I can’t overstate how consistently hot it’s been over the past three months. In our previous two years here in Vientiane, April rolled around, and yeah, it was unbearably hot, and everyone sprayed and dumped water on everyone else during Lao New Year, pools got packed, and energy bills went through the roof.
And then…the rains came.
And I bitched and moaned about the gloom and the dank and the darkness for the next 3-4 months, at least until we headed back to the U.S. for annual leave.
This year’s been a bit different.
We’ve been getting the usual storms we’ve come to expect from May and early June, with all the dramatic lightning and deafening thunder. Roads flood and some afternoons are pretty dark.
But even into late June, the storms are passing through and the sun…is shining.
Which is great…I love the sun…except not so great in June.
Because it’s summer in Southeast Asia, which means if the sun’s out, the heat index is well over 40°c (104°F) and it’s damn humid. All that rain has to go somewhere, and it doesn’t all roll down to the Mighty Mekong.
Fortunately, we got all our A/C units serviced in May. We tried to get them serviced in early April in anticipation of the hottest time of year, but it took a month for the workers to come out.
At first, we just had them service Riley’s unit because it was pumping out hot air. They recharged it and it blew ice cold, which is nice and all, except for the fact that they broke the unit now had a stream of thick, grey water spitting out of it, filling the baby’s floor while he tried to sleep.
So they came and repaired that one, and we asked them to service the other units in the house while they were there. Big mistake. Afterwards, Noe’s room and our room had the same issue.
So we dealt with it with blankets and buckets and a couple weeks later got another crew out to fix the problem. By this time it was nearly June, and I thought to myself, great, we finally got these units working and the hot season’s over!
But it’s not, and we’re still running the machines pretty hard.
International Children’s Day landed on a Monday this year. In Laos, all schools are closed for the “holiday” but most parents still have to work. Makes sense, right?
In past years, Noe and I had a Daddy Day while Lori worked. But this year, Lori took the day off to have a Mommy Day with the boys.
So, what do you do when you have two little ones who easily get cabin fever in the hot season? Well…we still head outside when we can, anticipating that both boys are going to sweat through their clothes and require lots of sunscreen and hydration (and don’t forget mosquito repellant — we’ve got an active dengue outbreak, the worst in years — which is another reason for the cabin fever).
This year, if it hasn’t been the heat, rain or killer smog, it’s been dengue. All of the above (except for the rain) has been far more pronounced than previous years.
On Children’s Day, Lori took the boys to a new kid’s garden that opened up down the street. She didn’t have a car since she was taking an R&R day, so we stuck pretty close to home. Lori and the boys arrived at the kid’s garden (Kid’s Paradise) shortly after it opened.
The sun was out and it was already baking. But Noe enjoyed playing on all the equipment (he had the run of the place, it seems), and Riley enjoyed watching his brother play…mostly.
The view around our neighborhood. Our road is unsealed and mostly dirt, so when it rains, it can become a real challenge to navigate. A couple hours later on a sunny day, the water’s mostly gone.
I went two weeks without leaving our district, Sisattanak, which is a record for me.
Sisattanak covers a large area, and I still managed long bike rides across the length and breadth of the district, but didn’t set foot in Chantabuly for 14 days.
For those not familiar with Vientiane, Chantabuly comprises the central core of Vientiane (“downtown,” if you will…or Old Town…I guess). It’s where most visitors to Vientiane spend 99% of their time.
Lori gets out of Sisattanak every day because her work is in neighboring Saysetha, and many of their partners are also located in Chantabuly.
But not me. Oh no.
I resigned myself to the “Diplomatic Area” as our area is often referred to by real estate agencies. Again, if you haven’t lived in Vientiane, you might not appreciate the humor/irony of applying terms like “downtown,” “old town,” and “diplomatic area” to our fine city. And that’s what makes our fair adoptive city so unique…
I pass this brightly-colored wat on my bike all the time and have wanted to get a nice pic of it for a while. However, it’s either cloudy or I don’t have my camera.
