Now, I’m sure there are many worse situations in which to come down with a cold than while desperately flat-hunting in -30, with nowhere to stay, Chinese New Year coming up and an urgent need to earn some money and chase some invoices.

If you’ve been in a worse one, I’d love to hear about it.

On the grand scheme of things, it’s not a particularly bad cold. (It’s nothing on the one I had in Bulgaria – you’ll find that in 2011-2012 global colds review – or, for that matter, as debilitating as the corker I whined about in Pokhara.)

Just a sense of malaise, an unpleasant, scratchy sore throat, and something that’s building into the kind of rich, chesty, bubbling, roaring cough more often associated with permanent residents of the New York subway than fragrant souls like me.

Because, lord knows, both Zac and I are fragrant right now.

But it’s really not conducive.

I should probably find a pharmacy and score some of the Canton earthworm tablets that sorted me out so wonderfully in Beijing, along with this stuff.

Chinese medicine, whatever the hell they put in it – which isn’t, I should add, the hippie hearts and flowers nonsense you’ll find peddled by “TCM” practitioners to gullible Westerners: my earthworm tablets included human placenta and three types of deactivated bacteria – works.

But finding the right medicines involves a major vocabulary challenge and, oh Jesus, we need to find somewhere to sleep.

The door opens onto a narrow hallway, its tiles, like all floor tiles in Harbin, apparently grouted black with the coal dirt that comes in with the snow, and a super-heated steam of body smells – not body odour, for I have yet to meet a Chinese person with BO – rushes out. Oh god.

We head back to the station, where I hurl myself at the touts. One has a room for 80 kuai! Excellent. I don’t even bother to haggle the lucky number out of the equation.

Right now, I just want a place where we can rest our heads before I return to the house-hunting fray.

And that place can’t be expensive as it looks like I’m going to need to pay four months’ rent, plus deposit, plus agent’s fees, plus broadband, in cash, upfront, as soon as we find somewhere.

Which is problematic not only because I can only take out 2500 kuai every 24 hours, but also because, unless some people pay me, I’m actually going to run out of money. Things are going wrong. So things are being expensive. And because things are going wrong, I’m not earning.

Aaarrggghhhh….

The tout leads us down an anonymous main drag, and across the road to a rank of little basement gateways with red neon signs in Chinese characters. This is going to be our first really cheap Chinese hotel.

And, no 80 kuai (£8) isn’t cheap in China. But it is cheap for Harbin at peak season.

The door opens onto a narrow hallway, its tiles, like all floor tiles in Harbin, apparently grouted black with the coal dirt that comes in with the snow, and a super-heated steam of body smells – not body odour, for I have yet to meet a Chinese person with BO – rushes out. Oh god.

In a tiny, narrow cubicle to the left of the door, a man is sat on his bed, a mattress folded out onto a concrete platform that takes up 60% of the room, the remainder being occupied, rather incongruously, by a computer of quite spectacular vintage.

He’s in his vest, but I’m not surprised he has his door open, because his room is a windowless cell. It feels like a prison. Or, rather, like a migrant workers’ hostel I ill-advisedly landed up in while ill-advisedly hitching solo around South Africa.

We think we’ve been asking about wifi. But because the person who taught us the word for wifi has an absolutely honking Beijing accent, and so pronounces “wang” as “waaaaaarrggghhh”, we have been saying “wan’r” instead of “wang”.

Zac and I have been asking about wifi.

Well, we think we’ve been asking about wifi.

But because the person who taught us the word for wifi has an absolutely honking Beijing accent, and so pronounces “wang” as “waaaaaarrggghhh”, we have been saying “wan’r” instead of “wang”. Further, though I recognise the word for laptop when I hear it, I can’t actually remember it, so I’ve been saying we have desktop computers, which, clearly, we don’t.

What we appear to have communicated is that we want to play on a desktop computer.

“Look! Look!” says the lady, grabbing Zac. “There’s a computer! See!”

She seems a little disappointed that Zac is not entirely whelmed.

“Oh my GOD,” says Zac to me. “It takes floppy discs!”

That means, I realise, it’s most likely older than him. Wow.

As I endeavour to make our abode, which comprises an L-shaped sleeping platform, a table with a computer on it, a bin, a window and about 20 square centimetres of floor space, remotely habitable, my spawn wails: “How CAN you have a computer with no internet?”

“Maybe they watch movies on it,” I say.

“On FLOPPY DISCS?” asks Zac, dubiously.

