With a wry smile, Chavalit Srifah recounted why his coconut-farmer mother let a friend off a small debt, effectively turning down a multi-million dollar windfall for her family.
A day's walk from the nearest village and whipped by monsoon winds off the Gulf of Thailand twice a year, the two acres of beach land offered to her were of no use to the fruit growers of Samui island three decades ago.
Now the plot is worth US$4 million, lying in the center of a booming resort filled with hotels, bars and shops that draws one million tourists each year.
"In those days, people gave land away," said Chavalit as he smoked a cheroot and gazed from his durian and rambutan groves over Samui's forested hills down to the sea. "Who could know people would travel thousands of kilometers to lie on the beach?"
Since bombs planted by Islamic militants ripped through a tourist bar complex on the Indonesian island of Bali in late 2002, killing 202 people, developers have snapped up land in Thailand to cash in on perceptions the mostly Buddhist country is one of Asia's safest holiday destinations.
The price of prime land on the islands of Samui and Phuket has more than doubled in five years, but is still seen as cheap by Western retirees, Asia-based expatriates and Singaporean and Hong Kong businessmen who are buying up Thai holiday homes.
ALMOST HEAVEN
"For what I've got here, a three bedroom villa with a pool, I could only buy a one-bedroom flat in Jersey," said Maggie Saout, a 53-year-old retired fund manager from the Channel Islands who spent US$265,000 on her home.
"Sometimes when I'm sitting in my pool in the afternoon looking out at the sea, I feel I've died and gone to heaven."
Saout says her house, perched on a hill above a bay of moored fishing boats, is a good investment. When away she rents it to honeymooners and holidaymakers for US$275 a day, and her Internet booking business advertises nearby homes for up to US$1,000.
"So many people have rented my place, fallen in love with the island and decided to buy a villa themselves," Saout said.
In a bid to promote upscale tourism, Thailand last month launched the "elite card" which will grant foreigners willing to pay US$25,000 a lifetime of VIP treatment, free golf and reductions at resorts in the country.
The card also allows foreigners for the first time to buy land, although the deeds are held by the state firm running the scheme. Foreigners with houses in Thailand have typically circumvented the law by setting up joint venture firms with Thais to own land, or have bought roll-over leases from developers.
According to property consultants, the villa business is now attracting Asia's big hoteliers, such as Singapore's Raffles Holdings Ltd, and listed developers, such as Thailand's Golden Land.
"In terms of pricing, environment and security Thailand comes in tops," said Pheobe Teo, an associate at Jones Lang Lasalle Hotels, which recently ran a hotel investment survey showing Phuket as the most popular Asian resort for buying property.
"Rich individuals and expatriates in Asia are buying, and the market is doing well enough for operators to put in an equity stake rather than go for pure management contracts."
RICH BAD BOYS
Samui's history of inward migration began 150 years ago when hundreds of Chinese merchants from the island of Hainan settled there to run the trade in coconuts and cotton.
The first backpackers hitched rides on fishing boats to the island in the early 1970s, but now that Samui has filled with upmarket resorts, they prefer the neighboring island of Phang Ngan, famed for its monthly "full moon" raves.
Samui now has an official population of 36,000, but an estimated 150,000 mainland Thais now live on the island to serve the tourism industry. Much of the land and the hotel business is run by businessmen from the Thai capital, Bangkok.
"Now, because the local economy is growing so fast, Samui people are happy outsiders here. But one day it will slow down," said Marc Ribail, managing director of villa developer Coconut Land and Houses.
The island's bustle has pushed sleepy villages of stilted wooden houses into the background as construction material stores and furniture shops compete for space with ice cream parlors and Italian restaurants.
But the new wealth often splits close-knit families, with some overnight millionaires driving the island's 50km circular road in brand new luxury cars, while their cousins remain low paid civil servants or work on plantations.
"Traditionally, the mountain land was given to the favorite boy and the beach given to bad boys," said Ribail.
"Now the bad boys are very rich because they sold to Bangkokians, foreigners or large hotel groups."
But islanders say selling land was a necessity because the cost of fish and other produce ballooned when mass tourism arrived and businesses began to be run by outsiders.
"Normal people couldn't adjust to the changes. The cost of living rose and they sold land. They had no choice," said Chavalit, scanning his hill for a spot for his own second home with a sea view.
"Now the old traditions have gone because people don't work the fields and plantations anymore."
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