I can't crouch with my feet flat

How can I put this delicately???

I can’t crouch with my feet flat. The loos here are meant for people who can. And something about the resulting angle I’m in means that I’m having a problem going. The return to Vientiane (after one week away) was a huge relief to my insides. I hadn’t been at all. Got to do something about the Achilles tendon to lengthen it so I can crouch better.

I came out of the loo at the end of the garden with a stomach ache as I’d still not succeeded in going. Everyone else I know gets the opposite problem in Asia. I think I prefer it this way round but a week of not going is just ridiculous. I don’t think the enormous resident spider helps though. I’ve been assured it’s not poisonous but it’s huge so I’m a little wary of it – and if you are going to be bitten you at least want it to be somewhere like your arm.

Still at the monks family I was having sleeping problems. I’d been tired since we arrived as the monk had called me at 4.30 am to see if I was up yet. I wasn’t. The first night I’d been told that the granny would be sharing my mosquito net with me. I’m used to having the whole house to myself so the idea of sharing not just a bedroom, but a mosquito net with someone wasn’t a plan I exactly relished – but figured that there must be a shortage of mosquito nets so offered to go and buy one the following day – oops. There wasn’t. It had been a friendly gesture – she liked me and was fascinated by this weird woman who couldn’t even crouch properly, didn’t like sheat fish (as the recipe book of traditional Laos food had called the contents of the bowel which is a very popular ingredient in cooking here (when we open up fish to eat the monks will generally exclaim their disappointment on realizing that this one is depriving us of the delicacy by announcing to the others that there isn’t any fish poo today)), and didn’t know how to do the simplest thing to do with living. And I’d rejected her. She didn’t seem to mind, but I felt a bit bad.

The woman looked ancient - I was so shocked to discover she was just 60 - I'd have guessed at least 80 - probably closer to 100. And she had a horrible habit - often she went around in just a bra - weirdly I realised that these huge bras that are often on show here have an additional part under the boobs whereby money etc. can be stored in a zipped pouch. And then again she often found wearing the bra just too much effort - breasts of that age are not something I'm overly keen on being able to see that much. I was still staying at the monk’s family home and things were starting to become a little frustrating. Such lovely lovely people but the clash of cultures can be hard.

The old lady couldn't quite grasp why I hadn't spoken to her at all the first time I'd visited and why I was now speaking really badly and couldn't understand a lot of what she was saying. She had met almost no one who didn't speak Lao as a mother tongue and couldn't understand the concept. She spent a long time telling me a story - the gist of which I think I understood (but I couldn't be sure as the idea of slowing down or using simpler words wasn’t grasped at all). Basically I was better than the last foreigners that she had met. However, as she went on to tell me that they were the French colonialists who had been shooting at her this somehow wasn’t that great a compliment!
Anyway so that first night I’d had a mosquito net to myself, but I’d gone to sleep with dreadful Thai movies playing at full volume and a little row of around 6 small girls who’d all gathered to watch the weird white woman. They sat crosslegged immediately outside my mosquito net, discussing my strangeness amongst themselves as I tried to get to sleep. The fan was switched off. They were worried that I was cold. I wasn’t.

I’d love to claim that I was woken by one of the chickens that kept popping their heads into the room but it was the cat running over my hand – the chicken would have made a better story though.

I tried to get back to sleep. Then the granny came in. 5 am is obviously a perfect time to start sorting out all the pans and other noisy metal objects that were dotted around the sacks full of rice in the ‘bedroom’. I thought I’d try to ignore her. It wasn’t easy. Then a motorbike revved up right by my head – I had to be dreaming this. No. The bike was brought in for safekeeping purposes every night so that cloud of exhaust fumes noisily penetrating the mosquito net were real. I was determined not to give in. I was so tired from the trip and they would be gone in a minute. They were. But by now it was nearly 5.30 am so everyone was up and about. My diminutive audience was back. And because I was ignoring them the TV was turned up louder…..and louder…..and louder. You know how well meaning Aunties want to wake a new born baby buy know that they shouldn’t so just sabotage it’s sleep instead? I was that new born baby.