FEATURE: Laying Foundations in Paradise: How my husband and I got into building luxury villas on Koh Phangan

Fraser and I on the site of our 2nd villa build

Head to the end of the article for the link to Part II!

"Your money’s always safest in property," came my dying dad's sage words as we sat at his favourite lakefront restaurant in his Lake Chapala home in Mexico. 

“I’m leaving you and Fraser a good chunk of my life insurance that should be enough for you to buy some land and maybe build yourselves a home in your island paradise.”

We’d been living on Koh Phangan for the previous five years, and this was our third emergency trip across the pond to be at my ailing father’s side — though this time, we hadn’t booked a return.

Neither of my parents had ever received a leg-up from their families. My dad’s dad had apparently been quite wealthy but he’d pissed it all away, leaving the family to subsist on bone broth and water. 

Fraser’s dad’s dad had a similar story.

And my parents had actually built up some wealth for themselves — opening and running a chain of North America’s first women’s-only fitness clubs across Canada — but a series of unfortunate events led them to losing it all when I was quite young. And they never quite got it back.

So even though my dad had no savings of his own to leave me when he passed, he and my mom had been paying into a life insurance policy for years to ensure that we could get on the property ladder.

Moving down to Phangan

Our move down to Koh Phangan had been prompted by a job offer from a friend running a high-end property development company on the island who was looking for Western carpenters to take care of the finishing on his villas. 

Fraser had been on 1,000 THB/day (that’s less than $30 USD) helping to build a luxury yacht in a part of Bangkok so far from our Asoke apartment that it cost him 1,000 THB in taxi fare to get to and from the job — so he was forced to leave on Monday and come back on Friday to make it worth his while. It wasn’t ideal conditions.

The job on Phangan gave him a slight pay rise: he was now on 1,500 THB per day (around $43 USD). But this was for a full day of doing manual labour in the searing heat, and he would come too exhausted to do anything… and I do mean anything ;). 

It was still more than the 300 - 500 THB per day ($9-$15 USD) that the Thai and Burmese labourers were on, so he did count himself lucky in a way. 

Back in those days, it was easy to subsist on Phangan on low salaries… a big reason why the pay rate was low across the board for most jobs on the island. Which was a big benefit for us, since we’d moved down to the island without enough cash to put a deposit on a house rental or even buy ourselves a cheap second-hand motorbike. 

For some reason, I thought we’d be totally fine moving to a new destination with just 6,000 THB (about $200 USD). Then Fraser pointed out that it was actually 5,600 THB and reality set in.

We ended up having to borrow the cash from our parents until we got on our feet. 

(A friend in my writer’s group who I shared this article with pre-publication asked here: How did it feel to be in a foreign country with no financial support? Was it frightening, were you guys crazy or just young? My answer: all of the above! We were young and stupid and crazy and bolder than I would be if I could do it all again… which I guess is why it’s good that I can’t!)

A year or two into our Phangan life, Fraser met a guy called Gregg and his girlfriend Sophie on a visa run. We became instant friends, and it wasn’t long before Fraser and Gregg were going into business together. 

Gregg, who ran a highly successful inflatable water-based obstacle course in Sri Thanu at the old Lake Hut (what is now Footprints/Hemmingways), had an idea for another water-based activity…