Bangkok! Also I got sunburn.

Oh hiiii guys... or should I say sabaidee! That's one of the five words I know in Lao now. 

Actually I have finally started Lao lessons and I'm pleased to report they are going well so far. I'm on top of introductions, phrases to use at the markets, ways to avoid pesky tuk tuk drivers and I can also say that I'm from Australia and that I don't understand Lao. Tom has been doing lessons since he started work so he is way more advanced than I, although I did manage to offer our security guard some homemade brownies the other day and he actually understood what I said!

My main shortfall has been getting to grips with how tonal the language is. Seriously the word for 'I' and 'testicles' is essentially the same bar a slight inflection which means when I do try to speak Lao in the real world I'm constantly paranoid that I'm ordering my balls a coffee. Awks.

But, I'll get to Laos life in a later post - yes, I am really going to try and apply myself to this thing - for now let's riff a little about a trip we took to Bangkok recently last month...

God, I love Bangkok. It's so big and loud and dirty. A literal concrete jungle so crammed with traffic that it takes half an hour just to get around the corner in a cab. Refreshingly hectic, gigantic and full on compared to sleepy little Vientiane. As much as I like Laos and the novelty of living somewhere far removed from Western comforts, I have to say it's nice to get away and drown myself in consumerism. In Bangkok you can go to shops like H&M and Muji, watch a movie at the cinema, drink amazing cocktails at a rooftop bar 60 floors up, eat a Whopper at the airport (yeah it was awesome) and pay for all of this on a credit card. No cards (eftpos and cc) are accepted anywhere in Laos so paying by card has actually become a total novelty. A not-so-good novelty.

Beep beep, toot toot!

We stayed in a lovely hotel on a small soi off the main shopping drag in the city and I loved the little side streets in this area. Exploring this part of the city was new to us so it was fun wandering down pokey lanes and stumbling upon cool buildings and great food stalls. Some things we found:

Love!

Cementing my new-found status as a WAG (oh jesus) we took this trip because Tom's football team, the Lao Elephants, were playing in the AFL Asian Championships just outside of Bangkok. The football itself was actually pretty fun. I was expecting school sports day vibes but it was quite the set up with around 14 teams from across Asia (including China, Japan, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Singapore) and it was held at a gorgeous polo club. The Elephants won a game which was awesome but sadly in the last game Tom pulled a 'hammy' and had to sit out :((((. He was hobbling for a week or so but doing much better now and he's even prepping for the next team trip to Cambodia. I also left game day with an injury... a crippling bout of sun burn. Ugh. I NEVER get sun burnt and so I guess this was punishment of 27 years of pretty careless slip, slop, slapping. It was not fun at all and now I understand what this horrible affliction is all about. I still have a terrible tan line on my shoulders to remind me. Noooo!

Game face. 

Look at this guy! So sweaty.

After game day Tom hobbled and I whinged-about-my-sunburn around Bangkok. We splashed out and had dinner at a Michelin Star restaurant Nahm which was amazing. A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. Way better than the airport Whopper.

Then for some reason, maybe to completely counteract the classiness of Nahm, we also decided to do some real touristy crap and got a double pass to an aquarium on the basement level of a mall and Madam Tussauds. I just wanted to figure out how they got freakin' sharks and stingrays through a shopping centre and underground but we ended up mostly dodging Thai school kids and Russian tourists. So many Russians, what's the deal with that?

How did you guys even GET HERE!? 

N'aw.

Madam Tussauds was full of Asian celebrities. But there were a few familiar faces.

Hat, cane and jacket: model's own.

Yep. This happened.

You guys, he's so much taller than I imagined!

AND THIS.

Annnnd I have to end this post because Tom will probably murder me now. That's one of the reasons I'm skipping town this weekend and heading to BKK again with some girlfriends! Bye!

Waterfalls and Dumplings

Well, this thing really went downhill fast didn't it? But hey, we've been busy finding and moving into our new home, Tom has been mining mines, I've been doing a bit of freelance work and buying rugs, and things seem to take a long time to get done here. Like, the time it took three days and four different guys coming to the house to get our internet connected. Yeah. Serenity now.

We've also been trying to assimilate into the Vientiane expat social scene - which may or may not have involved furiously dancing to Backstreet's Back at a Fourth of July party... details are hazy.

So we have moved into our new house and it's niiiiiice. We are happy. And there is an amazing no-name noodle and rice place just down the road. Cue the latest addition to our hangover scrambled eggs: fried rice. I will do a housey post soon once we buy some furniture to make it look a little less crack-den-y as it's pretty much just a couch, TV and two (to die for) rugs at the moment. Did I mention the fact our street flooded the other day? Or the rugs? All in good time...

