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!

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!

Stuff, Things

One of my new found friends in Laos has her own blog, a brilliant and much more professional effort than this random thing which I highly recommend you ch-check out for another look at expat life in Laos and travel tips for traipsing around other parts of South East Asia: Life Elsewhere. Friends with lil' juniors in particular will love it. This week she posted this entry which explores the notion of a life of effortless nomadic travel vs cherished worldly possessions.

Bon Voyage!

This made me think about our recent migration and what we chose to bring with us/keep in Perth. We've been living out of one shared suitcase for three weeks now, nearly four. To clarify, when I say 'shared' I mean around 25kg of miscellaneous Antonas clothes, shoes, all my favourite jewellery, undies, hair straightener, travel-sized hair dryer, my beauty case, a few 'in case I'm really bored' magazines, camera and film supply, oh and my toucan purse. All, in my view, necessities.

Luckily for Tom the three t-shirts, two pairs of shorts, undies and shaving kit that he packed fit snugly in the crevices around all my stuff (hey, he also brought a carry-on). Add to this a few months supply of toiletries/medicines/nurofen (oh nurofen!), a plastic bag of iPhone/iPad/laptop chargers and plug adapters en masse, Lonely Planet Laos and an assortment of yet-to-be-glanced-at Lao phrasebooks and that's our life until our shipping container arrives. Happy to report, so far we haven't been missing anything too much.*

Misc. items going on a sea voyage!

As part of our relocation we were given a 40ft shipping container to fill and a storage unit for whatever we didn't want to bring with us. My visions of the sinking Titanic quickly determined what was coming and staying:  I decided against bringing anything irreplaceable which meant no artwork, no vintage furniture and no decorative items (goodbye vintage pottery collection). The only exceptions to this rule were our collection of Mexican skulls, my Tjanpi woven goanna and one unstretched painting from Martumili, an Aboriginal art centre from the Pilbara. I'm confident these items will see me through potential Perth-sickness, Pilbara-sickness and the Mexico-sickness that's been plaguing me since we left in 2011.

One of the hardest parts about moving for me was leaving our art collection behind, but I know it's being looked after well by my parents and Mollie (yes, I have skyped my art, just to check in and say hi). This isn't so much the desire to have things hanging on our walls here to remind me of home, a certain artist or of my past life as a Gallery manager - but more the familiarity I have with each piece, a connection which I'm severing by not having them around. One piece in particular used to hang in our bedroom and each morning when I woke up it would be the first place I would look. Every morning I would look at this artwork and find something new to admire, a pattern or colour or brush movement that I'd never noticed before - just amazing. Knowing I won't be able to do that for another few years actually scares me a little. Although thinking about seeing this work again, potentially from a whole new perspective is genuinely exciting. And... as I keep telling myself, moving countries is definitely a valid excuse for us to start collecting new artworks.

Goanna <3

We did also bring our couch, tv/stereo and cabinet (left the record player behind), bed, linen, towels, computer and most of our study, my camera collection, Tom's bike, coffee machine and other kitchen appliances and assorted summer clothes. So when/if you decide to visit you will recognise a few things from home - although thankfully we have spare beds that come with the house so you won't have to crash on the couch. The comfiness of said beds is debatable (the beds here are SO HARD) but rest assured we will be investing in some sort of padding to minimise any risk of injury that might incur from sleeping on a prison cell floor-like surface.

I think it's enough home comforts to connect us to our former life but still nothing that makes me feel like our most cherished items are at the mercy of the sea and/or dodgy removalists. Our container has already traveled by sea from Perth to Ho Chi Minh and is now en route to Bangkok before arriving in Vientiane in a few weeks time. I'm hoping it arrives around the same time we move into our new place, fingers crossed!



* Ok, I lied. We are super excited about our Apple TV arriving. For the past few weeks it has been stockpiling episodes of Mad Men and Game of Thrones for us to mooch on our couch to as soon as we unpack. See, Lao life will pretty much be the same as Australian life, filled with Don Draper. No spoilers plz!!

Erk...

Hmmm... my shower water turned brown the other day.

I was in the shower when the water pressure dropped off for a few seconds, then came back on. I thought nothing of it until I opened my eyes and noticed the floor of the shower had turned brown.  I jumped away from the shower head and IT HAD MURKY BROWN WATER COMING OUT OF IT AND IT WAS ALL OVER ME! Gross. Oh god, it was so gross.