I try to take a photo. My entire camera steams up with the body heat.

Zac wakes me at 4am to inform me that there are rats under his bed. “There’s not a lot I can do about it now,” I say, maternally, though even I can hear the scrabbling.

As an accommodation experience, this place is definitely different. (Skint and desperate in Harbin? Turn right down the road from the station, and look for a strip of red-lit basements that aren’t restaurants, about 300m down, on the other side of the road from the station.)

Now, I’ve stayed in many worse places than this: a brothel in Mali, a cheap hotel in rural Morocco, the floor of the village office in Halmahera, Indonesia, etcetera, etcetera.

Everyone’s lovely and friendly, which you have to be when you live in a cubicle, for, at least as I read it, the single men are all migrant workers at places which don’t provide dormitories for their slaves, though the high-street-fashionable woman with well-groomed four-year-old in tow appears to be breaking her journey home to see family for New Year.

If I spoke Chinese, it would be a fascinating insight into Chinese life. But I don’t.

On the plus side, the sheets and bedding are not visibly dirty, there are no bugs and the squat toilet is clean has only one recent “present” in it, which our hostess rapidly flushes away.

Harbin travel tip! Renting a room in one of these places and then leaving your luggage there is cheaper than the left-luggage office at the station.

We find a local place to eat at, one that’s offering more than rice, and I drop off quite easily, thanks to my cold which is now at the feverish stage and a couple of beers to mitigate our surroundings a little.

Zac wakes me at 4am to inform me that there are rats under his bed. “There’s not a lot I can do about it now,” I say, maternally, though even I can hear the scrabbling. “If we can’t find a flat tomorrow, I’ll stop flat-hunting and look for somewhere we can safely spend a week.”

Though, with Chinese New Year coming up, and estate agents, like everyone else, downing tools for the great Spring Festival holiday, not to mention the work that needs to be done, I’d rather find one sooner than that. We’ve been ricocheting around China quite long enough, thank you.

I’d really like to go to bed for a couple of days and sleep off my cold, then get some work done. Or, to further refine this, I’d rather not have the cold, I’d rather not have the work to do, and I’d just like to be looking at Harbin.

Again, we set up camp in Bomele, in the nice armchairs by the window.

“Cold lemon juice and an American coffee with milk?” asks the girl. We’re regulars! Already!

I’d really like, right now, to go and see the ice festival, the main point about Harbin for most visitors and something that’s been on my bucket list since I first heard about it, or at least check out the frozen river.

Well, actually, I’d really like to go to bed for a couple of days and sleep off my cold, then get some work done.

Or, to further refine this, I’d rather not have the cold, I’d rather not have the work to do, and I’d just like to be looking at Harbin. (This is, gentle reader, one of the ongoing hassles of life as a digital nomad.)

Anyway, I’d really rather not be flat-hunting.

I’ve found all the various places we’ve put down roots in over the last three years or so, our little house in the rice fields in Ubud, Bali, our 32nd floor flat in Kunming, China, our enormous bloody house with its Bedouin arisha in Dahab, Egypt, all in the space of a day’s looking.

Now, I’d expected Harbin to be more difficult linguistically and culturally than any of these. Ubud and Dahab are backpacker/longterm traveler/expat/tourist towns, so easy as hell. I wouldn’t say Kunming is set up for tourists, exactly, but it does have an expat scene and a strip of bars and restaurants with English menus, wifi and similar, and quite a lot of laowai come there to study languages, so there’s a reasonable short-let infrastructure and English-speaking middlemen and brokers in place.

But Harbin is proving a LOT more difficult than anticipated.

This is not, frankly, how travel is supposed to be. We’ve been in a downward spiral, a hellish concatenation of bureaucracy and transport hassles, ever since we got stuck in Lukla, over a month ago.

We’ve missed the end of the Chinese school term. I’m nowhere on researching schools. I’m short on cash.

Every single step of this run at China is proving infinitely more difficult than the last. And I’m not particularly well-prepared, because, well, ya know, we’ve been to China before, and it was easy.

“Hello!” I say. “It’s Theodora. The English person.” “Hello,” he says. “I. Have. Flat. You. Can. See. Is. Two. Room. Flat. Rent. 1800. Kuai. One. Month. You. Can. Rent. Four. Months. You. Understand. Question?” GO MR YE!

Mr Ye has another option for us, apparently. I pass the intervening time looking on Ganji for acommodation that doesn’t require a year’s contract and six months’ rent upfront, is central, and isn’t studio apartments, spare rooms or love hotels.

