Life is full of surprises, especially if you are living in Thailand, as a long-time English resident discovered recently. His work involves a lot of overseas travel and after one exhausting trip he was happy to get home to his Sukhumvit apartment and catch up on some much-needed sleep.
His dreams were rudely interrupted early the next morning when he awoke to a loud pounding on his bedroom door. Puzzled and extremely irritated, he opened the door to be faced by the alarming sight of a bunch of men wielding sledgehammers. They resembled a mafia wrecking crew. They seemed equally surprised by his presence and wanted to know what he was doing there. He told them he lived there, which he thought was a reasonable explanation.
It turned out that the landlord had not received proper planning permission to build this particular apartment which was an extension, and had been ordered by the authorities to demolish it. A notice from the landlord explaining the situation had apparently been mistakenly delivered to the apartment next door where a Japanese couple lived. The couple thought it was their apartment which was about to be demolished and had already moved out to new accommodation, leaving their neighbour blissfully unaware of the pending sledgehammer assault.
