People often ask us “Why Thailand?” And the absolute truth is that we didn’t actually choose Thailand. Thailand chose us. How does that work? Well, the short and sweet story is that we were into month 7 of our global lush adventure living in Ho Chi Minh City, when we decided it was time for a change. I’d always heard how beautiful and exotic and sexy Thailand was and my joy mate was totally down. The only question that remained was where in Thailand we would make our hub. My friend Captain Ron suggested we try Chiang Mai. What is a ‘Chiang Mai’ I asked? I had never even heard of this city. Come to find out it’s the 2nd largest city in Thailand. It’s situated in northern Thailand and surrounded by mountains, with China to the north, Laos and Vietnam to the east and Myanmar to the west. And way down south it borders Malaysia. Very interesting we thought, let’s go! And there you have it. Well not exactly all of it. The next thing you know another friend, let us know her son was in Chiang Mai and if we needed anything we could call on him. Yay! A contact always makes travel into unknown cities a bit easier! Thailand was a bit more hectic than even Vietnam. Honestly it’s hard to believe but it’s true. At least Bangkok was. Chiang Mai not so much although it can get quite busy during the high tourist season. We arrived to a hotel in the tourist district which I hated and quickly found an Air b n b while we waited for a short term apartment. What happened next is kind of like something out of a Hollywood movie. We found this chic newly remodeled and impeccably decorated studio apartment in the popular and trendy part of Chiang Mai. And when we went to check in the owners Finnish wife sashayed in her designer duds and announced how perfect we would have been for the condo that they had just sold! (Ummmm we aren’t looking for a place!) Anyway, we got along super well with the couple and became fast friends. Having finally completed two remodeling projects that spanned 5 years they were more than ready to go on an extended holiday to Sri Lanka, so they left the key to the “sold condo” with their friend. Who couldn’t wait to share it with us! He called one day out of the blue and asked if we were interested in seeing the sold condo. Of course me being a designer and having done some construction renovation I was only to happy to take a look! Indeed the place had so much incredible potential. It was a corner unit with a 180 degree view. It needed lots of TLC but had incredible bones. The friend left us the keys and we went back and looked at it multiple times…each time I had more and more ideas…and I got more and more attached. Until finally the owner asked me, on a scale of 1-10 how serious we were about buying the place, because he didn’t have earnest money on the sale. Strangely I was a 7 truly believing that there was no way we could come up with the money! Ha! The universe is a tricky thing when you get yourself out of the way. Suffice it to say that all the stars aligned and we became the proud owners after about 5 weeks! Never having been to Thailand and not knowing anything about anything Thai, we now were the proud owners of a condo in a foreign country. Now the real fun began. We needed to renovate. The ‘friend’ sold me a list of contractors and introduced me to them (The best investment we could make). We settled on about 5 different ones. General contractor (he hired demolition, tiler, plumber, electrician, floor refinisher, drywall and painter) windows, cabinet maker, doors and stone counter man. And we were off to the races. The whole project took 13 weeks. Nothing short of a miracle considering we spoke no Thai! You can’t really make up this kind of story. Of course we had some crazy remodeling mishaps. We lost our electrician, but the universe replaced him with a much better one. Same for the original plumber. Our general was the floor guy and he had his own ideas about the floor so we parted ways and the same day Jerry found a contractor in the lobby who sent us a floor guy. That was another comedy of errors but we figured it all out in the end. About 8 weeks in I thought we would never finish even though the project was always moving forward steadily. Mostly it was the hundreds of bags of demolition debris in the middle of the living area that felt overwhelming and discouraging when they weren’t being moved out. That and the endless dust and cement water all over my gorgeous teak floors! It was heartbreaking for me until one of my friends informed me that teak was what they made boats out of and it was almost indestructible! Oh. Alrighty then! This helped me relax a lot! Eventually all the contractors came together in harmony and finalized their part of the remodeling symphony. How did we wind up in a penthouse condo in Thailand? There must have been a piece of us that wanted to settle down for a minute. In a beautiful and exotic place. In a fabulous penthouse with an incredible view that wanted our finger print on it…and this one picked us to live in it.