vientiane house-hunting

There's no one to talk to and no one to take care of me. I just spent two hours lying in a lump in bed watching Australian crappy soap operas. I am totally not suited to living alone! I would go bananas. I even said something out loud to myself. Yikes!

Today I got up and feasted on some odd mixture of nem chua and chewy things (maybe pig ears?  Maybe intestiny whitey bits, you know the ones, they're kind of in thin thin strips but a little bit...springy?) well anyways, it was tasty like the nem chua fried rice the other night. Then I had to waste time while my clothes dried before I packed up so I could check out. So I watched some crappy TV. I stupidly don't have any books. 

When the clothes were finally dry, I packed up, paid, and went to eat noodles at the twins' noodle place. I managed to order and everything, and was even able to ask 'song nek noi yu sai?' ('where are the two kids?'). S-m-r-t. Then I went to the Planet computer place to do email but it SUCKED royally. I was on for HALF AN HOUR and it was soooooooooooooooo slow that all I did was READ one email. Not even reply, how ever hard I tried. I tried to be very calm. I am working at not complaining and getting irate too quickly. I think I'm improving. I just pleasantly asked them to take 10 minutes off my charges. It was only 3000 kip for 20 minutes, so it wasn't like it was a huge thing, and as I kept reminding myself, it also wasn't as if I had pressing urgent business elsewhere to take care of. 

Then I went to meet Gu Ma's sister-in-law. They have an optical shop just near the planet internet place. Their house is nice, and I met the new grandson who is very very cute. His Mum speaks English really well, but I mostly just talked to Mrs. Khamlek and we got on perfectly in our Vietnamese. I was a little rusty, but actually pretty impressed with myself at how much I can convey - I guess in comparison to my Lao. Anyways, she told me her sister had a free room, so we went over there to look at it. Handily, the sister is a seamstress, so she'll be able to do the flower girl's clothes for me I'm betting. Her house is kind of a small VNese style long one level place, with sitting room, bedroom, and kitchen / wash up place at the back. 

Then, there is a mirror-image house right next door, with a different entrance but shared wash up area at the back. Anyways, the other side of the house is what's available. The front part is nice enough - nothing in it, but it's painted and it has a light, and then there's kind of a spooky "bedroom" that is sort of boarded up with cardboard and screened in to protect it from mosquitos. We chatted, and I think that they'll clean it and paint it, and then it'll be ok. I left money for a fan, and then I'll have to get a couple of chairs and a table or something to put my stuff on. The bed is just a frame, and I'm not sure whether they'll give me a mat or what. But the good news is that if I stay there I will definitely get my Lao going, and I'll have a family to come home to, which would be good. [Laos-22-July-2000]