I find pretty much diddly squat, though I do at least manage to chase some invoices, field some emails and do a small job that absolutely has to be done today.

It’s rising teatime, and Mr Ye still hasn’t called.

I brace myself, then pick up the phone. YES! I can do this!

I’ve explained to Mr Ye last night that “If. You. Talk. Slow. Like. This. Use. Easy. Words. I. Can. Understand. My. Chinese. Not. Too. Good.”

And, in fact, we’ve been communicating OK, face to face. He’s a bright guy. He’s not spent much time with laowai, but he does understand that Chinese is difficult for us and he needs to slow it down.

Still, the telephone is a new level of difficulty, because with the visual cues and hand gestures left out, it’s pure Chinese and, further, I don’t have a Chinese name yet.

“Hello!” I say. “It’s Theodora. English person.”

“Hello,” he says. “I. Have. Flat. You. Can. See. Is. Two. Room. Flat. Rent. 1800. Kuai. One. Month. You. Can. Rent. Four. Months. You. Understand. Question?”

GO MR YE! The man’s a genius! (The vast majority of Chinese don’t yet travel internationally, so to hit someone who can manage the conversational style of ye 1950s Briton abroad, AKA understand that people don’t speak the language but if you speak VERY slowly and VERY loudly they might cope, is brilliant. I always used to mock my dad for this, but actually he had a point.)

“YES!” I say. “I understand! 1800 kuai one month! We want look! Want look now! How much time from here?”

“Ten. Minutes.”

“GOOD!” I say. I’m super-excited.

“Where. Are. You?” he asks.

“In coffee shop,” I say. I can remember the word for “same” but can’t remember the correct word order for a Chinese sentence using comparatives, so bottle “same” and paraphrase. “Yesterday of coffee shop. You come here yesterday. On Zhongyang Dajie.”

At which point Mr Ye, sadly, forgets he’s talking to a cretin. “^&(^(&coffee-shop, Bomele ^&(*&^(*&^(*^20 minutes &^(*&^(*&^ZhongyangDajie(*.”

“You come this coffee shop in twenty minutes?” I say. “Take us look flat? OK?”

“OK!” he says.

Holy cow! I’ve managed a phone conversation in Chinese.

Kinda.

Though I can’t help thinking that I have a long way to go before I can cope with school admissions.

“Sixth floor!” says Mr Ye, brightly, who, in the manner of Harbiners, not only goes out without hat and gloves in temperatures of -30 but can spring up endless flights of stairs with the vigour of someone half his age.

We walk a little under ten minutes, in fact, from Zhongyang Dajie, past a buzz of local restaurants, malls and supermarkets, through a heavy-duty metal door in the base of the building and up, and up, and up some grimy steps.

“Sixth floor!” says Mr Ye, brightly, who, in the manner of Harbiners, not only goes out without hat and gloves in temperatures of -30 but can spring up endless flights of stairs with the vigour of someone half his age.

Jesus, I think. It hasn’t taken long for my Everest Base Camp fitness to disappear.

The door is grey-painted steel, marginally softened by red and gold Chinese New Year decorations, but hardened by a substantial lock with a dial that you have to twist a few times before you slide a lever to open the keyhole, an effect that is quite remarkably reminiscent of the peephole at a maximum security prison, perhaps one with several hundred freedom fighters on hunger strike.

There’s a small, tiled entry-way cum living area, our “methodist”, with a sofa, a fridge and a rack for exchanging outdoor and indoor shoes.

Off this are two big rooms with wooden floors: one has a desk, a bed and some wardrobes, one has a bed, a sofa, a telly, a KTV set, plus speakers, and more wardrobes. There’s a long, thin kitchen, with a counter one can eat at, leading onto a glazed balcony, with a small bathroom off the kitchen.

And, umm, that’s it.

“Ooh!” says Zac, plumping himself onto the sofa. “A man cave! Mah man cave!”

He’s wanted a man cave since we stayed in what he branded a mancave in Tyre, Lebanon. And he appears to have decided this is it.

I look at “my” room. Actually, if I arrange things, I’ll have a reasonable amount of workspace. It’s not going to be as nice as Dahab, where I had my own little office, but it’s workable. It’s a nice, big, bright room.

We could, I think, be happy here. And that’s what it comes down to, with a house. Happiness.

Given I am very far from being a domestic goddess, when I tell you that I am seriously contemplating scrubbing the kitchen ceiling, that should give you an idea of how dusty and grimy it is.

