Laosy...

Ughhhh, Laos kicked our asses yesterday. Not so fun, especially not fun on Tom's birthday.

In the space of two hours we went from having a house and a car to having nothing. Brutal!

Our dream house that we'd found, got the lease, everything ticking along nicely, was snatched from us - Mekong views to Thailand and all - as the tenant has *just* decided he wants to stay in Laos and is willing to pay way more money than we can afford. Annoyance to the max. Can't really blame the guy though (hmm... yes, I can) because I wouldn't want to give the place up either. It was perfect. So, so perfect.

Too perfect apparently and that, I've been told, is just how things work over here.

Since we cancelled all our other real estate appointments when we found 'the one' two weeks ago, I now have to do the whole house-hunt rigmarole again. Thankfully, I was pre-warned about the dodgy real estate agents to stay away from so I'm really happy with ours.

In Laos rather that having one agent per house, each agency scouts all available houses and is able to show any of them to anyone. So you could see the same house over and over again through different agents - although the unwritten (or maybe it is written?) law is that whichever agent shows you the house first gets to keep the commission. I've only seen one house twice so far, and I felt all awkward and wasn't going to say anything when I had to look through it for a second time. But then the little old Lao lady who showed us around the first time came in and started pointing and smiling at me - she ratted me out. So I had to act dumb 'oh yeah... I thought this looked familiar... I've seen this one before...' yeesh!

Luckily during my first real estate encounter I wised up to a few things that I definitely do not want in our new place, well one thing in particular really: no rice paddies. I would literally be driven down kilometers of dirt road, to places I'm pretty sure would be considered 'rural Laos' to find one house in the middle of a rice field. Our agent would point over to a neighbouring field with a single house in it telling me 'expats live there - this is a big expat area', I'd squint over at the other house on the horizon trying to make out if it actually was a house at all, or maybe just a cluster of palm trees.

On a few occasions (with different agents) we'd go to a house that would be completely empty except for a couch or mattress with a lady and baby on it. Creepy. Usually at some point during the viewing there would be breast feeding. Creepy and awkward. It got to the point where the different agents would ask me 'what about the house with the baby?' and I'd get confused between all the babies in houses and not know which one they were talking about. Only in one instance was a family actually living in the house and had a baby with them, that house, after much explaining was 'the one with the baby'.

I have to admit I thought it would be a lot easier to find a place that we liked over here. Most of the houses I looked at with agents have been pretty OTT and impersonal - which is just the style over here: polished marble and gold accented staircases with bedrooms the size of our whole house back in Perth. I naively deleted all the photos from my viewings otherwise I'd post them here.

The beauty of the house we did find was it just felt like 'us' as soon as we walked in. Simple, probably small by expat standards, floorboards (big plus) and a tiny but beautiful jungle garden. Ok, so I'm not sure we'll find anything as gorgeous... but at this point I'm really just hoping we find a place that feels like a home to us. I have visited some really beautiful homes of people I know here... so there definitely is hope!

So, Round 2 of the Great Lao House Hunt *ding ding* hopefully less rice fields and babies.

And... long story short, we also got out bid on the car we were going to buy because we couldn't give a deposit of $2k in cash because we don't have a bank account over here yet. Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat? Yeah. That also sucked, but there are plenty more cars in the... car yard? Parking lot? On the road? Note to self: always carry around thousands of dollars in cash when going second-hand car hunting in Laos.

To end this post on a positive note (phew!): we are taking our first road trip to Thailand this weekend which we are really excited about! Woo woo!

We will be driving over the Lao-Thai Friendship Bridge into Nong Kai and then hitting up the 'big smoke' in Udon Thani. Because of the lack of actual supermarkets and department stores in Vientiane everyone, even the locals, will drive to Thailand to do their shopping in bulk at Tesco, Robinsons, Costco or one of the other giant super stores. So Tesco here we come! I reckon it will be a fun weekend with some fun peeps!