Home Travel Articles The house by the canal | The house by the canal |
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 My partner, Philip, and I first heard of our holiday house through searching ‘homestay Bangkok’ on the internet. “Traditional style teak house with modern facilities, situated near a canal and overlooking a plant nursery,” the advertisement read. “Rent direct from the owners.”It sounded like our dream come true. We'd always wanted to stay in a quiet backwater away from the noise and pollution of the Thai city, but still with access to its attractions. So we contacted the owner, who turned out to be a Polish man with a Thai wife living in London, and paid him a security bond of US$100 and he emailed directions. Bangkok is a gigantic city of 12 million people, and no taxi driver could possibly know all the streets. This certainly applied to our driver from the airport, who didn't even come from Bangkok. He admitted he had no idea where we were heading, so we rang the owner's brother-in-law, Nahn. Nahn explained carefully in Thai how to get there and, after a traffic jam or two, we were soon within reach of our destination, near the outer ring road. Here we struck a hitch: there was no street leading to the house. Nahn appeared suddenly, waving his arms by a plant nursery. He led us down a ramshackle path of wooden slats beside a bridge. This turned into a concrete footpath beside – sometimes across – the canal, then down and along another path of concrete slabs between rows of houses. We had arrived. There was plenty of space in the house, two bedrooms and a sitting area upstairs. As it was the onset of the monsoon season, this space came in very handy for drying our clothes. Some of the houses were built in the old Thai style on stilts, with an open area under the house where kitchen utensils and work tools were stored. Our house, being modern, the ground floor was closed in with concrete walls to make separate rooms such as you'd find in a western house – a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and so on. The floors were tiled and curtains hung on the windows in a Thai/European fusion. http://mcv.e-p.net.au/images/stories/406/features/travelcanal-300.jpg  But upstairs was built in the old style, with louvred windows and unsealed weatherboard to allow the breeze through. This had its disadvantages in the wet season. One afternoon, a violent storm broke while we were out shopping. Our trousers soaked, our shoes sloshing, our umbrellas blown inside out we made our way home, to be faced with drama central. Rain had seeped in through the louvred windows and weatherboard walls upstairs, drenched the floors there and oozed through the ground floor ceilings to create an obstacle course of puddles throughout our downstairs area.We mopped the floor, stuck plastic bags, rags and hand towels around the window frames to soak up the rain. Then we hung up our wet clothes to dry. Finally the house was tidy and it was time to shower before dinner. I stripped off my sarong and turned on the shower. No water! The afternoon market started about 3pm. What would be tempting to have for dinner? How about baby mussels with basil sauce? Perhaps braised duck or pork with star anis? Maybe vegetables in oyster sauce, barbecued fish or marinaded chicken? Yes, but then the satay looked so tasty. And for dessert, what about some of those little coconut cakes with dill and lemon, wrapped in banana leaves? Or some Foi Tong, the sinfully rich threads of egg yolk in jasmine syrup? So many delicious flavours to choose from. By the end of our stay Philip and I had learnt something new about Thai ways and about ourselves. So what did living in the house by the canal show us? First and foremost that we were flexible enough and adaptable enough to savour an adventure that's a little out of the ordinary. The house by the gave us a refuge of peace and tranquillity after our forays into the city of Bangkok. It was a privilege for us, and we shall not soon forget it. |
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