Shelter Situation Update

We've seen about fifty different units in the span of a month - in the Sukhumvit (not beyond Ekamai) and more recently, Narathiwas areas. Fitful bursts of energy that sustained this search have waned. Stress has become angst, manifested in sleeplessness, panic attacks, a mini-psoriasis breakout, and a zit the size of a dime.

While we haven't secured a place, the experience has been interesting to say the least. There are an abundance of units in this city that fit our budget and space requirements. Unfortunately, most of them suck.

Among those that are almost immediately eliminated include:

• Good unit in crap building
• Crap unit in good building
• Unit with sleazy agent and/or developer and/or owner hovering nearby
• Townhouse, too many stairs (we're lazy)
• High-rise (i.e., anything over twelve floors)
• High-so (i.e., flashy with little substance) :P
• Those that vehemently deny geriatric cats the right to lay waste to the unit
• Good unit in good building situated in vicinity of a klong/canal (odorless in an ideal world but this being Bkk, most likely consists of soupy sewage stewing in the heat)
• Good unit in good building along a major traffic bottleneck
• Good unit in good building that's next to an empty lot slated for future development (hmm, will it be a residential block, karaoke bar, brothel, or hypermart?)
• Crap unit in crap building with crap name such as Moon Tower, Sukhumvit Casa, Maison de Bangkok, and The Prestige (incidentally, we are seriously considering a non-crap unit in the non-crap Supreme Elegance)

Additional tidbits of Bangkok real estate:

• Access to the sky train and/or the subway via foot is a luxury, therefore most likely out of our reach (sniffles)
• Zoning?!? Haha.
• Japanese expats cluster near Fuji Supermarket and are considered a building's selling point (other nationalities, however, are not, and may be explicitly banned from tenancy)
• Only one building we saw had sprinklers and about half have smoke detectors
• No such thing as a buyer's or seller's agent - it is a free-for-all. We have contacted more than ten agents
• Little price integrity in the market. Listings for the same unit with multiple agents will reveal different pricing. Also, it is not uncommon for an owner to raise the price after a bid is made (Grrrrrrrr)
• One can live in a castle if so desired, as there is one in Sukhumvit soi 23, complete with (sadly, non-functioning) drawbridge, castle gate, spires, and serfs (aka maids)
• Every %*$@!? building has a %*$@!? swimming pool even if it's smaller or skinnier than my %*$@!? ass, and situated in the parking lot or on the roof. I'm sick of these %*$@!? useless pools

Makes us wonder: where did we go awry?