Life in Thailand: Kalaya and Andre

After doing the LTS, Andre Nederpel started working as a machine carpenter at a small construction company at the age of 16. At the age of 36 he emigrated to Thailand.

After visiting various countries, I ended up in Thailand in 1991 for a holiday with friends. In December 1994 I met my girlfriend Kalaya, 36 years old, in a bar on Phuket and she and I are still not ashamed of it, because most girls or women come from this circuit, with a few exceptions.

Without money there is little alternative to get further in Thailand than to work in the big cities as whatever. After some information to start something in Thailand, I sold my house and took the plunge. I found out that you have to be able to swim well.

In May 1996 I emigrated to Thailand to start something with my girlfriend. I was lucky that I could buy from a Dutchman who then had a restaurant on Phuket. After a few weeks, things started to go wrong. Before I came, my girlfriend had been there several times for dinner with other guests, and according to my colleague we could not work together because she came from the circuit and they are not good.

Minimart taken over and renovated

After half a year, Kalaya said that there was a Thai minimart for sale and land for rent somewhere in Patong with room rental for premises. Because the communication wasn't really smooth at the time, I didn't understand her, so it didn't happen. One year later, December 1997, this location was still for sale and the mutual contact had improved and I understood what the intention was.

I then took the risk again and left the Dutchman and we took over this minimart.

After renovating everything the Thai way, I still had exactly one ticket to fly to the Netherlands. I won't tell you what I lost, but that's more than I spent on the women. In the beginning I had to walk through Patong to find customers and check all the bars if I could find people I knew from my previous restaurant. Month after month it became busier and I started selling food, croquettes, steaks, frikandellen, balls, satay and so on. We made days from 16 to 20 hours a day.

Bought land, built guesthouse

Because we only got a contract for 1 year each time, I started looking at another location. We were lucky, just next to our minimart was a piece of land for sale, 39 talang wa. We bought that land with the money we had earned at the time, so we had a lot of fun again.

Kalaya later wanted to sell that land again and I wanted to put a guesthouse on it because we had so many customers who came back regularly. Don't think things went very well between us then, but we didn't let each other down.

Unfortunately, without money you will not get anywhere, so go to the bank to borrow. This didn't go so smoothly when you only have soil. so we lied a bit about the revenue from the minimart. The bank fell for it with what we declared each month in income. This loan amount was nice to build a ground floor and one floor with seven rooms.

After the first floor was finished, the contractor continued with the 2nd floor (3rd in Thailand). After consulting with my friend Kalaya to see if he had understood that the money had run out, she said that without my knowledge she had borrowed money from someone from her province with her mother's land as collateral to build one floor on it. She had money for the furnishings, because that is easy if the guests have somewhere to sleep.

Minimart abandoned, guesthouse sold, house built

We opened in April 2002 and things have gone well from day one. Now we were stuck with two tents, a guesthouse and a minimart: Kalaya in one and me in the other. In 2007 we had to leave the minimart because the contract had expired. Because we rented out all the rooms, we couldn't sleep anywhere ourselves.

In the meantime, they had built a new hotel opposite our guesthouse with units underneath, and we rented one of them for a year and a half; then we went to sleep in our guesthouse.

In December 2010 I broke my shoulder: three weeks in hospital. March 2011 a quadruple hernia: 25 days in hospital. A week after discharge from the hospital a hospital infection in my back: three more operations and 35 days in hospital.

During that time my friend Kalaya kept the whole place going. When the guesthouse closed, she came to the hospital and went back in the morning to arrange everything. The only thing she couldn't do was make reservations. Fortunately, they were done by my Belgian friend Dirk who stayed with us in the guesthouse.

In the hospital we then decided to sell our guesthouse, because it was too heavy for both of us. At that time, Kalaya had a house (photo) built in Petchabun with the money we had earned again with our minimart and the guesthouse. In March 2012 we were able to sell our guesthouse and we retired. I was 52 years old and Kalaya 53 years old.

Now she has bought land again, 3 rai, and has set up various crops there, such as mango trees, macaam trees, coconut trees, banana trees, etc. She cannot sit still.

A lot of Thai ladies end up well

So you see that you should not judge a Thai lady from the rice fields. Start with yourself. To come back to the Thai ladies; in the time that we had our minimart and our guesthouse, we have seen a lot of them end up well in all parts of the world.

Finally, we would like to thank everyone for supporting me in the hospital and staying in TIPTOP-GUESTHOUSE.