I am not, however, happy with the bathroom. It has a washing machine in it, taking up most of the space, and is festooned with cables almost in the manner of ye classic Latin American death shower, the type that so alarmed me when we first went to Guatemala that I actually called reception to send a “caballero” to look at it.

Nor does the boiler appear to work. Plus some of the kitchen cupboard doors are busted.

The place has clearly not been inhabited for some time, and is in need of a good clean. And, given I am very far from being a domestic goddess, when I tell you that I am seriously contemplating scrubbing the ceiling, that should give you an idea of how dusty and grimy it is.

It’s a good location, though. I like the street.

I weigh it up. “Can we stay tonight?” I ask Mr Ye.

We can!

Zac and I discuss. The first one we saw, he thinks, had a bigger living room. But this one will actually take us for four months, and he does like his man cave, which has a lockable door!

Also, neither of us are keen to return to our current abode. We decide we’ll take it if we can get the bathroom sorted.

Our utilities, including Soviet-style heating that is permanently on max throughout winter, will cost 5 kuai (50p, or 80 cents) a month, an economic curio that seems particularly insane given flats in the block are sold on the open market for about ten times the price they went for at the beginning of the century, let alone when they were built.

One can live for an extremely long time in China on 2500 kuai. A bowl of home-made noodle soup in a local eatery costs around 8 kuai; street snacks are in the 3-5 kuai range; a bus fare is 1-2 kuai. It is not, however, an experiment that I’m keen to conduct.

I try and explain about the washing machine and the cables. Mr Ye doesn’t seem to see the problem. The boiler, which handily appears to be “hot-water-machine” in Chinese, is a mystery to both of us.

“You call your friend?” he says.

I call poor Huaze, and ask her to explain about the washing machine and the boiler, and confirm that we can put down 4000 kuai plus Mr Ye’s 900 kuai broker fee now, plus the 5 kuai per month fee for utilities.

The rest of the money is to come before the end of the month.

When, I sincerely hope, some of my lovely clients will have paid me. (Still want to be a freelance writer? Read this.)

For after tomorrow, the issue’s not just going to be that I can only take out 2500 kuai per day. It’s going to be that there aren’t any more 2500 kuais to take out.

Because, rather than spending the month of January installed in a flat in Harbin and focused on rebuilding finances, with Zac in Chinese school, and then going skiing, I’ve been haemorrhaging money on visas, flights, trains, more visas, more trains and unplanned, last-minute hotel rooms, not to mention treats to make said richocheting around China tolerable for both of us, and now I’ve got to pay four months rent plus everything else upfront.

One can live, incidentally, for an extremely long time in China on 2500 kuai. A bowl of home-made noodle soup in a local eatery costs around 8 kuai; street snacks are in the 3-5 kuai range; a bus fare is 1 kuai; 2500 kuai is close to the average per capita monthly income.

It is not, however, an experiment that I’m keen to conduct. Particularly not with the delights of Harbin in the winter to explore.

Off we trot, back to Mr Ye’s office. It’s already dark, but apparently we can move in tonight. We need to do a rental contract. In Chinese. And the landlord will come and meet us.

Mr Ye calls the landlord. They’ll do it!

There’s no bedding, but we have sleeping bags. And we’ll have to arrange our own broadband and wifi.

Oh god. That’s going to be a challenge and a half, from working out what contracts are on offer and which company to go with, to finding the local office or the right phone number, to actually having the bloody conversation in Chinese.

Never mind. I can work in Bomele until I’m ready to face that.

Because I really do need to do some work.

So off we trot, back to Mr Ye’s office. It’s already dark, but apparently we can move in tonight. We need to do a rental contract. In Chinese. And the landlord will come and meet us.

Wow. That’s Chinese efficiency. And, further, Chinese kindness.

The post Finding Home in Harbin? appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

It’s not until I’ve physically collected and checked our China visas that, after a total of four days at the Chinese Embassy and one at Nepali Immigration, I can believe it’s actually, finally, happening.

We ARE going to go to China as planned! The visa deities ARE smiling on us! All is right with the world! This bad run of luck we’ve had since Lukla is just a temporary glitch!

And so, a young woman’s thoughts turn, naturally, to getting on with the some work  a quiet night in with the boy  packing celebration.

My initial instinct, what with neither Mr Darcy nor even the White Knight actively oozing enthusiasm for my company this evening, despite intermittent communication over the week, is to get poshed up and head to the Radisson.

