Pre-Fab Cambodian Homes On The Mountain Pass 🚛 Rat Trapping 🐁 & Litter Bugs 🚯
On the way to get the kids from school I noticed a gang of lorries hauling pre-fab homes parked on the mountain pass, and I decided I'd stop and meet the crew on the return trip if they were still there.
🚛 An Emerging Market 🏠
In the last few years pre-fabricated homes have become increasingly popular here in Cambodia. There are now several businesses making these homes from various materials and in many different styles.
We have seen some of these units sold for as little as $1,500 USD, and as much as $5,000 USD, and we've been considering getting some mini cabins in the future when the crypto market recovers. So when I passed a group of pre-fab home hauling lorries parked on the summit of the pass, I really wanted to return and get some unbiased info from the transport crew.
When we climbed the pass, we noticed the lorry gang was still parked, and at the same time we began to slow down, we were being passed by my nephew and his wife in their Prius, so we motioned to them that we were going to pull over and check out pre-fab homes.
A small part of my reason for stopping was Hive content of course. The stop served two purposes though, not only Hive content, but we asked the friendly crew about the prices, business name, etc. We were told most of the units they were delivering cost $10,000 USD+, and that was a bit shocking to me because we've seen similar units sold for a third of that price.
We noticed a lot of superficial damage done to the siding and exterior of the homes during the windy journey from Phnom Penh. Most of the guys were a transport crew not employed by the pre-fab home company, so it was nice getting some unbiased info about the quality and value of their units. This particular company is way beyond our price range, but we're already familiar with several similar companies, so now we have a better idea of what to expect when shopping for these mini dwellings.
Stuart Little Imprisoned 🐁
Part of living in a porous home is dealing with rodents and keeping their numbers in check. After living here for a few months, I noticed a rat duo with an affinity for turd-fishing in our squat toilet, so I knew I had to catch these poo-addicts and give them a new life somewhere else.
I have never found anything better than peanut butter for catching Cambodian mice, and it's worked to catch this rat duo one at a time. I haul the trap across the river and turn them loose in the forest, knowing that whitewater is a pretty solid rat barrier.
Signs Of Cambodian Tourism 🚯
There is a former stretch of public road and a defunct bridge which borders our property, and many travelers use this road to access the river, although technically they have to trespass on our land or our neighbor's land to access the river. Our upstream neighbor's land has no homes or anyone living on it, and it's also the site of a natural swimming pool, and therefore draws a few guests every week.
Anytime I'm home and I see a car load of people going down the road, I usually give them a 5-minute speech about how I'd love it if they don't leave their trash behind when they depart. They always agree and talk about the shamefulness of littering, and then they get in the cars and throw bags of trash into the river. Based on my experience, 90% of Cambodian travelers lie about their littering habits, and even after agreeing with me they won't do it, they just can't break old habits.
This has caused me to be more careful in how I will approach tourism going forward. I want small numbers of foreign guests with a respect for nature, and hopefully more and more Cambodian guests once there is a cultural shift in attitudes towards nature in the Khmer culture.
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And they STILL do it? It's beyond me how anyone can do it at all, it's so fucked up. You can blame it on culture but still.... Grrrr
Prefabs seem a cheap option to building and can be quick. Here people do some really lovely kit homes that are quite trendy. Now the market is a bit fucked though.. supply chain issues, costs of materials .. looks like a big downturn for all.
Bummer how you just were getting set up when market slumps, but you've been through worse, right?
Frustrating indeed, especially considering there public trash bins for the national park every 500 meters along the road in some places, and one happens to be 100 meters from our house, but that' just too much effort for most Cambodians. We hosted some guests last night in the cabin, and when they had left in the morning, I noticed a pork noodle cup carefully placed in the branches of our banana tree 🤦♂️, so rude and careless. Luckily I was not awake to see this while they were still here, because I would've let them know they are not welcome here anymore if they're going to put trash in our trees.
I think the pre-fabs here are hit and miss with quality, but I think if we can find a team that's perfected a technique, it'll be easier and cheaper than having something built, then rebuilt to fix errors, then repaired to fix mistakes made during construction. Everything so far we've done on the cabin has been below average quality work, and some cuts on the wood have been off as much as 10-15cm, real eyesores.
Just the other day I had to explain why in my country we match the grade of the handrail with the stairs. These guys are career contractors, but incorrectly measure the handrail and staircase so that you couldn't reach the handrail on the first few steps descending, but by the time you're at the bottom the handrail is higher than your shoulder.
It's regretful to spend all day working on Hive to make 5 or 10 bucks, then spend it on something that will have to rebuilt properly the next morning. At this point I'm tempted to drop $1,000 USD on tools, and just start doing what I can do myself.
it is like printed 4d house, the price is more expensive than creating your own house from concrete
This particular business was much more expensive than building from scratch, but there are many pre-fab homes that are beautiful, and only costs $1,000 or $2,000 USD built and delivered.
Are pre-fab houses cheaper than us building our own houses, my friend? And whether the pre-fab house has many choices of types, I mean the choice in terms of price. The bigger and more luxurious the house, the more expensive the price.
Hopefully Cambodian tourism will progress further with good management from the government...
I guess it depends on the business/brand, the ones we saw on the mountain pass were much more expensive than what we have seen online. There are very few skilled craftsmen in Cambodia, so I think it would be easier to buy a pre-fab home from a place accustomed to making the same house every day. I've learned many times in Cambodia that doing custom construction projects almost always fails. I hate to say I have no faith in this government, or it doing anything positive for the people.
Once the Prime Minister feels the citizens are tired of him, he'll flee to Cyprus with the majority of his country's wealth and cronies, where he already has citizenship.
