2: A pathological suspicion of drivers of vehicles for hire, in all their forms.
Eg: “Mum! He hasn’t put the meter on!” “I know. We haven’t finished getting in his taxi yet.” “It better not be fast again.”

3: A tendency to haggle over anything and everything. With anyone and everyone.
“I only have 50 baht. Can you make me special price?…” Or: “So, if I am super-, super-, super-good on this overnight journey on what is DEFINITELY not a VIP bus, can we convert that pocket money advance into a bonus?”

4: Fuss-free toileting, no matter (almost) what.
Asian lavatories can be a scary prospect to the uninitiated. By the time a child can use a hose to clean the parts which dead trees used to clean, in a squatting position rather than atop a throne, with nary a complaint or an unsightly damp patch, he or she has pretty much gone native.

5: A confidence in approaching random adults, and a firm belief they will give you what you want.
Eg: “Excuse me! Excuse me!!! Can I help you popping those balloons?”… “Now, if you’ll just pass me the scissors, and hold the string steady…”

6: Prehensile toes.
After months largely unconfined by leather or trainers, feet go back to nature. Toes splay. Arches widen. Joints extend and tendons lengthen. Walking over rock-filled streams, feet are used to their full extent. And shoe sizes are not what they were.

7: Road-safety skills that would put most Western adults to shame.
After negotiating the roads in Hanoi and Saigon (a process best done diagonally, in gradual increments of a quarter of a lane or thereabouts), the most apparently alarming streams of traffic become, well, a walk in the park.

8: A practised and bad-tempered line in explaining, “I am NOT a baby.”
In many parts of South-East Asia, the term “baby” is used interchangeably with “child”. Fair enough for the parent. Less appealing, perhaps, for the child.

9: A manly way with bugs of all kinds.
“What are you doing under the bed, darling? And why do you need the torch?” “I’m on a ROACH HUNT, Mum!” (Roaches in South-East Asia come with wings, and range in size from three to five inches. Bumping against lights, they sound more like semi-automatic weapons than insects.)

10: Feeling the cold.
In London, temperatures of 26 degrees see the parks full of office workers stripped down to their bras. One evening in Vietnam, a rainstorm brought the temperature down to, ooh, roughly that. The jacket was firmly on.

The post 10 Ways to Tell Your Child Has Been in Asia A Long Time appeared first on EscapeArtistes.