BangkokHoyt.com -- Album -- Bomb Shelter for a Home

In September, 2005, after a particularly stressful move to a different
camp in Iraq. I called my beautiful wife, Rattiya, for words of comfort.
But instead of inspiring thoughts, she rambled on about how she
wanted to build our house "quick." Her notions of a house built in 2
weeks sent my mind reeling. Of course such rushed construction is
typical in Thailand so I should not have been surprised.

The Thai people's attitudes toward homes and property are a bit
different from the western way of thinking. Thais are very superstitious
about spirits. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it, I may just be
making an invalid leap there. But regardless, Thais don't generally like
used homes. It is quite common to buy a home for the land under it.
Demolish the existing structure and build a new one. I think this is why
rushed jobs of varying degrees of construction quality is so prevalent.
If it's not that great of a job, it's no big deal. The next owners won't
want to purchase the property for the structure anyway.

Well that's my view, and it's not necessarily the accurate one.

So back to the point. I was tired and did not want to hear any of this
from my wife. I told her, "Rattiya, you need to make sure you take the
time to build a proper house that will not break into the ground." My
main concern at that time was that she wanted to build the house right
after we utilized the retaining wall and fill dirt to raise the property's
foundation level. I was worried that the ground was too soft and the
house was going to sink.

So Rattiya replied, "Gary, I cannot control the ground." Which was her
way of saying, "I'll do as I want and you cannot hold me accountable."

I said, "Rattiya, if you don't build a strong house and it breaks and falls
into the ground, then you better run, and run, and hide someplace
where I will never find you."

To which she replied, "Gary! Why you want to kill me?!"

Other than that conversation, I did not have any other input into the
house. She decided what to build and how to build it. (And this will
become starkly evident when you see the color of the house. I have
never claimed that my wife has a sense of color coordination). She
hired an engineer to oversee the whole construction project. And
apparently she took my words to heart, because what we ended up with
was a concrete bunker.

The foundation's pylons (actually pylasters), are made of concrete and
rebar and go six feet into the ground and there are twelve of them!
Keep in mind that this is only a 750 sqare foot house. The entire
house's frame is made of rebar and concrete. The floor joists are
about four feet from the ground and not only are they made of rebar
and concrete, but so is the floor itself. The walls are all bricked from
the foundation up and then plastered over with concrete.

If a tree fell on our house, we'd only have to fix the roof, because I don't
think anything else would be damaged.

I am a very lucky man to have a wife that listens so well to me!