For now, I thought I'd riff a little about our recent weekend away in Luang Prabang, which was just what we needed to escape Vientiane for a bit. LP is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as in the whole city, woah! It's about 30min north by plane and is extremely beautiful and quaint and we split our four days there into equal parts drinking/eating and walking/sweating. It was lovely. I had a mini freak out when we discovered our hotel (The Apsara - highly recommended) features in the Hip Hotels: Orient book that I used to pour over at the gallery. Pretty exciting. So naturally I took about 1000 photos of the cute soap packaging:

I mean, it's parrots!!

Here are some photos from the walking/sweating/awesome palm tree portion of the holiday:

The first rule of Luang Prabang is... 

LP is where the Nam Khan and Mekong Rivers meet. This is the NK.

We did venture out to the Kuang Si Waterfalls which were preeeeetty, preeeeetty, preeeeetty good. Although getting in a random van on the side of the road with ten other travelers and a driver who in hindsight was possibly pinging on a mix of Lao Lao and speed was maybe not the best idea. Cue an hour of everyone looking at each other nervously and gripping to seat backs as we careened around sharp mountain bends with horrible music blaring and the driver screaming into his phone in Lao. Driving off the side of a mountain in that van while listening to LMFAO on repeat would pretty much be the worst way to go. BUT it was all worth it when we arrived at the waterfalls.

Gorgeous hey? What they don't tell you is there are hundreds of little fish in there which bite you. As my dad would say 'that's how they get you!'. You may not know that one of my phobias is generic looking grey fish, so this kind of freaked me out and my dip in the waterfalls possibly wasn't as relaxed as it could have been. But eventually I stopped screaming every time a fish bit me and just went with it. Because sometimes you just need to let tiny fish gnaw on you and then have recurring nightmares about it later.

There was also a bear sanctuary which had rescued Asiatic Sun Bears in it. They were really cute, but then as we were leaving one of them was staring at me - I mean REALLY giving me the eye - and it made me feel quite uncomfortable. So I didn't take any photos of them. But I did take this shot of the 'educational bear wall' which isn't really to scale.

This is the only photo that Tom has actually ever asked me to take of him.

Then our driver tried to use us in his ploy to rip everyone else in the van off. We were having none of it - actually I thought that his winking at us as he told us the wrong price so we would 'go along with it' was him just being off his face - so you know we pretty much saved everyone (one Spanish lady) from paying 10,000kip extra (just over a dollar). Heroes of the van.

To conclude this post, which hasn't really offered any insight into how amazing LP actually is, here are some photos of the drinking/eating portion of the trip. Namely this alley way that runs off the night markets and is full of smokey street food stalls, we called it Meat Street because of all the meat skewers and dumplings we ate there. I truly think you know you've had a good holiday when by the end of it you have a 'guy', in New York it was 'Bagel Guy', Mykonos it was 'Spanikopita Yaiya' in LP it was our 'Dumpling Lady' and our 'Meat Guy'.

We made a friend <3

Oh hi tiny coconut pancakes in a little leaf basket. I love you. 

Dumpling Lady!

Meat Guy!

On our last morning we set our alarms super early to wake up and watch the procession of monks receive their alms - offerings from townspeople who get up every morning to hand out food to hundreds of monks. This collection forms the monks' daily meal and it was very moving to watch, even if we were a little hungover. It was completely silent except for a pack of dogs running up and down the street, humid and drizzling and we had to keep our distance and watch from across the road but it was a perfect way to finish our first trip to Luang Prabang.

We will pretty much be taking everyone who comes to visit us to LP, so look forward to meeting Meat Guy in the (sweaty) flesh. Ew. 

Previously on the Real Housewives of Laos...

Wow! What's been happening in Laos, hey? Like, soooo much!

Actually quite a lot, which has made me a little el-slacko on this thing. So, I thought I'd re-cap some highlights of the past week or so.

Afternoon tuk tuk-ing <3

House and car:
We have found both! Picking up our little Kia tomorrow and at the same time learning to drive in crazy Asian traffic and on the 'wrong' side of the road. Should be fun. Let's hope we don't die. Luckily for me I don't have my driver's license here yet so I have a few weeks of shirking driving responsibility. Unfortunately for Christoph he already has his Lao license so he will be navigating potholes while I pray to god we don't perish in a ten-car-and-scooter-pile-up-of-doom. Vientiane drift!

On the real estate front it looks like we have found a place that we like and doesn't have random babies or gaudy chandeliers in every room. We aren't getting our hopes up just yet as our first experience left us both pretty jaded about the whole getting a house thing, so we'll share more once we have actually moved in. After we've caught up on Game of Thrones. And Mad Men.