But then I begin to worry whether the Radisson may be dead. And then that would be rubbish. Because probably the only place to go, if the Radisson is dead, is Faces, Kathmandu, which is almost certainly where they’ll be. (Did I mention that Kathmandu is a very small town?)

So then I’ll have to avoid doing that, and then I’ll be cabbing around Kathmandu from dead 5-star to dead 5-star to dead 5-star which isn’t fun if you’re bar reviewing, let alone if you’re supposed to be getting laid, and also requires doing some online research.

Sod it, I think. I’ll send a quick text and see if Mr Darcy’s available. He is, after all, quite ludicrously hawt. And, ya know, without the aid of Botox, the days of ludicrously hawt 23  24  25 very-possibly-30-if-he-joined-the-Gurkhas-as-a-career-change-which-he-didn’t year-olds are fading rapidly in the rear view mirror.

Plus, I think gloomily, it’s not like I’m going to be getting up to any mischief in Northern China in the winter. Not in an ambient temperature of -30, anywise.

Mr Darcy is around! Not enthusiastic, perhaps.

In fact, REALLY not enthusiastic.

But around.

That will do, I think, in a state that, since Lukla, is probably best summarised as delirium. That will DO!

“It might be better for you if you just stayed in and went to bed early rather than going out and getting sozzed.” “Nah!” I say, wriggling into the Magical Age-Reducing and Height-Increasing Kneeboots of Confidence, Fun and General Domination. “It’ll be fun!”

“Are you sure you should be going out tonight, Mum?” says Zac, in a conversation he can doubtless replay with his therapist shortly before he sells his misery memoir, cuts all ties and abandons me to the prowling, hungry cats.

“Yes!” I say. “It’ll be fun!”

“Mm,” says my son, tearing himself away from his ongoing flamewar with someone who appears to be a) a bona fide physicist and b) far too old to be fighting with a twelve-year-old on the Anno 2070 forum – the thread’s currently at 200 pages and counting, and no, I jest not. “I think it might be better if you had an early night.”

“BETTER?!” I say. “What do you MEAN, better?!”

“I think,” he says. “It might be better for you if you just stayed in and went to bed early rather than going out and getting sozzed.”

“Nah!” I say, wriggling into the Magical Age-Reducing and Height-Increasing Kneeboots of Confidence, Fun and General Domination. “It’ll be fun! Don’t wait up!”

“You’re having a ‘sleepover’, are you?” he says, each quotation mark dripping a honeyed poison remarkable in one so young.

“Well, I certainly hope so,” I say maternally. “I might be a bit late for breakfast.”

Ah! A text from the White Knight! Well, HE wants to see me, anyway. Which must mean THEY do.

“Aren’t you going to drink that?” he says. “I can’t drink THAT,” I say, brattishly. “The coke’s flat. You have it.”

Ooh! The 90s Raver is at the bar. On only my second visit, Faces Kathmandu already feels familiar, which is to say that if I come here a third time, it will be old.

“Where have you been all week?” he asks.

“The Chinese Embassy,” I explain, and then bore him silly with my visa hassles.

What is very hard for people who lead more-or-less normal lives to understand is that, for nomads, an extended visa hassle is roughly equivalent to a house sale that looks like it’s falling through, in that it leaves you in a peculiarly stressful limbo full of paperwork, phone calls and hideous, unexpected expenditure.

I can’t help noticing that he looks a bit glazed.

Oh yeah, I remember. He gets shot at for a living. And doesn’t have any choice in where he lives anyway.

I order a Jack and coke. This is a mistake, and I switch to beer.

“Aren’t you going to drink that?” he says.

“I can’t drink THAT,” I say, brattishly. “The coke’s flat and it’s out of a supermarket bottle. You have it.”

A text from the White Knight. Where am I?

“At the bar with the 90s Raver,” I say.

He comes over. At least HE’s pleased to see me.

The kneeboots weren’t going to be a problem in my head, because in my head Mr Darcy is my age, or thereabouts, and therefore not only sexually self-confident a complete slut but quite happy with birds being taller than him in heels. But, of course, he’s 23.

Mr Darcy, meanwhile, is over in the corner with the hookers. FFS.

I wander over, whereupon two things rapidly become apparent. Firstly, thanks to the magical kneeboots of domination, I am now very significantly taller than him. Secondly, when not up a mountain or actually engaged in intercourse, we have absolutely nothing to say to each other.