While the kids were busy splashing in the splash pad with mommy one particularly clear afternoon, I hopped on my bike and raced down to take advantage of the “Golden Hour” right before sunset, which is more like “Golden Ten Minutes” in the tropics.
Here in Laos, splash pad time is also bath time. Noe and Riley have taken the majority of their baths at home outside this year. We have a nice little window between the time the front yard becomes shaded (around 3:30pm) and the time the mosquitoes really start to bite (4:30pm), though this time of year we have to be careful of the dengue mosquitoes that bite — that’s right — during the day! Dengue by day, malaria by night.
I don’t want to sound flippant about these serious diseases. It’s just the reality everyone lives with across much of the globe on a daily basis. We take all the necessary precautions with our kids, and even in the midst of an outbreak, the risk is relatively low where we live. It’s important not to lose perspective about these things. A far higher percentage of kids are hospitalized for flu and pneumonia back in the U.S. than they are here for dengue or malaria.
Still, it’s always in the back of our minds if one of the kids gets a bite or a fever.
All dry!
Getting ready to head off to Noe’s creche for another day of running around with his friends outside, making arts and crafts, learning the alphabet, numbers, and colors in English, French, and Lao, and story time in all three languages.
We’re sad that he’s going to age out of the creche this September. He’s been attending that place since he was 14 months old! But that’s life, and Noe’s no stranger to change. Hopefully, we’ll be just as pleased with the next place he ends up at.
On a side note, that Vietnam flag shirt is his favorite shirt right now. I’m not sure if it’s the color, or the fact that it’s from Vietnam (he’s quite obsessed with all-things Vietnam right now — apparently our week there last April made a bit of an impression on him).
“But, what about Riley?” you ask. Well…
He’s enjoying his nursery school, but getting there and back is proving more of a challenge these days with the rains, dirt roads, heat, and Lori not having a car some weeks.
In general, I take care of getting Noe to and from the creche and Lori takes care of getting Riley to and from where he needs to be. On days it rains and she doesn’t have a car, her commute looks like the above.
I know what you’re thinking…why not carry him in a baby carrier? A stroller seems like the wrong tool for the job.
And I’d refer you back to the heat index. Riley’s a big boy, and it’s been very hot and humid lately. Lori would rather take her chances with the stroller than deal with sweat-soaked clothes, heat rashes, and all that fun stuff.
But Riley could care less about all that. All he really wants to do is army crawl (which kind of drives my PT wife crazy — great entertainment for Noe and me to watch).
When I pick Noe up at the creche, there’s often an impromptu head-to-head battle of the shoes if two parents get there at the same time.
Noe nearly always wins (if he’s not distracted, and that’s a big IF), but he doesn’t yet have a lot of versatility.
We have a nearly identical pair of shoes that he just can’t seem to master yet because they’re blue. The color is very distracting (and apparently they make an owie, or at least that’s what he tells us).
After the boys get home, they have about an hour to play together until dinner time. Noe’s [generally] really good with Riley. And, of course, Riley wants to be anywhere doing anything that Noe’s doing. If Noe’s not in the room, he looks around for mommy. And if mommy’s not there, then and only then, he looks for daddy.
Noe continues to help mommy prepare both boys’ dinner, though we’re not sure how much longer this routine will continue. Time is of the essence in the evenings, it takes about three times as long to prepare meals with Noe in the mix, and god help you if that kid sees everything you have in the fridge that you’re not preparing for him — barbecue sauce, tortillas, English muffins — nothing is off the table in his mind.
After Noe’s done eating and Riley’s done making an absolute mess of what actually looked like food at one time, Lori and Riley head upstairs to Riley’s room, and I wash Noe’s hands, brush his teeth, collect Big Monkey and Big Bear from the living room and follow him as he walks up the stairs.
But not before I turn on the lights outside. This time of year if I don’t, the flood flies magically find their way into the house and make a mess everywhere.