I unknowingly ate tripe thinking it was some kind of cabbage. My Lao friend said 'not vegetable' then pointed to her stomach :(

Port Hedland in Laos:
Imagine my surprise when I learned a few weeks before we left Australia that Port Hedland journalist Mark Scott was also moving to Vientiane. Weird or what!? Well Mark is here now and as those who are schooled in the ways of PH do, we got sufficiently sauced last weekend (did you know they sell towers of Beerlao here?) and ended letting some random tuk tuk driver take us to the local 'discotheque'. Upon arrival we realised we were at a full-blown Lao nightclub rubbing shoulders with Vientiane's clubbing elite (think Asian Jersey Shore). The weird thing was no one was dancing and the dance floor was filled with drinks tables that people just rearranged if they wanted space to dance. We migrated towards the only other white people who weren't gross old men and ended up partying with them and a group of very enthusiastic Vietnamese kids who every five minutes would make us all toast our drinks, yell 'hey' and then dance around the table in a conga line. It was really, really fun. Oh and we danced to Psy. And the Harlem Shake. What is happening to us??

We stumbled upon a Lao block party and watched a break dance battle. Amaze!

China!:
So our first Asian adventure is in the works for later this year - we are going to China! I'm a little nervous, I have a feeling I'm going to just walk around shaking my fist at everything and muttering 'China!!' under my breath. I also think I might buy too many knock-off handbags and get arrested coming back into Laos. Here's my China to-do list so far: eat dim sum everyday, also eat duck everyday, see a Panda, visit a flea market, find some cool art. If anyone has any suggestions of cool stuff to add to this - please let me know what to do and where to go. We will be going to Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong.

Jam Fancy shrine on the street.

Tom has been playing football for the Lao Elephants and has signed up to go on a footy trip to Thailand to play teams from Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Philippines, PNG, Singapore, Hong Kong and Vietnam. He's representing Laos y'all! On a footy trip... to Thailand... oh brother!

I helped out with the install of an photography exhibition fundraiser and somehow ended up as MC for the night. It was veeeeery different from my old gallery but I had a fun time and met some really lovely people and bonus: I think we raised quite a bit of $$ for health and education programs for disadvantaged women and children in Laos. Good cause! I have also been contracted again to do some work for that advertising firm for the next few weeks so that will be keeping me busy until we move in at the end of this month.

Not-so lady of leisure. Wah!

Big trouble in little Laos

So my visions of at least a month as a lady of leisure ended quite abruptly just one week into Lao life when I got a job! Woah! It's a freelance gig that a friend from my old job (at FORM) hooked me up with, working with an advertising firm in the US (!) assisting them with social media coverage and monitoring. It's interesting and I'm really enjoying it and learning a lot - feeling very international as the team I'm working with spans from the US to Europe and then to me in Asia. I've been working seven days a week and will be for the next month... wait, wasn't I meant to not do that over here? Oh yeahhh.

Tom has also settled into work at his site. He's on the same shift as he was Perth-Port Hedland so home each weekend and every second Thursday, so it hasn't been much of an adjustment. Something that's a little different from the usual FIFO schtick is he now flies to site in a war-era Russian helicopter. A big change from the business class upgrades on Qantas that he's accustomed to and according to him "totally not as exciting as it sounds". I may have added the 'totally' to that.

The only downside of my awesome work opportunity is that I haven't been able to get out much during the day to explore our new city so I've mostly been wandering around at dusk and into the evenings, jumping in the odd tuk-tuk when I can't find my way back to the apartment. We are staying close to the little Chinatown area which by day has the best fake dvd shop, what seems like thousands of fresh juice and ice coffee stalls, the most delicious pho I've ever tasted and Home Ideal which is the closest thing to a department store in Vientiane. You can buy bizarre Asian groceries there including pre-cooked eggs in vacuum packed bags (ew) but also Tim Tams and fake designer bags, and they alternate hardcore swear-rap with honky-tonk country music over the PA. It's a trip.

Home Ideal. It's a sale biatch, whut whut!

By night the area offers plenty in the way of bustling street food stalls and late-night street snacks as workers knock-off shift and join their families or partners for dinner. Most of these eateries seem very much in the spirit of get-in-eat-get-out, so we get a few weird looks from the staff when we hang around talking, taking our time with our food, ordering more Beer Lao, inspecting the hundreds of bottles of condiments on our table and admiring the interesting decor choices of our surrounds.

Assorted condiments!

In a lot of the restaurants we've been to my favourite aesthetic feature has been the bounty of plastic fruits and vegetables cascading from walls and hanging pots - it must have been a good harvest that year. As I plan how we can potentially work masses of faux vegetation into our new home (and Tom dies a little inside) I'm pretty sure the restaurant owners are thinking 'Why are these whiteys so obsessed with those fake corn cobs - just eat, pay and leave people!!'.

Actually, Lao nationals have a word for whiteys/expats/westerners and it's 'falang'. We are falangs. Yes. And this is totally us now.

I also liked this painting of running horses in one of the restaurants we went to. It was the only painting on the wall in the whole place... which makes me think it might be covering a gaping hole going through to the shop next door.

Running horse motif.

I should note that we foolishly packed our camera cord with our items that are being shipped. I also can't find anywhere that will develop film, it seems you can buy film readily enough but not develop it. Hmmm. So until then iPhone photos will have to do!

I also figured out how to add a link to some of my Instagram photos below (proud!), so you can see more pictures there.