Central Scrutinizer Posted February 6, 2002 Report Share Posted February 6, 2002 We made good time back to our village once we hit the "highway" and were at the house soon enough. Sis made some food to bring out to my wife and her relatives, who were picking rice, for their lunch hour. That is what they take for lunch when working in the fields, one hour for lunch break. Later I'll write more on my experiences in the rice fields. Right now we're talking fishing! I set up our fishing rods with swivel hooks and stashed them, along with our other gear, in the back of the pick-up. While waiting for Sis I went down the street to the store on the corner by our house. This store should have been MY store. A couple of years ago this place had been a house an old man owned. A fairly new house, though small, that when the old man's son had gone to jail, for some crime I forget at the moment, had forced the old guy to put up for sale. When I had previously noticed the house was empty and had a "for sale" sign on it which was in Thai I asked my wife what the sign said, and she said it was for sale. On the sign the price was 100,000 baht. I thought this was fairly cheap for such a decent small house, (It had two small bedrooms and an indoor squat toilet) although I suggested we offer 80,000 baht and see if the old guy would go for it. I told the wife, when she asked why I would want to buy it, that we could turn it into a noodle shop/convenience store, as the closest "real" store was a couple klics away outside the village. We'd get all the village trade as we'd be closer, and running the shop would be easy as it is only four houses down from ours. This idea was quickly squashed by my lass and her Sis. When I asked why, and pressed my valid points, I was told that this was a "bad luck" house. Everyone who had lived there had come to some bad luck end in some form or another. Hmmmmmmmmmmm. Odd ducks these Thais at times 'eh? I countered with "Look, we buy the house. We get the monks from the Wat, which is just down the street, to come and give the place a real good "good luck" blessing rom Buddha. Then we buy a real nice spirit house for the little goblins and ghosts and put it out front for them. Viola, no more "bad luck" house, and we have a nice little baht making shop real close to our house to run." The plan had merit they said, and might just work, but they still didn't seem too keen on the idea, so I dropped it. A month later the house was sold for 90,000 baht. Now it has become a thriving noodle shop/convenience store. I'll never listen to these ditzy broads again!! The place is doing a booming business! I made my way down to the shop that should have been mine and bought a few cold bottles of beer Chang, and a couple of bottles of Lao Khao, for those who like this crap, for the rice picking relatives to swig back during their lunch break. Yeah, I'm a nice guy sometimes. Picking rice is hard and thirsty work. For those of you who have never tried Lao Khao I suggest you forego this little alcoholic beverage. To imagine it's taste I give you this comparison. Take a bottle of the cheapest, nastiest tasting tequila you can find. Pour it into a dirty old tin pail which you've lined with old roofing tarpaper. Now have a few cats piss into it and let it sit in the pail for a week or so, or until the taste of the tarpaper has invaded the concoction thoroughly. Pour this, when ready and ripe, into a glass and drink it. There you have it....Lao Khao! Sounds delicious huh? Believe me, it's the crappiest tasting shit I've ever had, and I've drank about damned near everything for a buzz in my lifetime. I returned from the shop that shoulda been mine with my goodies and put them in the truck. I cracked one of the Changs and swigged on it while waiting for Sis to finish making lunch and sat on the truck's bed gate swinging my legs and soaking up the sun's blistering rays. Sis came out shortly and tossed a few plastic bags of cooked food in the truck and off we went to feed and water the toiling mass of our rice picking relatives in the fields behind the village. And to later try our hand at catching fish in the ponds on our rice field properties. I love this shit! (to be continued) Cent Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 6, 2002 Report Share Posted February 6, 2002 Excellent posts , i done a lot of fishing in some stock ponds ,caught a load of catfish up to 15kg but i would really like to try and fish a few ponds rivers out in the sticks next time, i wait with "baited" breath to hear how you get on. Boris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 6, 2002 Report Share Posted February 6, 2002 Cent: great stuff: your style is interesting, kind of a "call em as you see em" approach. My input on why they did not want you to buy the store. You thought of it first. had it been their idea, you would never have heard the end of it. ( as we all know, "farang not understand business in thailand". I hope you actually did get to go fishing. I was always interested in finding out just what there is to catch with a pole in thai ponds/rivers. Some what of a mistery to me from a while back, I had a friend ask me to bring a big fishing pole for her bf ( bring from america). They were in sakon nakon, so I got the largest fresh water pole/reel I could find ( and not struggle with on the plane) I would guess it could handle a 30 lb fish no problem, but when given to him ( after he left I got the real feed back) he said it was not big enough. To this day I wonder if he was just ungrateful, or there are some really big fish in those ponds and rivers??? Myabe your story will clear this up ( for me anyway) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 6, 2002 Report Share Posted February 6, 2002 What does the wife and Sis say about the noodle house idea now? