When Lisa King’s parents heard there was a property for sale on a beautiful stretch of beach in Southern Thailand, they put a deposit down without inspecting the place. ‘My mother [Farida] used to believe that she was vaguely clairvoyant. She woke up one night in a dream and was, like, “We need to buy this house”,’ says Lisa, an artist and textile designer, laughing. The house in question was a traditional Thai teak building, a beachfront property set among rich foliage and flanked by the dramatic limestone cliffs that make the Krabi province a hot spot for rock climbers. The predominantly wooden house, raised on stilts with a dark green roof, blends into its lush surroundings with open balconies wrapped around the exteriors. The house, known as Baan Samarinda, is part of Railei Beach Club, a community of private holiday homeowners that include National Geographic photographers and retired treasure hunters (‘legit, legit!’ Lisa says. ‘[They] discovered treasure from the Spanish Armada off the coast of Florida’).
At this point, some 35 years ago, Lisa and her family were based in Bangkok, so journeys to their new holiday home were more akin to a pilgrimage: a 12-hour overnight bus followed by an hour-long trip in a traditional wooden long-tail boat. Given the remote destination, the family also had to take everything they would need with them. ‘I just remember my mother cooking for two weeks and then freezing everything,’ Lisa recalls as she and her sisters would load up their suitcases ahead of each trip. Since there were only three hours of electricity a day, a refrigerator was out of the question so food was kept cold thanks to a daily delivery of ice via boat.
Farida, originally from the island of Madura in Indonesia, had also always dreamed of having a Balinese house, but when her then husband pointed out that it would be unwise to add yet another country to their roster (at the time they had two houses in Thailand – the one in Krabi and their rented home in Bangkok – as well as another one in the UK), she came up with an alternative. She would bring Bali to them. They purchased the plot of land next door to their beach house and she set about acquiring the pieces to build her dream. It began with the entrance, huge ornately carved wooden doors that, along with two containers’ worth of furniture and building materials, were carefully transported from Bali to Thailand before being taken across to the island piece by piece on small longboats. Given the mammoth task of transportation, often Farida would take a small detail, like a carving, that she would then have replicated by Thai craftsmen. The roof tiles were custom-made in Lampang and the two statues flanking the entrance took four men to heave off the boat on to dry land. ‘It was really blood, sweat and tears to achieve this build,’ says Lisa, ‘many treacherous journeys through the rain and storm with shipments balanced on an open wooden boat, bearing in mind [my mother] didn’t swim!’
Despite the hurdles of the remote location, the landscape was a huge draw. ‘I guess they sort of snuck their way in,’ Lisa observes as she gestures to the shelves and cabinets groaning with shells her mother had collected over 30 years. As the house took shape, it grew beyond its Balinese inspiration as other elements began to introduce themselves – low lacquer Burmese tables jostle with blue-and-white Chinese porcelain. ‘Her style reflected how she would mix different people of different cultures in one room,’ Lisa observes, ‘usually around a dinner table, and that’s how we grew up in this house. These houses have seen hundreds of people gathered from near and far.’ Since her mother’s death, Lisa and her sisters have continued this tradition, assembling intimates and sharing the beauty of the island with them. Lisa even got married on the beach, for which occasion the local community joined forces to build bamboo scaffolding supporting a giant disco ball. And in its own way Farida’s party goes on, since the houses are now also available to rent, inviting people from all over the world to share in her cosmopolitan vision.
For more information, visit baanrailei.com
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