Once in the house, they shed their lighter-than-air wings (which are impossible to sweep) and promptly die. Minutes later, hundreds of ants come out of the woodwork and descend on each and every little flood fly carcass.
One evening I forgot to turn on the lights before taking Noe upstairs and returned to a living room covered in flood fly wings and a plague of ants.
To add insult to injury it just happened to be the evening of the one day of the week we have a housekeeper mop our floors.
Back in Noe’s room, Noe uses the toilet (which may take between 1 and 10 minutes), and if he’s been a Big Boy, he gets to turn on the sound machine and I read his favorite book to him, the always riveting Good Night, Good Night Construction Site.
We sing a couple of songs, I turn out the lights and leave. 99% of the time, lights are off at 7:15pm and Noe’s passed out by 7:20pm, and will stay that way until around 6:00-6:30pm when we wake up.
Very occasionally, he’ll awake in the night calling for one of us. I’ll go in and ask if he had a bad dream, he’ll generally answer in the affirmative and want to be held for no more than a minute, at which time he’ll tell me in no uncertain terms, “Daddy, Noe want to sleep now.” I’ll tuck him in and another minute later he’ll be out again.
Riley’s also a good sleeper these days, but for the whole teething thing. Why exactly babies need so many teeth when they’re just going to lose them is something I will never understand.
Teething notwithstanding, Riley goes down between 7-7:30 and often sleeps until 7am, with an occasional dream feed in there. Ever since he’s been pigging out on solids, his sleep has been pretty solid too.
If there are two things our boys like to do, it’s to eat and sleep. But they also play hard too, which undoubtedly affects their eating and sleeping.
These spider lilies suddenly bloomed overnight right outside our gate.
We met up with some good friends of ours at Skills Cafe, a coffee shop we hadn’t been to since Noe was Riley’s age. It’s a bit out of the way and closed on Sundays, and there are many other options, so we just haven’t made the trip. Again, it was bloody hot, but Noe didn’t seem to be phased. He still managed to get some good thrashing in despite the heat. A true rocker.
Our friends have a boy Noe’s age who is also one of his closest friends. Noe’s a little older, and I’d like to say a good influence, though Noe does have a tendency to concoct schemes and get his friends to go along with them.
This one involved completely emptying the sandbox of all its toys (and much of its sand!) and relocating it in this playhouse, several meters away.
This is what Riley looks like when he’s not distracted by Noe. For a few minutes, at least.
One evening, we fell asleep to the sound of incessant chirping, only to discover this little guy in our carport the next morning.
Not quite sure how he got all the way in here, but Noe was completely enthralled…for about two minutes.
We passed him off to our neighbor, where I’m sure he will run freely and grow old and yaddy yaddy yaddy…
We had a big storm one night, resulting in multiple downed branches and trees across our yard. The one, above, was by far the largest.
I heard it fall as I was getting ready for bed. I went to investigate in the dark and found a large branch in the rear of the house that had fallen and taken a large chunk of the fence with it. It wasn’t until morning that we discovered this one.
To be honest, this tree was kind of asking for it.
Fortunately, it fell on a day Gardener Dude was coming. He hacked up the thing, burnt the pile, and that was that.
A few days later, we had a wind storm and…
Another one bit the dust. I told Gardener Dude, last one, promise. But of course, less than a week later, one of our largest banana trees keeled over. Let’s just say we currently have a lot of “mulch” around the yard. I’d say Gardener Dude deserves a day off, but as his main job is watering and pruning and Mother Nature has pretty much been taking care of 100% of that, I think we’re cool.
Another Thursday, another Daddy Day.
I needed a hex wrench to install a compact tire pump on my bike, so, off to Kua Din market! Kua Din is only a short 4km bike ride from our house, but not the most pleasant ride in town, particularly the last half kilometer dodging city buses, tuk-tuks, cars, people, and anything else you can think of.
We overshot our destination a bit and headed to Talat Sao (Morning Market) first, which is a mishmash of the old central market with two multi-story Chinese shopping centers crammed in between the various wings of the century-old monstrosity. It really is a sight to behold, where it’s obvious that exactly zero effort went into making sure everything connected to and complemented the existing structure.
