Finally a little good news: Golf and team have been making our electricity and sanitary designs and delivered the first version.
It took 1.5 year but we are glad we get some motion forward.

At the same time we got a quote for the ‘raw’ build, meaning foundation, roof and walls, which will already eat our total budget it seems. Hopefully we can still add windows and have something we can camp in. We gave it a go for November.

Unfortunately de building permit is still on the desk of the Moo Baan head who refuses to sign for more than a year now but also does not give us a reason so we can appeal. Contacts and family, other local people all tried to get the man in motion but so far no luck. I guess anyone can guess what he is trying.  Hopefully we can still get it done before November and there is a small chance he might change position after the local elections.

Our Chanotte (Land ownership papers) was also a crazy story:

Land office did their work (nice people) and send it to the forest administration and never got anything back. By accident my niece got her first date and that guy happened to be the son of the previous head of that administration. They went in to ask around and found our papers buried under a pile of other papers. They took it out, put it on top and got the promise someone would look at it the next day. After calling they said it was send to the wrong office and needed to go to the office of nature?? parks. (We are basically in it but did already those checks before.) It has been on the pile for at least half a year…

Anyway it seemed moved agency and probably another pile of paper. The worrying part is that it has to go back to the forest department and then land office again. They said it could take a year, if we would not have interfered that could have been easily 3 years or more…

We will suggest our niece to find a new boyfriend with connections to the other office 🙂

Another surprise was that our local water pipe system with free water from the mountains, turned out not to be so stable with the dry season getting more serious by the year. Now we need to drill a well but for this we need a new permit from the same guy not willing to sign our building permit. What a joy. The well will affect our sanitary drawings but can only be done later, close or at the same time as we are building. Going to be exciting times in many ways this year.

We are also still waiting for a quote from the windowframe manufacturers, when we get that we can assemble it with the other designs and make a final plan voor November.

More, much more to follow!