Instead of just turning off the tap, I started panicking. Screaming from the shower - I was trapped between the spray and the wall - for Tom to come and help me. I'm not really sure what I expected him to do (bend the hose shut or wrench the whole shower fixture out of the wall maybe??) but by the time he got to the bathroom the clean water had kicked back in and my silent gagging in the corner was rendered kind of unwarranted. But still. Never. Drinking. Tap. Water. Ever.

This was my first real reminder that, oh yeah, we are now living in a developing country. This has been really, really easy to forget since we've had it pretty good for our first few weeks here, living in an apartment with a cleaning service, cable tv (with HBO... Asia) and a driver on call. Spoilt.

Plenty of locals who live in the city don't have access to running water in their homes and while most have electricity a lot don't have the luxury of air-conditioning, which is almost unthinkable when for eight months of the year the temperature is pushing 40c. Having the internet at home is still a relatively new opportunity for a lot of the Lao population and currently there's only one bank here that offers internet banking. Coca-cola has only just arrived in Vientiane to challenge Pepsi in the soft drink market and there is no sign of McDonald's, KFC, Burger King or the like. Although we did find a Chinese KFC spin-off called McconKey... interesting.

By contrast, there are a hell of a lot of brand new cars on the roads. Old cars are a pretty rare sight as most people cruise around in a giant Landcruiser or Hilux. I asked a local about this and she said some families will invest in new cars with the view that it will last for years, that their children and then grandchildren will all be able to use the car, passing it on to each generation. In some cases, the cars are purchased with the help of a bank loan - which have also recently been made available to the public. I can imagine this debt must stay with some of these families for years as well.

Really, the shower drama was nothing. Actually, we are pretty lucky that dirty shower water is the worst thing that's happened to us since we've arrived and I'm sure this isn't the only time it's going to happen over the next few years. I have already heard a few horror stories from other expats about snakes slithering into their bathrooms while they've been in the shower (!!), power going out for days at a time and elusive giant Lao rats living in roof cavities, keeping people awake all night with their rat parties.

I have no doubt we'll get a jolt of reality when we move into our own place and no longer have the daily housekeeping and driving service to which we've become accustomed. Not long to go until house times and to be honest I can't wait. This tiny apartment is starting to make me a little stir-crazy!

And oh... the power literally just went out, then kicked back in. No joke.

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.

Apocalypse Lao

So almost two weeks ago we packed up our little West Perth semi-detached to move to Vientiane, Laos. Laos. Apparently with an 's'. It's between Thailand and Vietnam and Cambodia and China and Burma. Asia, man.

The whole move - from Tom applying for the job that got us here to manic city/site visit to goodbye parties to getting on a freakin' plane with a one-way ticket (and my puppy dreams being dashed, but we won't dwell on that) - only took about 8 weeks in total. Strangely though life in Perth seems like an age ago and while we have been slowly settling in over the last few weeks this feels like some weird holiday-limbo where any second we'll be leaving again to go home. I think it's because we are living pretty much on top of each other in a studio apartment which has a pool and daily cleaning service etc. Hotel life! With no room service. Boo! But you can buy beer (Beer Lao of course) for under $1 from the pool area. Yeah!

Truthfully, it's been pretty cool so far. It's not as humid as this blog may suggest so I have been enjoying reasonably good hair days. We have been getting by alright with our 'Sabaidee' (hello) and 'Kop Chai' (thank you) and big, overly enthusiastic smiles which I'm hoping endear us to the locals who are just lovely. We're feeling so relaxed we've even nicknamed the Mekong River (or the Mighty Mekong as it's called by many, apparently) the Kong.

I'm definitely still in honeymoon mode with the city: the appeal of the Asian street grit hasn't worn off yet. God, I LOVE Asian street grit - all overgrown greenery, trash being swept to the side by those bamboo brooms, rattan bins, broken drain covers - yeah. We have also been getting into the ultra-cheap-and-tasty food... actual Chaisan (cheap Asian food) where giant bowls heaped with fresh noodles and steamy pho cost less than $2 (!!). Chancing it at a few roadside diners, turning blind eyes to weird cats hanging around and swatting the occasional bug off a tabletop like seasoned pros. Don't worry guys, we'll take you to the best places when you come visit. 

We have even found time to be a little social. I've met some pretty cool people so far who I'm hopeful will become great friends. Yay! 

I know this whole move will become a reality as soon as we move into a house, and I'm excited to say that we may have found our total dream house... but no more details until the lease is signed and it's ours.  Next time perhaps I will regale you with my brief foray into the Lao real estate market. Here's a teaser: it involves lots of random babies in empty houses. Seriously. Shudder. 

The brooms!