The residential areas on the fringes of Chiang Mai are split into neighborhoods called Moobans. The mooban where I live happens to be called World Club Land. While it sounds like the name of a touristy resort or tacky country club, it is a simple mooban just like the others. One distinction it has is that it is the home of Grace International School where many of the students are children of missionaries. For this reason there is an abundance of foreigners in the neighborhood. I found it surreal the first few days here, seeing all of the non-Thais walking past my window. I was surprised to learn that the neighborhood was given its fitting name even before the school and the corresponding flood of Westerners took over. Apparently each mooban tries to take on its own feel, and with World Club Land they were going for a fitnessy, club feel. The school, which is open to all mooban residence after school hours, does have a plethora of tennis, basketball and racket ball courts, all of which I am not likely to ever use. But it’s nice that they are there.
One afternoon I took a walk down my street and was surprised by some of the huge houses down the road. My house is by no means grand, but less than a mile down the road there are some truly palatial properties! The remarkable thing is that just a couple minutes more down the road were some houses you would be fair in calling shanties. These are residences built from old repurposed timber, bits of metal and sheets of plastic. It’s always interesting to me to see places where conspicuous wealth touches elbows with the poor. (Sorry I don’t have more pictures, but it makes me feel creepy taking pictures of strangers’ houses!)
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