The kneeboots weren’t going to be a problem in my head, because in my head Mr Darcy is my age, or thereabouts, and therefore not only sexually self-confident a complete slut but quite happy with birds being taller than him in heels. But, of course, he’s 23.

He gives it a good shot. Gets his tits out. Does some gay dancing.

I throw notes at him, but they’re the wrong size. The hookers are all throwing 5 rupees and I’m throwing 500 rupees. This is insensitive of me, so he makes me take them back.

Further, it appears that vocally encouraging him to remove all his clothes in a nightclub is unladylike.

Nonetheless, he invites me to lick his nipple while he does the gay dancing.

I do it WRONG!

And then I have a moment of crisis. Fuck! I’m not groomed enough, or sexy enough, to do the cougar thing… Hell, I can’t even apply makeup! Or lick a bloody nipple right!

I wander over to bore the White Knight with tedious tales of our Christmas at the Chinese Embassy.

By the time the 90s Raver observes, quite in the manner of a Jane Austen hero complimenting a heroine on her quadrille, that my dancing is “One for the man bank”, I’m rather enjoying myself. And hammered, obv.

The alcohol flows. I alternate between chatting to the White Knight, gay dancing with the 90s Raver, accepting compliments on my legs from various gentlemen of the armed forces, and generally people-watching in the manner of a longterm bar reviewer and writer type, which is to say working out who’s who and what’s what.

Ya know.

By the time the 90s Raver observes, quite in the manner of a Jane Austen hero complimenting a heroine on her quadrille, that my dancing is “One for the man bank”, I’m rather enjoying myself.

And hammered, obv.

Which is when, having forgotten that Mr Darcy is 23, I also forget that Mr Darcy is not a cynical rising-40 British bar reviewer or soldier who’s been stranded in Kathmandu for the big end of the decade, but Nepali and, umm, 23.

Continuing my conversation with the 90s Raver, I turn to Mr Darcy and say, “So, those girls, are they actually prostitutes or just bar sluts?”

Oops.

This goes down like the proverbial cup of cold sick.

Actually, it goes down rather worse than that.

It goes down like a cup of cold sick with a dysentery chaser and a used syringe for a stirrer.

“What happened there?” “Well,” I say, précis-ing as best I can. “I think I’ve inadvertently mistaken the wives of his brother Gurkhas for prostitutes.” “Wives?!” he says. “They’re not bloody wives!!”

“Jesus,” says the 90s Raver, as I make a hasty exit from a cluster of twittering possibly-not-prostitutes-just-bar-sluts and one enraged Gurkha to the safety of the dancefloor. “What happened there?”

“Well,” I say, précis-ing as best I can. “I think I’ve inadvertently mistaken the wives of his brother Gurkhas for prostitutes.”

“Wives?!” he says. “They’re not bloody wives!!”

“Oh,” I say. “Well, that’s alright then. More gay dancing?”

Mr Darcy appears. He is not a happy bunny. “What made you think they were prostitutes?” he says.

“Well,” I begin, deciding not to get into the makeup thing. “Last time we were here, he said I and his flatmates were the only women in here who weren’t prostitutes…”

“Leave me out of this,” says the 90s Raver, exiting stage left.

He does, after all, have to live in Kathmandu.

“You think all Nepali women are prostitutes,” says Mr Darcy.

“No I don’t!” I say, getting all feminist and arm-waving on his ass, because bringing gender into it is TOTALLY going to help when he’s suddenly hung up on the race thing. “I’ve met plenty of strong, empowered Nepali women, professional women, Sherpa women – don’t be ridiculous!”

“You think all Nepali women are prostitutes!” he says. “They’re from the UK! Like you!!!”

I double-take.

The White Knight appears and, with the general calm air of someone accustomed to command, not to say absolutely execrable behaviour in nightclubs, restores order and ceases the waving of arms with repeated applications of the magic phrase “Let’s just all calm down and talk about it in the morning.”

The White Knight and Mr Darcy look and sound British when they’re speaking English and look and sound Nepali when they’re speaking Nepalese, ergo they’re both.

I take another look at the girls in question.

Now, the question of Britishness is an interesting one. But, fundamentally, people count as British if they look and sound British, and you can be British and another nationality as well.

A girl at the playground in full niqab with trainers sticking out the bottom bellowing “Mohammed! Get down off that now or your dad’s going to fucking kill you!” is British. A Dalston hipster in skinny jeans and brothel creepers is British.

The spinster cycling to Mass over the village green is British, as is the vicar’s wife icing fairy cakes for the bake sale.

