Dogs, gibbons and military coups...and no photos!
All about Eve
Sophie’s sister Eve has been staying this week with her friend Yasmin. In the course of the dinner conversation on their first night, it transpired that Eve and I lived next door to each other for at least a year. Last year, in fact, on the city end of Napier St in Fitzroy. And not only were we living next door, but our rooms, both at the back, directly faced each other, and I saw her probably every second day. When I say saw, what I really mean is that a lot of the time, she would be naked or half-dressed, and I would turn away, irritable at having a nude stranger practically in my room.
Although I didn’t, of course, recognise her in person, as it were, I now remember a surprising number of things. She put her sneakers on the sill every morning and strung up her sports bra across the window. She had a red blanket. She sometimes had a boy in her bed, although I could only ever see feet.
One of her housemates, the one in the bottom front room, was always there, in the front room every morning, on her laptop. Not, as it turned out, writing a book, as I always jealously speculated, but doing uni essays.
I also remember a particularly massive party there one night, to which we weren’t invited, and which kept me up. The next morning, sitting in the sun in the kitchen doorway, I heard her on the phone. “But would you say that was the best party, Patrick, would you say that?” Even in my morning grumpiness, I thought it was funny, and wished I had just gatecrashed.
And now here she was, in our house in Vientiane, Laos, of all places, the same husky voice, the same face (and of course) body, which I knew so well but actually never knew at all.
And of course she is just DYING of embarrassment over all this, especially as the most pervading memory she has of me is that I had an orange sarong on the window, and the fact that I was never, ever there, a thought that occurred to her every time she caught herself walking around naked. Of course, I had always turned away by then.
Thankfully, though, she was not the girl who had loud sex while playing Tori Amos (see one of my posts from last year). In fact, that was another girl, a drama student who lived downstairs.
Melbs
Do I even need to point out what a small bloody world it is? It all got me thinking about Melbourne, more than usual, and about how lonely I was there, in retrospect- single, eating alone, living with strangers. I make it sound more desperate than it really was, but life is just so different now.
I’ve said this a million times before, and I’ll say it again: moving to Vientiane was a thousand times easier than moving to Melbourne.
Jumping ship
I had such a crap week that on Friday, I took the day off and skipped town, catching a songteow 40 minutes out of town to the Vaysana Resort in Ban Keun.
Really, it was the best thing I could have done. We lay by the pool facing the river for literally hours, just reading and, as Eve put it, “picking up some colour”.
It also occurred to us to wonder if we would be lying side-by-side reading if we were boys. We doubted it, somehow.
Anyway, “colour” indeed. I really overdid it in my quest for brown legs. I’m bright red all over, and in grave pain. I don’t expect any of you to have any sympathy, but it really does kill.
Hot and steamy
My delicate lobster legs have meant I have had to forego the sauna this week- a real shame. It’s my latest discovery, even though herbal saunas are a pretty regular part of life here. Ladies and gents alike strip off, put on a sarong and sit in the steam for many minutes at a time.
I just love it. I love sitting still and watching beads of perspiration pop out on my arms. I love feeling like all the crap is being steamed out of my system. I like getting all dehydrated and replenishing with hot tea. I love coming out and the air feeling so cool, even though it’s never cool here.
It’s the best cure for a hangover.
The 'necessary evil'
So anyway, it was a pretty big week last week, not least because of the coup.
It came at a bad time, as most people from my intake were due to go back to Australia, and many people, not including me, were planning a Bangkok shopping extravaganza on the weekend, which had to be cancelled.
Amusingly, many Lao people have been scoffing at the whole thing. We’re supposed to be 20 years behind them, they say, and yet look at us! There’s peace here, no need for tanks in the streets or military intervention. It’s backward, they say, and a bit pathetic.
AT LEAST THEY’RE DOING SOMETHING!!! I feel like screaming back. At least people there are not being forced into apathy and submission, but rather finding practical, if extreme, solutions to the all-round dissatisfaction pervading society.
But no, I would never say that, for fear of getting into another minor argument with someone, which always ends pretty fast when I realise how blinkered those in power are.
Snoopy
The other night, we were awoken by a crashing sound followed by the most tremendous shrieking. I looked out the window and saw that Snoopy, the landlady’s dog next door, had jumped the fence and landed on our washing line. He was completely stuck. It really must have hurt, to land on that piece of wire.
Tom hates that dog, on the basis that when he and Kate first moved into this house, the dog was on Death’s Door and could hardly even wag his tail.
But he’s better now, and a good protector, even if the washing line does serve him right because he has this strange habit of walking up and down the top of the narrow wall each night. It was bound to happen sooner or later.