I didn’t find what I was looking for there, so we went about the tedious activity of getting from Talat Sao to Kua Din, which theoretically should be easy, as they are right across the street from one another, but rarely is.
I arrived at the hardware store, found my wrench and was ready to call it good, but then thought Noe might like to take a walk through the fresh market.
Mere months ago, he would have been distracted by all the FRUIT! Now that he’s older, he’s really into all the live, slimy creatures you can buy for dinner: Catfish, toads, and of course, eel!
On our way home, Noe asked if we could go to a coffee shop, which sounded like a good idea to me, so…
Lately when we go to his favorite French cafe, he insists on sitting in “Noe’s chair,” which I must admit is the best seat in the house — a comfy cushion right by the front window facing the street.
Road repair in Vientiane. My bike especially enjoys the refined materials and level of workmanship employed. And when it rains do you know what happens? These concrete and brick chunks get covered beneath a puddle, making for an unfortunate surprise when motorbikes are forced to steer through them.
Agreed, Noe. I’m not sure what we’re building here, either.
Noe, hijacking Mommy-Riley reading time. Surprise, surprise.
Here, Lori’s running interference while I get in a quick read with the Chunkster.
One of my favorite coffee shops in town. Love the name, love the takeaway window, and especially love the Nitro Cold Brew. Too bad they’ve been bor mi (no have) for the past month. Par for the course here in Laos.
Here, we’re taking a tuk-tuk home from downtown. It was my first journey to downtown in two weeks, as I mentioned before. Lori hasn’t had a car assigned to her in as much time, so I’ve been getting around on my bike, and we’ve been taking tuk-tuks and taxis as a family when Lori’s home.
We had a solid year (including our time Stateside) where we didn’t ride a single tuk-tuk. So, even though Noe’s ridden on dozens upon dozens of tuk-tuks in his life he was too young to remember and it’s all been new to him.
Picking a good tuk-tuk is a lot like picking out a good mango, and I’ve gotten pretty proficient at both. Still, there are times when I’m either distracted or just off my game and we end up with a lemon.
This particular tuk-tuk looked like a ticking time bomb (the 2-liter bottle of fuel in the passenger compartment, and smell to go along with it, is generally a good indicator, in that respect). But taking this tuk-tuk meant we didn’t have to walk up to the main road with two little ones, so we took it.
And…ten minutes later, we were sitting motionless on the side of the hottest road in town while the driver checked all his fuel hoses for kinks and underwent some engine maintenance that probably should have been done some time before picking us up…like, a decade before picking us up.
It’s the heat of the day and we’re pushing nap times. Finally, we decided to flag down another tuk-tuk, and managed to do so pretty quickly. Just then, the tuk-tuk sprung to life and the driver said, Dee! Dee! (Good! Good!). We continued our journey, if ever so slowly, and arrived home without incident.
The next morning, we opt to skip the tuk-tuk all together and take a nice long walk to brunch.
Nobody should ever take a nice long walk TO brunch. That means, you either have to eat something before brunch, or walk on an empty stomach. Yet, with the heat, it was really our only option.
I’m always looking for shortcuts in Vientiane, which are few and far between as 90% of the roads are dead ends.
There are hundreds of situations where it’s just cruel and unusual. Two secondary roads that stretch for a kilometer or two on their respective sides being prevented from becoming one by a single property owner with a 4-meter concrete wall encircling his house. Having those two roads connect means shaving 10 minutes off your journey — by car!
But no, hardly any secondary roads connect. I spend way too much time perusing Google satellite view in search of the elusive Northwest Passage, not having any luck…until today.
I thought I had finally found a short cut from our house to the northern reaches of the district, where we wouldn’t have to walk along the main road with the traffic and everything else. A quick Google search confirmed my suspicions and we set out on our epic brunch journey with the tandem stroller…
…our second-hand tandem stroller that pulls violently to the left, which is great, if you happen to be going in circles, or taking a LOT of left-hand turns. But not great for much else.