That scary man with the Bible shouting at you on the nightbus is British, as are the kids with their trousers belted below their pants swaggering through suburbia like they’re straight outta Compton.

The White Knight and Mr Darcy look and sound British when they’re speaking English and look and sound Nepali when they’re speaking Nepalese, ergo they’re both.

Zac’s father has an Australian passport and a British passport, Australian heritage and British heritage, and has lived in both countries – but because he sounds Australian, he’s basically Australian. The passport, when it comes to Britishness, is a relatively small part of the identity.

Anywise, these girls, in their nylon Mid-Priced Indonesian Hooker outfits, white face powder and red lipstick, do not look British in the slightest. And nor, given they’ve been speaking Nepalese all evening, do they sound it.

“Well, HE says they’re from the UK.” “Nah,” the 90s Raver says. On this, we are, it appears, agreed. “So what ARE they?” I say, with my bar reviewing hat on. “Are they just bar sluts? Do they even HAVE bar sluts in Nepal?”

“They might not be prostitutes, actually,” says the 90s Raver, a bit later, as the girls continue to twitter. Quite why Mr Darcy felt he had to inform them of my question, I will never understand. “They might just look that way, because they think that’s how Western girls dress and they want to be Western.”

“NOW you tell me!” I say. (The White Knight has no idea whether they are prostitutes or not but had kind of assumed they were.) “Well, HE says they’re from the UK.”

“Nah,” the 90s Raver says. On this, we are, it appears, agreed.

“So what ARE they?” I say, with my bar reviewing hat on. “Are they just bar sluts? Do they even HAVE bar sluts in Nepal?”

“Bar sluts?”

“Yeah,” I say. “You know, girls who just go to bars, sit at the bar and wait for men to buy them drinks?”

For some reason, he doesn’t quite get this one.

“Or,” I say, because tact has always been my strong suit. “Are they just the kind of girls that want to marry soldiers? Is that what they are?”

“The kind of girls who want to marry soldiers?” he repeats back to me, slowly.

Aaarrggghhhh.

At this rate I’m going to have alienated every English speaker in Faces, Kathmandu, before the end of the night, which is only 2am, thank god, although I’ve only been here, like, an hour.

“That wasn’t what I meant…” I begin. Then I stop digging that hole and resolve to be nice.

Gay dancing! It’s the way forward!

I look desperately around the club for someone I have yet to mortally offend. Ooh! There’s the evil Gurkha with the piercings! I like him!

“Are YOU with HIM?” I look at Mr Darcy, who’s in an absolutely gigantic sulk, and start to laugh. He’s a beautiful guy, who would look absolutely perfect on the cover of a gay porno, probably wearing a toolbelt…

Oooh, one of the prostitutes/bar sluts/whatevers – hell, they could be a party of conventioneering brain surgeons, or maybe estate agents, perhaps from Surbiton, or maybe Manchester, or, for that matter, the expensively Western-educated daughters of Kathmandu’s social elite, but I doubt it – wants to talk to me.

Right, I think. I WILL BE NICE.

“Hello,” she says, in a thick Nepali accent pushed through her nose in an ill-advised attempt to sound British. “My name is Lulu and I am from UK.”

“Oh,” I say, brightly, ignoring both the hooker name and the missing definite article because I am being nice. I.AM.BEING.NICE. “That’s nice! What part of the UK are you from?”

Lulu from UK ignores that. She has a more pressing message to deliver.

“Are YOU with HIM?”

I look at Mr Darcy, who’s in an absolutely gigantic sulk, and start to laugh. He’s a beautiful guy, who would look absolutely perfect on the cover of a gay porno, probably wearing a toolbelt, and apparently an extremely good soldier, but he’s 15 years younger than me and, bar an interest in diving, mountains, sex and getting drunk, we have absolutely nothing in common.

“No,” I say, laughing, in the absence of a convenient précis that covers nipple-licking, drunk sex and the odd text, but excludes relationship. “God, no.”

“What age are you?” she says, demonstrating her fluency in English idiom yet again.

“What?” I say, still laughing.

“What AGE are you?” Lulu asks again.

I look at her. She looks a bit dumpy to actually be a hooker, although, in the few brothels I’ve visited, they’ve had them in all shapes and sizes. “I’m 38,” I say.

“I am 21,” she says, delivering what is clearly supposed to be a feline coup de grâce. “My MOTHER is 38.”

“Oh, really?” I say, biting back a number of observations because, hell, I COULD be her mother, there really is no victory in making a 21-year-old cry, and I AM BEING NICE. Rather belatedly, for sure. But I AM BEING NICE. “That’s nice.”