I wish I’d managed to get a photo that night. He was flailing around and screaming like a girl, but he stopped when he heard us come rounding the corner of the house, and when we arrived on the scene, he was trying to look as dignified and nonchalant as he could, given that his hind legs were strung up on a piece of wire.
Stupid dog. Sophie went round a couple of days later to ask if we could get our washing line fixed, and was met with a knowing, weary nod.
Anyway, it brought to mind our friend Alex, who has been living up in the northern province of Luang Namtha, and loves animals a great deal. At one stage, one of his neighbours acquired a dog, which Alex befriended, and was gratified when other villages started to treat it like a pet as well. The Lao don’t really treat dogs as pets the way we do. Anyway, the dog sort of became part of the family. Then Alex went away for a couple of weeks, and when he came back, the dog had gone. “Where’s the dog?” he asked the owner. “Oh, we ate him the other night,” the owner replied.
Now, we’ve had many discussions about this, in the context of vegetarianism, and in theory, it seems silly to be grossed out by this. Cow, chicken, dog, what diff?
There is a difference, but it’s difficult to pin down what it is.
Anyway, needless to say, I dreamed of dogs after we freed Snoopy ('We saved his life!' said Sophie with a more than a touch of pride). Dreaming of animals is supposed to be good luck, and you're supposed to then go out and buy a lottery ticket.
Monkeys
Speaking of animals, every morning, around 8am, we hear a noise from over at the former President’s compound. It sounds like a house alarm. Sophie always assumed it was the guards diligently checking to make sure the alarm worked every morning. Mean little me always assumed that the guards were accidentally setting it off every morning. Anyway, we had Alex staying with us last week who finally explained what the noise was.
It’s gibbons. Caged gibbons.
Not, as it turns out, a house alarm.
Staying in touch
This is currently my favourite website. I find it comforting, for some reason, to find that so many people are crazy and stupid and obsessed with small things and have filthy mouths and talk about sex a lot.
Also, a friend sent me this link a few weeks ago, which made me laugh, and wonder whether the Prime Minister actually ever does read public submissions, and what he thinks when he sees something like this. I mean, he must agree, surely. He must just thank his lucky stars that most of the population is too dumb, or apathetic, to realise how obvious it all is.
Also, Calvin Trillon, yay! This is his latest piece in last week's New Yorker. So inspiring- makes me realise that almost anything is worth writing about, given the right touch
Get into it...
Sophie’s sister Eve has been staying this week with her friend Yasmin. In the course of the dinner conversation on their first night, it transpired that Eve and I lived next door to each other for at least a year. Last year, in fact, on the city end of Napier St in Fitzroy. And not only were we living next door, but our rooms, both at the back, directly faced each other, and I saw her probably every second day. When I say saw, what I really mean is that a lot of the time, she would be naked or half-dressed, and I would turn away, irritable at having a nude stranger practically in my room.
Although I didn’t, of course, recognise her in person, as it were, I now remember a surprising number of things. She put her sneakers on the sill every morning and strung up her sports bra across the window. She had a red blanket. She sometimes had a boy in her bed, although I could only ever see feet.
One of her housemates, the one in the bottom front room, was always there, in the front room every morning, on her laptop. Not, as it turned out, writing a book, as I always jealously speculated, but doing uni essays.
I also remember a particularly massive party there one night, to which we weren’t invited, and which kept me up. The next morning, sitting in the sun in the kitchen doorway, I heard her on the phone. “But would you say that was the best party, Patrick, would you say that?” Even in my morning grumpiness, I thought it was funny, and wished I had just gatecrashed.
And now here she was, in our house in Vientiane, Laos, of all places, the same husky voice, the same face (and of course) body, which I knew so well but actually never knew at all.
And of course she is just DYING of embarrassment over all this, especially as the most pervading memory she has of me is that I had an orange sarong on the window, and the fact that I was never, ever there, a thought that occurred to her every time she caught herself walking around naked. Of course, I had always turned away by then.
Thankfully, though, she was not the girl who had loud sex while playing Tori Amos (see one of my posts from last year). In fact, that was another girl, a drama student who lived downstairs.
Melbs
Do I even need to point out what a small bloody world it is? It all got me thinking about Melbourne, more than usual, and about how lonely I was there, in retrospect- single, eating alone, living with strangers. I make it sound more desperate than it really was, but life is just so different now.
I’ve said this a million times before, and I’ll say it again: moving to Vientiane was a thousand times easier than moving to Melbourne.
Jumping ship
I had such a crap week that on Friday, I took the day off and skipped town, catching a songteow 40 minutes out of town to the Vaysana Resort in Ban Keun.
Really, it was the best thing I could have done. We lay by the pool facing the river for literally hours, just reading and, as Eve put it, “picking up some colour”.
