Where does all the dog shit go? I’ve seen hundreds of dogs since I’ve been in Laos but only one dog shit. The dogs here are generally quite good natured, they bark a bit half heartedly when you walk past them at night and they’ve taken to having group sex by my front gate but generally they’re quite friendly. I’ve seen one playful puppy which had a nibble at a friend of mine but he was wearing quite offensive sandals, so you can understand the puppy’s displeasure. So where does it go? The shit that is. The dogs roam free, so I’ve never seen a person picking any up. There aren’t any specific shit collection points and the general waste collection is restricted to more central areas of town. It’s a complete mystery. Maybe, they’ve developed a completely shit efficient breed of dog without the rest of the world noticing. Maybe the shit burns up in direct sunlight or maybe the dogs got together and decided that shitting on the streets really wasn’t the done thing any more and they’ve all learned to use toilets. It would explain some of the public toilets I’ve used, so I think I’ll settle for that explanation. Anyway, it’s been bothering me. Another thing I don’t understand is the prevalence of upright washing machines. I moved down to Pakse about a month ago and started work just over three weeks ago.
We moved into a new house on the banks of the Mekong at about the same time so we’ve been stocking it with stuff ever since. I contemplated a washing machine but the preference here is most definitely for the upright type. We had one in our house in Vientiane and it didn’t do a bad job as long as you were prepared to stop the cycle to disentangle your clothes from each other every five minutes, or to play a giant game of clothes Twister at the end. They also take up a disproportionate amount of room compared to a horizontal drum machine. They need the same type of connection and there’s no shortage of up-to-the-minute electronics here and in Thailand, so why choose upright as the default? I must be missing something. So anyway, for now, we don’t have a washing machine. We do have an enormous television and satellite dish though. We’ve got about 200 channels, with a roughly equal split between Thai soap operas and Thai music channels. I can understand why the government here are concerned about the erosion of Lao culture with all this crap flooding the market. I even quite like the fact that their concern extends to ensuring that all women wear a traditional Lao skirt in government offices. As I work in a government office, that includes me. I love the Lao skirts. They’re immensely practical and easy to wear except in one crucial respect. I ride a motorbike. A proper motorbike, not a scooter like most of the demure and elegant Lao ladies who scoot about the place, answering phone calls, carrying shopping and juggling two children on their scooters all at the same time. Anyway, my motorbike (her name is Lottie – short for lot jak which is Lao for motorbike) has a dirty great fuel tank in front of me which necessitates the hitching of my skirt to thigh level. 
This isn’t a great start in a broadly conservatively dressed country but the skirts are wrap-around, so as soon as I get up any speed, the skirt flies up in my face, reducing my modesty still further and blocking my view. This makes me a somewhat erratic driver, so in some respects I’m fitting right in. Last night I had to ride home from work with an enormous jackfruit strapped to the back of the bike with a bungee cord and a pineapple swinging from my handlebars, which was a first but seemed like a perfectly natural solution. I’m definitely coming to the realisation that there’s absolutely nothing I’m going to be able to do to avoid looking utterly ridiculous and out of place over the next couple of years, so I suppose I’d better try to embrace it. 