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Central Scrutinizer Posted February 6, 2002 Author Report Share Posted February 6, 2002 Handy, Nothing at all. Just a weak smile and an embarassed look as I rant, gently and somewhat jokingly, at them ocassionally about it, and tell them "I told you so", and point out how much baht they have lost by not listening to the "dumb" falang. Hahaha! I've always asked them "if the falangs are so dumb about business why is it the falangs come to Thailand and spend their money on holidays. Where are all the "smart" Thai businessmen going to the states and spending thousands of USD while on holiday? HUH?" The new plan is a Video/VCD rental shop in the village. Should be up and running sometime in August. For cheap start-up capital, and a decent monthly return after expenses, in Thai terms of course. Not big money by our standards. I have a captive audience up there with 85% of the families owning VCD players or Video players. (Mostly Video still, but VCD players are poppng up in many households now, as they are cheap there.) Mostly Chinese and Thai movies to rent, with some American Thai dubbed blockbusters. If it works well I'll start another one a couple of villages over a year later and see how it does. (The money I'm talking about here is very small actually to do a start-up from scratch.) The closest place is at least a half hours or more drive away to rent anything to watch. Here there are 300 families in the village, a bit more now, maybe 350. They especialy love the Morlam Concert VCD's and video tapes! In the states the local Video/DVD Shop is on the way out in the next few years due to Pay per View Television, which costs about the same to rent a movie as it does to go out and rent one. Whereas in Thailand, RURAL Thailand, the infrastructure for Pay-per-View won't be there for many more years to come I think. Plenty of years left to make money in the VCD/video rental business. And it's a clean inside job, low physical work, out of the sun, with plenty of potential customers stuck in the middle of no-where, and the labor is cheap.....high school girls from the village wanting a decent clean job for a hundred baht a day or so, and still live at home in the village with Mama, Papa, and boyfriend. But the first one will be run by Sis and wife in our village, with explicit instructions from me. Then if it's good we'll branch out a little in the area in other villages. Cent Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 7, 2002 Report Share Posted February 7, 2002 Cent; good idea for the vdo shop, but I would be willing to bet once others see ur success, there will be a few more open on the same soi. ( ever see just one of any small business in a village in thailand?) some years ago I set up a copier cartrige re-charging business in the building I had an office in. cost about $6 to re-- a cart. in about 5 weeks, there were more than 10 differnt guys going office to office offering the same service. good luck. ( and waiting to hear more about the fishing trip. ) Or is fishing just an excuse to cover the smell when they come back from a day out? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Central Scrutinizer Posted February 7, 2002 Author Report Share Posted February 7, 2002 Pasathai, I know what you're saying here Pas, but the rub is there are really no places anyone can set up shop close by to compete with me/us. All the area on the soi are residential homes, most owned by family and friends, the village school, the village Wat, etc. The only place to set something up on the main road would be outside the village to the east, and that's basically all rice fields, too expensive to buy to start a small shop on that won't pay that much return on, except over a very long period. Not profitable enough I think to invest in. Plus if it happens and the competition is too fierce I'll just pack it in and sell off the already many times over paid for inventory for a mall profit, and start something else. I have many ideas for small businesses in a village area that will probably work to a small extent. Mainly I just want to start something to keep Sis and the wife in pin money, working, and out of my hair, so I can write my stories in peace without them underfoot all day long bugging me to do this and that. Sis has a fairly good business mind, ran a successful noodle restaurant in Pattaya for a few years. I already have around 300 videos and vcds and karaoke vcds I've bought over the past couple of years in my "private" collection, mostly Thai and Chinese with maybe 30 or so American dubbed in Thai movies, which I'll put into the shop for rental. Seems the Thais favor the Chinese movies quite a bit, along with the Thai stuff. I'll invest in another 500 to 700 vcds and videos, giving us around 800 to 1,000 titles to choose from when we start out. Every month we'll buy around 25 to 50 more titles as newer stuff comes out. I've figured this into the monthly costs. vcds and videos are pretty cheap to buy there.....decent copies even less. We'll have two vcd players as rentals, and four video players as rentals for those in the village without either to rent when they need to. These are cheap to buy and figured into the original investment of 40,000 baht start up cost. Also I'll sell vcd and video players from the shop for cost to try to increase the available customer base in the village. On time payments, but more as a lay-away plan where you only get the machine once it's paid for....no credit please. :-) Plus Sis will be going to classes for video machine and vcd machine repairs, which will be provided at the shop. She's very mechanically inclined. The shop itself is already there, a large room built onto the house as a noodle shop/restaurant that we closed due to problems with the twat across the street and his noisy metal working shop. Now the house is totally enclosed in glass, including the shop front, so the noise won't be a problem for customers. But the noodle shop idea has too much competition, any woman with a wok and a few baht for