It also occurred to us to wonder if we would be lying side-by-side reading if we were boys. We doubted it, somehow.
Anyway, “colour” indeed. I really overdid it in my quest for brown legs. I’m bright red all over, and in grave pain. I don’t expect any of you to have any sympathy, but it really does kill.
Hot and steamy
My delicate lobster legs have meant I have had to forego the sauna this week- a real shame. It’s my latest discovery, even though herbal saunas are a pretty regular part of life here. Ladies and gents alike strip off, put on a sarong and sit in the steam for many minutes at a time.
I just love it. I love sitting still and watching beads of perspiration pop out on my arms. I love feeling like all the crap is being steamed out of my system. I like getting all dehydrated and replenishing with hot tea. I love coming out and the air feeling so cool, even though it’s never cool here.
It’s the best cure for a hangover.
The 'necessary evil'
So anyway, it was a pretty big week last week, not least because of the coup.
It came at a bad time, as most people from my intake were due to go back to Australia, and many people, not including me, were planning a Bangkok shopping extravaganza on the weekend, which had to be cancelled.
Amusingly, many Lao people have been scoffing at the whole thing. We’re supposed to be 20 years behind them, they say, and yet look at us! There’s peace here, no need for tanks in the streets or military intervention. It’s backward, they say, and a bit pathetic.
AT LEAST THEY’RE DOING SOMETHING!!! I feel like screaming back. At least people there are not being forced into apathy and submission, but rather finding practical, if extreme, solutions to the all-round dissatisfaction pervading society.
But no, I would never say that, for fear of getting into another minor argument with someone, which always ends pretty fast when I realise how blinkered those in power are.
Snoopy
The other night, we were awoken by a crashing sound followed by the most tremendous shrieking. I looked out the window and saw that Snoopy, the landlady’s dog next door, had jumped the fence and landed on our washing line. He was completely stuck. It really must have hurt, to land on that piece of wire.
Tom hates that dog, on the basis that when he and Kate first moved into this house, the dog was on Death’s Door and could hardly even wag his tail.
But he’s better now, and a good protector, even if the washing line does serve him right because he has this strange habit of walking up and down the top of the narrow wall each night. It was bound to happen sooner or later.
I wish I’d managed to get a photo that night. He was flailing around and screaming like a girl, but he stopped when he heard us come rounding the corner of the house, and when we arrived on the scene, he was trying to look as dignified and nonchalant as he could, given that his hind legs were strung up on a piece of wire.
Stupid dog. Sophie went round a couple of days later to ask if we could get our washing line fixed, and was met with a knowing, weary nod.
Anyway, it brought to mind our friend Alex, who has been living up in the northern province of Luang Namtha, and loves animals a great deal. At one stage, one of his neighbours acquired a dog, which Alex befriended, and was gratified when other villages started to treat it like a pet as well. The Lao don’t really treat dogs as pets the way we do. Anyway, the dog sort of became part of the family. Then Alex went away for a couple of weeks, and when he came back, the dog had gone. “Where’s the dog?” he asked the owner. “Oh, we ate him the other night,” the owner replied.
Now, we’ve had many discussions about this, in the context of vegetarianism, and in theory, it seems silly to be grossed out by this. Cow, chicken, dog, what diff?
There is a difference, but it’s difficult to pin down what it is.
Anyway, needless to say, I dreamed of dogs after we freed Snoopy ('We saved his life!' said Sophie with a more than a touch of pride). Dreaming of animals is supposed to be good luck, and you're supposed to then go out and buy a lottery ticket.
Monkeys
Speaking of animals, every morning, around 8am, we hear a noise from over at the former President’s compound. It sounds like a house alarm. Sophie always assumed it was the guards diligently checking to make sure the alarm worked every morning. Mean little me always assumed that the guards were accidentally setting it off every morning. Anyway, we had Alex staying with us last week who finally explained what the noise was.
It’s gibbons. Caged gibbons.
Not, as it turns out, a house alarm.
Staying in touch
This is currently my favourite website. I find it comforting, for some reason, to find that so many people are crazy and stupid and obsessed with small things and have filthy mouths and talk about sex a lot.
Also, a friend sent me this link a few weeks ago, which made me laugh, and wonder whether the Prime Minister actually ever does read public submissions, and what he thinks when he sees something like this. I mean, he must agree, surely. He must just thank his lucky stars that most of the population is too dumb, or apathetic, to realise how obvious it all is.
Also, Calvin Trillon, yay! This is his latest piece in last week's New Yorker. So inspiring- makes me realise that almost anything is worth writing about, given the right touch
Get into it...
posted by sarrie24 | 11:28 AM
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