Building House in Kram

We started prepare the land in May/April 2016 so that there should be at least one rainy season before we started to build. Everyone says that is needed so that the soil will be proper packed. After adding soil from 25 big trucks we also got help to get the ground slope down to the road to help getting rid of water on heavy rains. I here have some pictures of this event:

Before we could build a house we needed a plan. In Thailand there are a bunch of pre-approved house plans you can fetch from the local municipality (Thesaban in thai). After looking at these without finding any plan we really liked we started to google around on the internet for others. The house should be placed in Thailand and therefor it was important to find a house plan suited for the thai climate.  We found a very interesting site — it’s a company drawing complete plans with all documentation and blueprints, they then sell these for 5000 bath each. They do not do any changes or special solutions, just these plans. You will find a link below. We bought the plan for the house BP27, but was not completely happy with it, so we started to do some modifications and ended up with an own version. When we were done we let a thai engineer make the official blueprints and calculations on the changed plan so it could be approved by the thesaban offi...

The next time we where in Mae Phim/Kram we started to look for a piece of land to buy. To find land in Thailand on internet is really not the right way. Thai people doesn't sell land that way, the only thing you find is people trying to make a fortune in selling cheap land very expensive to foreigners. The right way is to ask around (in thai language). We asked beach restaurant owners, fruit sellers, in the coffee shop, hotel staff etc. In this size of a village, all of the above know someone that have a piece of land for sale. There was also signs on trees and bushes when you where driving around. The first land we was taken too (by a lady selling fruit from a motorbike) was perfect in all aspects except the price. It was far over our budget, so no deal there. We continued following men and ladies on motorbikes or in our car, but nothing was as good as the first one. We had to leave after a week without finding the land we needed for our house. 6 months later on my next...

My name is Kjell. Together with my girlfriend (future wife) Ang, we will start a story about building a house in east of Thailand. It started with many years of travelling in Thailand. We went south (Phuket, Krabi, Phang Nga, Trang, Hua Hin, Cha Am) and north (Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Nan, Pai) to find a place we want to live - without success. One day my mother showed me a clip from a newspaper - it was a small sleepy fishing village in the east of Thailand with name Mae Phim. After some discussions with Ang we decided to rent a car and find out this place - and here it was - a place to live. Mae Phim is the beach with 3 km of soft nice sand and clear water. The adjacent village is named Kram. Except from some small scale turism from Norway, Sweden and Finland the main turists here comes from Bangkok during the weekends or bigger holidays. You drive here from Bangkok in 2 - 3 hours depending on traffic and how fast car you have.