 My wife and I just finished building a house next to my friends, elephant refuge. The photo above is one our way to look at land in this tiny mountain village FIVE MONTHS LATER THIS IS OUR NEW HOME BELOW   i wasn't joking about being on the fringe of his elephant camp. This is his son Mafia--yup his name is mafia  we have a year round brook running the length of our land and we had a neighbor create a dam so the kids could play |
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 OK we've identified 4.5 Rai of land (about two acres) which is a side of a mountain with brooks running on two sides of our new property, made an offer, got accepted and we are excited to death. fast forward 3 years, the government wanted to make land ownership more legal in these remote villages so they sent surveyors up from Bangkok and guess what !! we have 11.5 Rai of land not 4.5. we received our first tax bill for the land and our house. A very official letter came in the mail. I ripped open the envelope to discover that our tax bill was 18 Baht EIGHTEEN Baht  two days with a backhoe and the construction can start  our nearest neighbor allowed us to use their electricity to build and I of course paid the bills  The water to the house comes from the mountain and yes it is FREE   As i mentioned, the neighbor allowed us to use their electicity to build until we got our electric meter installed. I downloaded an APP from the electric company so I could pay the bill promptly--It has never been over 300 Baht (TEN dollars) for both houses   we have rose apples on the property    no Michelin stars but not bad our ONLY restaurant in the village  tea plantation near the house  my wife installed the enamel wood burning stove just in time for the weather to turn 40C about a 100F. it really gets pretty cold at almost 1000M elevation |
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 To celibrate, we met with our lawyer in the village's ONLY restaurant (above). The food is incredibly delicious and no more than 70 cents  our other nighbors are about 10 minutes away i'll fast forward to today when the mountain house is complete Enter Headline  The staff from Elephant highlands moved our belongings from Chiang Mai to the new house We had to go to town hall to pay two years taxes which had been in arrears. The bill for two years was 98 Baht (just under three dollars)    1 of a 100 lychee trees   incredibly daunting job of beating back the jungle to lay the lawn. The staff from the the elephant highlands comes down to do this back breaking work  we now have 100 coffee bushes as well as chilli and lemon grass    first lychee of the season |