base essentials to prepare food can open a noodle shop. This idea, the vdo shop, has no competition and a customer base whose needs are not yet being met. We'll have no rental fees on the shop, as we own it already and it's all paid for. And the help is basically free, as Sis and wife, and daughter, can handle the staffing and work load easily. I've figured after expenses they can make around 4,000 to 5,000 baht a week just on vcd/vdo rentals, (if my calculations on rental frequency hold to be correct, or even close. Not big money for us, but an okay income from a legit business for them in the village.) not including monies made on the rentals of the machines, vdo/vcd machine repairs, and selling older vcds and videos as space is required later for newer stock. These can be sold cheaply and turn a small profit, as the rentals have already paid for themselves usually after around 15 to 20 rentals. Once they stop renting, usually if they aren't renting after 30 to 60 days, you sell them off cheap to make room for the newer stuff. They've already made you a profit during their "shelf-life", and are now assets to be disposed of once their demand value is gone, still making you a small extra profit. The only reason I know about this stuff is my best friend here in the states owns his own vdo shop, and has run it succesfully within fierce competition in the area where he has his shop for 15 years. (One of his competitors being Blockbuster Video!) He always dicusses his business with me to get ideas, and to bounce his own ideas off of someone who isn't completely retarded. Plus my daughter has worked for him for around 6 years, and is always talking to him about ways to incease the business, and to me. She is in college (graduates this year) and taking a small business owners/business Admin degree course, along with minors in studies she needs to do the type of business she wants to open. She also works in the Small Business Association branch of her university which helps others start their own small business. I've gone over my plans with both of them, and the idea is sound, and the potential losses are minimal if it doesn't work out. My one big demand for this whole thing to the wife and Sis is this: No-one takes a satang of the profit from the shop until I am paid back my original investment!! This is a must! I figure they'll be working for free the first 3 months to pay me back. They've agreed to this stipulation wholeheartedly without complaint. I'll then take my origial investment and sit back and think of another way to invest this money into something that'll keep the family working and earning some baht for themselves. Once my money is returned it's up to them to run the shop, with nothing from me except for knowlege, encouragement, and ideas to help them. I'm not a businessman, and have no desire to be one. I think they'll do alright if they listen to me. Sis is pretty sharp, and no dummy when it comes to making baht, and neither of them lack a work ethic. And this isn't rocket science or back breaking work either. Pretty simple really. I'll watch how they do the first six months, and if the business is a success I'll re-invest half the original money to beef up their movie title inventory, also getting this moey back too. A video store in the USA needs around 7,000 to 10,000 titles to compete, but this is for a much larger city with thousands of households and customers. I figure a small shop in the village needs around 2,000 to 2,500 titles to make it work long term and be successful. Like they say. "If a man is hungry don't feed him a fish, give him a fishing rod and et him feed himself." AND I say he should then catch a fish and eat it, then catch a few more and sell them, and pay you back the cost of the fishing rod! Some guys amaze me when they dole out all the cash to start a business for their lady, then don't demand their original investment back as part of the deal, before they even start the business deal. I've read all the horror stories here and on all the other boards. It may be small money to the guy, but what is it teaching her, and her family probably if it's a Thai lass? That you are a rich falang, an endless source of income, a walking ATM machine, the easy solution to all their financial problems? Is this what these guys want to teach their lady? It's not the money fellas, it's the principle of it. Make 'em work for it! (Not meant for you Pasa, but other readers.) Just my thoughts and ideas. Later Pasathai. Cent Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 7, 2002 Report Share Posted February 7, 2002 Cent: Wow! you really have thought this out. ( I would not have imagined any less from you after reading your thoghtful stories) Is the "keep them out of ur hair" the #1 plan? nothing worse than a bored thai lady thinking we have to keep them "entertained" on the rentals> have they started putting those loooong thai/chinese serials on vdo yet. when my daughter brings home 6-8 tapes and its all one story, I know its going to be a long week. ( ever notice the theme of most of these is the ladies crying and the guys fighting?) do you have a plan for repairs on the spot, or just basic cleaning of the machines? I would think the tape players would get "gunked up" pretty fast. Maybe a popcorn machine would be a good addition to the fare too. ( just dont let anyone talk you into warming dried squid in it( (( mine still reeks after 3 years))) Good plan to make them "work for it", I hope it does not turn into a "face contest" issue. I had a friend that set his gf up in a small business, got paid back ( more or less) and the following trip she gave him a bill for a beers she served him. (go figure) I am sure ur situation is much different, you must be accepted as family by now. I ( we all probably) hope you have lots more to tell about the "plan" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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