Mae Sai 04/25/2010 Make Me Crazier

As I laugh at myself and think TIT (TIT = This is Thailand).

I got up at daybreak and checked the roof. Sure enough there is still a puddle there. Daeng and I had coffee, toast with peanut butter and orange marmalade.

A few minutes before 8:00 I hopped on the motorbike and went to HOME MART to buy a level. A level may have made it possible to lay the tile pitched to the drain but I was under the impression they knew what they were doing.

When I got there a few minutes after 8:00 and the place was dark and no one around. The time on the door was 8:00 to 17:00. Now HOME MART is a big place very similar to a HOME DEPOT in the United States. I think the sign should have said "Around 8:00 to Maybe 17:00". This is Thailand with a Burma Twist and Sunday.

They opened about 8:10 am and I bought my Stanley 24" Level for 200 THB (Around $6:00 USD) and headed back home. The reason it was 200 THB and not 209 THB, as marked, was the lady on the cash register did not have her register up yet, and no receipt, of course. It is tough to get a receipt for anything here in Thailand.

When I got back the roof tile men were already taking up the tile that we agreed on yesterday.

Forgive me as I'm going a little crazy today and making Daeng even crazier. The men are putting in the kitchen, which I might add was to be the second thing to work on. The original agreement was to do the 2nd floor bathroom first.

I laid the kitchen all out with masking tape on the floor and got agreement of the men that are going to do it. Right off the bat they cut the existing floor tile wrong so we made a little change to correct that.

The boss man said that it would be all open under the counters but then the men building it said they needed two support columns. We laid those out and got agreement, I thought.

Then they moved one of the support columns so the doors under the sink will not line up with the center of the sink or the window frame. We will just have to live with that.

I just checked with the roof tile men and it looks like what they are doing will solve the problem with the roof puddling. They are going to lunch.

I came back to the first floor to find the kitchen men were starting to install the second set of cabinet doors and they are the wrong color. TITwBT! (This Is Thailand with a Burma Twist). That sounds like the title to a song.

More after lunch.

Well, the afternoon went much better. Salad came back to the job and started the bathroom. He couldn't exchange the cabinet doors until tomorrow because the place he bought them is closed on Sunday. Kick me in the butt as all along I thought everyplace was open seven days a week.

It rained again around 3:30 PM and the roof drained okay. Everyone left around 5:30 PM. I spent the next few hours cleaning up the place. The workers don't work very clean. In America most customers would tell the contactor to got out if they worked the way they do here. TITwBT.

The roof tile man called Daeng around 7:30 to tell her he was finished and wanted to be paid the balance of 7000 THB. I was proud of Daeng as she told him he needed to take all the trash away and we would pay him.

The roof tile man said to have the other contractor we had hired for the bathroom to haul the trash away. Daeng told him No, it was his job and when he hauled it away we would pay him. Daeng told him the reason we did not have him do the other work is he did not do a good job on the roof. There are still small puddles but we are just going to put up with those.

He said he will be here in the morning. Salad said he was going to have a full crew here tomorrow. He only had three and himself today. Tomorrow should be interesting.