is in the brother’s name or that’s what I understood anyway. It’s very difficult for a farang to get the truth and nothing but the truth from any Thai people.
I do not mean they all lie and cheat, my girlfriend is a normal hi so upper class girl with long educations and plenty of time in schools abroad. Her English is better than mine but still they keep on bending the line most of us westerns call the straight true line.
For example if you and your girlfriend hatch and you want to build a house in Thailand I am sure she will say “I have some land”
That can mean anything from:

1. You’re lucky; she actually has the land because she is rich and bought it.
2. You are less lucky, she has the land but she gave it to the bank. When you finish with the building the bank takes the land back –that’s the worse case.
3. You are shit of luck; she knows someone that can sell you the land for a handsome profit.
4. You are in to some Thai family mess, her family has some land but it’s not in her name. (my case)
5. You are into some sleepless nights, the land is ok but its next to her parents house, in the middle of the village where all her 23 relatives live. And they now all are going to use the new ATM that moved in.
6. You are going to have wet dreams; the land is the next to the Mekong River or in some part of Thailand where once a year you will have a 3 meters flood. Did she forget to tell you?
7. You are the ATM, she is letting you pay for everything and then she will just close the door and leave.

There are many more scenarios but one that I practically find funny is the story about the Japanese man that has fallen deeply in love with an Isan bar girl. He comes back every month to see her and after some time, decides to get married.
They went up to Isan and he paid the dowry, the right to marry the daughter of the poor rice farmer (do not ever pay a huge amount of money for marry a bar girl).
They killed the pig, got ribbons on his hands, got blessed by monks and everything was happy and dandy. She then built them a house in a piece of land that she had from before and he went back to Japan to finish off some business.
When he tried to call her from Japan she never answered the phone and when he came to Bangkok no one was there to meet him. He went alone to Isaan and found a Thai man standing in the doorway of his house. The Japanese man asked the man who the guy was. The Thai man said, “I am the husband and this is my house. Who are you and what are you doing here?”
The nice little bar girl was already married legally to the Thai husband and just went through the blessing ceremony with the Japanese guy(you can do that ceremony with the monks as many time as you want it does not mean anything. It’s more a tradition in north Thailand). He could not claim the house or the wife because he had no papers of the land or the house or the marriage. All he had was a bag full of ATM slips.

The Neighbors chewing beetle nuts part II

The Neighbors chewing beetle nuts part III