Those prefab cabins would make an awesome addition to your land, if that weren't so pricey. Foreigners in particular, because not everyone appreciates the rustic look. That is so sad that locals have such a penchant for littering. It's a tough one to address too, when the government isn't on board with providing rubbish bins nd rubbish dumps.
I definitely won't be choosing the company whose homes we saw on the pass, just too pricey like you said. However, there are some pretty good looking cabins I've seen for $2,000 USD. I guess you never know until you pull the trigger. I am thinking that a good first step will be to buy a pre-fab bathroom house, perhaps two toilets and two showers. We could make a good amount of money by simply offering bathrooms for Range Rover drivers because the VIPs don't know how to pee on the side of the road. Even if we don't like the overall fit and finish of a bathhouse pre-fab, at least we would be able to earn our money back quickly from pay-for-pee customers.
The sad part is there are public trash bins 50 meters from our house, but hardly any trash ever finds its way in these bins. It's a matter of laziness and education. I've even had an argument with a couple who couldn't understand why I just couldn't take their trash for them to the bins. I tried to explain this is a national park, and I'm not paid to collect trash, and even if they were paying to stay at our place, I still wouldn't allow them to litter. They obviously come here because it's beautiful, and I know they wouldn't visit if everywhere was filled with trash, so I guess the thinking is just to come here until they ruin it, then find another upcoming popular site to trash.
A pre-fab bathroom, that is a brilliant idea! I don't know if cabins come with bathroom facilities, but having separate bathroom means simpler/cheaper cabins could have shared facilities.
That rubbish mentality is a hard one to change isn't it. Maybe the kids could charge people to put the rubbish in the bins. Money making scheme. Do the public rubbish bins get emptied regularly?
A lot of rural properties in the Caribbean still keep the kitchen, bathroom, and bedrooms as separate buildings, and I'm quite fond of this. With 20-30 guests, an exclusive bathroom area can serve everyone with only a couple of toilets. However, if we chose to put a toilet in every accommodation, we could end up with 10 toilets and all the septic issues that go along with them.
The bins here seem well-maintained, at least by Cambodian standards, so it comes down to basically not caring unfortunately. Even wealthy Cambodians will simply throw trash out their door and look at it every morning without even being phased, still shocks me.
Another question. I've had to buy a new Samsung tablet and transfer everything across. Ecency didn't transfer and I can't remember what I need to do to sign in and link it to peakd. Can you help?
Well, I assume there won't be any cross-device issues, but in my Hive Keychain app there is a place where you can generate a QR code and scan it with your new device, instantly importing all but your master password. I believe it is in "Accounts," "Manage Accounts," then at the bottom there is a button to "Generate QR Code." Let me know if this works for ya.
Those cabins definitely looks more expensive than 1500. Is 10k include transportation and installation? Do they need ground leveling work? Do they need to pile the ground and secure the structure?
As for littering, I have a confession to make. Despite being a self conscious modern person and educated enough to know how to protect the environment, I found myself guilty on one occasion like a year or two ago. I turned my back and went to the night market, got myself a bag of stinky tofu and left the family waited in the car. After I finished the bag of smelly stuff, I had to ditch the plastic bag so it doesn't carry all the smell into the car. However, after walking around for 10 minutes, I couldn't find any trash bin and my final resort was to hid it behind a lamp post 😅 Needless to say, after that I went back into the car, and I forgot my breathe still smell like toilet bowl 🤣
I know I commited a crime and I felt super bad about it. I spent a weekend doing community work, clearing up the park and picking up trash, but still everytime when this kind of topic arise, I will feel super guilty about that one time I did that. I did went back 200km to that place and try to redeem myself, but the stinky bag wasn't there anymore 🤣 so now I had to carry that guilt for the rest of my life!
The price is only for delivery and crane drop, plus any repairs that need to be made. We have seen wooden cabin style structures the same size for only $2,500 USD delivered. That's one hell of a story, coming back for your bag after all that time, surely your karma is clean from all the extra work you did and the worry you felt 🤣. And even if that didn't cleanse your karma, that stinky tofu certainly certainly got rid of any mouth karma.
🙏🙏🙏
Wow some really great machines that can haul a house. What about the cost if we ask them to move our house, is it expensive or not?
Well, I guess only a crane truck would be needed to move a house, but it would also have to be a pre-fab house designed for lifting. If not, houses have to be moved the old-fashioned Khmer way.
Yes, it's a very good design house, if it is to be lifted like that, does it have to be a wooden house.
Hi @justinparke! Interesting about these prefabricated houses. Haven't you thought about building a house with adobes or mud? Much of my house is built with wood, vines and mud, and it's already over 100 years old, it's a strong and sturdy house. The only enemy of mud is humidity, if you take into account all the elements required to prevent humidity from penetrating the walls, you will have a great house, fresh, safe and very durable. Greetings.
It has rained here almost non-stop for the three months we've lived here, so I'm afraid it's just too wet for that kind of house. Even today we lost two pieces of land to the river due to floodwater erosion. I'm not saying it wouldn't be impossible, but such a structure would have to have a roof that doesn't allow any water near the house. Preferably we could build a gigantic fire and bake the home so that it doesn't become silt in the river too. There is so much good clay here for bricks, so I hope one day a brick maker starts producing closer to our home so the delivery cost is cheaper. For now, the nearest affordable bricks are 200km away. I like wood, but even though there is abundance of it here, and it's also 200% cheaper than anywhere else in Cambodia, there is no properly cured wood.
We'd have to buy wood and cure it for at least 6 months. 10% of the wood we've used so far has split, partially due to being wet, and partially due to the construction guys using gigantic nails on thin planks without drilling pilot holes in the wood first.