I should have been suspicious of my route when it required that we break into a university. Well, maybe trespass. It’s hard to know what counts for what here. In the U.S., you can walk around most universities’ grounds, even if the main vehicle gate is closed. Such was the case here, but we’re not in the U.S. I was hesitant to proceed, but Lori said it was fine. And if Lori says it’s fine…there’s a 49/51 chance it’s not fine.
After letting ourselves in, we followed the main road, per Google, through campus. There was a fair amount of tree cover, already making it a better bet than the main road.
Ten minutes later, we arrive at a block of dorms, and a decidedly locked cyclone gate. We could see the road continue on the other side, but there was no way getting through the gate, which meant backtracking and adding about 20-minutes to our already drawn-out trip to brunch. Worst of all, all our cloud cover had burned off and things started to get really steamy.
Then, Lori noticed a hole in a nearby fence that people were climbing through to bypass the gate. On the other side lay the women’s dorm bathrooms. I immediately vetoed the decision because, in addition to all the above, the stroller was too heavy to lift through the hole, meaning we’d have to unload the boys to get it through…i.e. one of us would have to hold Riley while the other lifted and squeezed this tank of a stroller through the hole in the fence. No way!
Lori asked me if I had a better idea.
I didn’t, so…
We unloaded both boys and Lori held Riley while I attempted to shove the thing through the gap. After several valiant attempts, it was evident it just wasn’t going to work.
Then, Lori suggests lifting the stroller up and over the meter-high gap to the left of the narrow gap. However, I wouldn’t be able to lift the stroller and receive it on the other end while Lori held Riley.
So, we did the only we could do not having a blanket to put Riley down on (and mind you, Riley can’t walk or even stand up yet on his own). We strapped the baby back in and Lori and I carefully worked the stroller and baby through the wider gap while Noe looked on as if this was a totally normal trip to brunch. I often worry about what passes for normal in Noe’s mind, and what doesn’t (like daddy wearing full-length pants or Riley wearing SOCKS).
We made it to our brunch destination, which was thoroughly underwhelming, turned around and made the 2 km trek back home just in time for naps.
That’s mostly it for mid-June. Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about Noe’s big birthday! We’ll save that for a future post. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with these final images.
Gardener Dude’s repair job after cutting into the garden hose line with the weedwhacker. Given that it did not rain this day, you might understand how this repair fell short of solving the issue.
A day later, a guy with a hacksaw, cement, and a coupling showed up and fixed it right up.
Well…actually, he remembered the hacksaw and cement, but forgot the coupling. So, several hours later he returned, after a long lunch, and fixed it good as new.
If this doesn’t tug at your heartstrings, I’d check your pulse.
It’s been a few tough days home with Riley. He hasn’t been feeling himself, due to a combo of tummy issues, fever, and extreme teething. If teething were an X-Games sport, Riley would walk away with the Gold, hands down.
You can see his two previously cut teeth on the bottom there, but they’re not the culprits. We can now confirm, a few weeks on, that the low-grade fever and tummy stuff was linked to the teething as we thought.
But look at that face!
One evening, I walked out to spray off Riley’s high chair (part of our nightly routine these days), and nearly walked right into this:
That is a large spider web, about a meter in diameter, which is impressive by itself. What’s even more impressive, however, is that it’s firmly anchored on one end to my bike. The very bike I parked in that very spot earlier that same day. These guys don’t mess around.
Zucchini Bread!
David, Wow, so interesting! I had forgotten your far away life! What an experience!!!
Good to hear from you, “Mrs. Russell”! Thanks for following our adventures.
OMG This was my favorite blog so far!!! Love, love, love the pictures of the boys, and your comments beneath. And you’re right, Riley’s face is so pathetic is his highchair picture. HIs teeth must really hurt!! I laughed outloud at your brunch stroller episode—really proud of Lori and you getting the stroller through the hole—something I would do, for sure!!