I Bought Some Land on Koh Phangan to Develop on and Here's What Happened
Got another special treat for you today, friends! My amazingly talented and endlessly optimistic and trusting friend Megan — who has been living in Ubud, Bali since before I moved to Thailand — has a blog for us about her experience buying land for a development project in Koh Phangan, Thailand. I’m beyond excited for her to be spending more time on the island, and that she’s agreed to become a regular contributor to this blog! Lucky us :)
This one’s on us, but please do sign up for a free or paid membership to show your support and so you never miss an article, delivered right to your inbox every Friday (unless I’m late and then you’ll get it Saturday).
It’s 24 years since I first stepped foot on Koh Phangan. I hit a couple of full moon parties in August/September of 2000. All the people who had been hanging around the island for a while were telling me how I missed it, I needed to be there five years ago… well, ten really. Actually, the 80’s. Basically whenever THEY first ‘discovered’ KPG. Of course, the people who said it was over were all still there, which made me think they were probably just being douchebags.
I thought 2000 Koh Phangan was frigging fabulous! I was rather set up to appreciate it, as I had pretty much left my husband, filed for a divorce and headed to the airport with a bag of bikinis, a CD Diskman and a passport that was nearly new.
It’s worth mentioning I was the ripe old age of 21.
Yeah, I was on the fast track, or the ridiculous track, but whatever track, I had jumped the rails and was definitely on the adventure track again. It was so superior to being married to somebody I should never have married in the first place. I guess it’s predictable the raves and discovering MDMA trumped pot roasts and Prozac. I LOVED everything about those months, every person, every gritty bus, gnarly overnight boat ride, 25 baht Pad Thai, Chang beers downed whilst watching pirated movies showing in every single beach cafe.
I wish that some Charles Dicken’s-esq ghost had found me floating in that perfect green sea on Haad Rin beach, and whispered, “You’re not finished having crises and running away to Thailand. Midlife, baby. You’re gonna fuck off from all of it and be right back here.”
I think it would have really helped to know this. And I know I couldn’t have fathomed it. So many serendipitous moments, connections, choices and circumstances had to happen, over the next quarter century, for me to land back here now.
I’ve been building in Bali for over a decade. It’s been great, I learned a lot, got to see my chicken scratch designs turn into crazy structures, and my timing was lucky. The island grew, Airbnb took off, I raised my son in Ubud, and he turned out weird and wonderful. When covid hit, I took a break, and realized I really didn’t really want to hit rinse and repeat again. Bali felt sticky.
When Fraser, a longtime friend, suggested I just focus on design, and hire him to build me a project on Koh Phangan, it was a giant YES. I had just sold a few houses and was feeling cashed up to get cracking again. I just couldn’t be asked to do all the hard grind myself.
I’m tired of project managing things in Bali, in a language I never learned to speak, with teams of people who really don’t want to be bossed around by a woman in filthy yoga pants ranting about P-traps and the value of not just dripping paint EVERWHERE.
I’m over the ambiguous rules and regulations and insidious corruption. You know what Indonesia must be like when I find Thailand a totally easy and clear place to do business.
I also felt like I had taken my fair share from Bali, and with the floods of people moving there, it, and I needed a break.
Fraser went on the hunt to find me land. A couple weeks later he rang up, and said he had the perfect plot. My husband, Ben, and I flew to Thailand and fell instantly for the avatar like forest where we could picture tiny homes hanging over massive boulders. We were all aware there was a lot of traffic noise, but we figured we’d find a way to muffle it. DONE! I moved money into my WISE account, ready to hit BUY. Fraser gave me a “settle down lassie” and said he was going to do the due diligence before we transferred any payment,
Two weeks later, Fraser told me the landowner had reneged on the deal.
I heard this, and actually let out a giant sigh of relief. Somehow, in the previous week, I had completely, accidentally, if you can believe such a thing is possible, invested most of the money sitting in my WISE account, in another property. Whoops. The details are boring and bizarre, but the outcome was boring and irrefutable. I only had half the cash I needed to buy the land.
I guess it wasn’t meant to be.
And then Fraser sent the next message. He was upset with the landowner for reneging on the deal, after he had worked so hard to find it for us, and we had flown out and agreed on all the details. The landowner, a contractor who works for Fraser, agreed it wasn’t fair, and offered up a better piece of land, at the same price. No traffic noises. Same view. Done. All fixed! Please send payment immediately.
Faaaaawk.
I cracked a beer, and handed one to my friend, Nick, who was staying with us in Japan at the time all this was going down. I explained the problem. Nick was very quiet.
He drank his beer, and then sort of casually said “I could come in as your partner. I have cash.”
Nick had never been to KPG, let alone Thailand.
I accepted. We closed the deal the next day.
Six weeks later, Nick and I, his partner and their 6 months old baby, got our asses to KPG, to see this piece of land Fraser had managed to find for us.
So there you go. We started a last-minute partnership, we bought land we’d never seen, in a country Nick had never been to.
And I’m excited, for the first time in quite a long time, about a project and the people I get to work with. The land is beautiful! The bird songs bounce around the gully that runs down the center of the acre of land. We scrambled around carefully, praying the hundreds of coconuts hanging overhead didn’t fall on our heads.
Business meeting with Fraser!
We spent hours with Fraser’s team - a design engineer, a landscaper, a solar panel expert. We also spent a lot of time with baristas and bartenders. It was so much fun.
The adventure will unfold here.
Stay tuned.
I’m sure it will be very boring as we:
Remotely manage a build in SE Asia, on an island
Build a manufacturing business
Work with friends
Try to recover an accidental loan, in order to fund said manufacturing
Extract a container of furniture and personal goods that have been held by customs for 3 months in order to finish a build in Japan
Manage an Airbnb business in Bali (last guest cancelled a 6 week booking because “There are 15 geckos on the OUTSIDE of the house.”
And country hop around to spend time with my newlywed hubby who works in remote Indonesia, holiday with my aging parents in Europe, and check up on my son who is running a hostel in Hokkaido.
Whatever could possibly go wrong?