We can’t all go back together and just hang out and get pissed because that is what my mixed-sex groups of friends did in the 90s and we’ve been through the noughties and now we’re in the teens. Dear god, I’m old. Torn between taxis, I dither for an unconscionable amount of time.

By the time the lights go on, it is apparent that I am going to be entertaining the soldiery in one form or another tonight, perhaps in the manner of Vera Lynn, or possibly Marlene Dietrich or, at the very least, Myleene Klass, most definitely not, however, in the manner of what the history books so charmingly term “camp followers”.

Most definitely not that.

Oh no, no.

Most definitely not that.

Mr Darcy appears to have calmed down drunk enough to have temporarily forgotten the insult to his sisters in nationality who have, in any case, gone wherever girls go at 2am in a country where nice girls don’t and bad girls want paying.

My options appear to be: go back with the 90s Raver and the Fittest Man in the British Army™ to the 90s Raver’s house, where there is a bar, head off with the White Knight and Mr Darcy to their hotel, where there is also a bar, or, of course, stagger around the corner to my poor neglected child, an early night and a productive day.

As if THAT’S going to happen.

We can’t all go back together and just hang out and drink more because that is what my mixed-sex groups of friends did in the 90s and we’ve been through the noughties and now we’re in the teens.

Dear god, I’m old.

Torn between taxis, I dither for an unconscionable amount of time.

“Just get in,” says the White Knight.

And as we head off, in a haze of alcohol fumes, I reassure myself for perhaps the billionth time that now it REALLY can’t get any worse.

The post Lulu from UK appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

“Mum,” he says. “I really don’t think it’s a good idea to go to Vang Vieng.”

Vang Vieng, Laos, is a destination I’ve been to-ing and fro-ing over, as it happens. On balance, I reckon that an other-worldly landscape, white water tubing and caves will more than compensate for the prevalence of happy pizza joints, Western teenagers revelling in reefer-fuelled freedom from the parental home, and 21-year-old Israelis obliterating the memory of their military service. Plus someone has recommended a good guesthouse that’s out of town.

Furthermore, nine-year-old boys and 18-30s on mushroom shakes have rather more in common than either side might care to think. On balance, folk of an age to have children, nephews, nieces etc. think Z will love the tubing, as do I. Folk closer in age to Z than me think that witnessing such decadent scenes of canage will be traumatic for the pair of us.

“Why not?” I ask.

“Read this!” he says, incensed. “Just read it! Read what they say here.”

I know what they say “here”. I look at the passage entitled “Holy Smoke”, detailing a scam whereby locals dressed as plainclothes coppers wind up braying adolescent tourists who are spending a week’s salary on beer and weed and turn a very healthy profit — I’m sorry, exploit innocent travellers on very limited budgets — by imposing hardcore on-the-spot fines for persons in possession of weed.

I say, “Darling, this doesn’t apply to us. Neither of us will be smoking weed. It’s fine.”

“It doesn’t mention weed!” he says. Indeed it doesn’t. It mentions reefers, joints, but not weed.

My eye flips to the last sentence. “Quasi police aside, if you bump into the real article (they’re all plain-clothed in Vang Vieng) you have no choice but to pay the fine or be deported/jailed.”

I can see how this, stripped of the context of the preceding paragraph, could be a truly frightening prospect.

In fact, he is rather alarmed about Vang Vieng altogether. I was chatting to a Dutch guy on the bus from the border, which meant, of course, that we were both chatting to the Dutch guy on the bus from the border, when the topic of Vang Vieng came up, and with it happy pizzas. (That’s a pizza with extra, erm, ‘erb on top.)

Z asked what a happy pizza was. I sort of assumed, coming from Hackney, that they’d have covered most of the basics in school already. But apparently not.

So, I duly explain not just what a happy pizza is, but what marijuana, weed or spliff is, that it’s illegal, and why it’s not a good idea to consume it until you’re at least 18, and possibly not even then.

“Well,” he says, at the end of this. “If anyone comes up to me in a dark alley and tries to make me eat happy pizza I’ll throw shoes at them.”

“You what?” I say, observing that somebody, somewhere, has covered off the evil pusher concept we learned at school during the Heroin Screws You Up campaign.

The Dutch guy, being Dutch, is virtually pissing himself at this point, with suitable Low Countries discretion.

“I’ll throw my shoes at them,” Z says. “Like in that computer game? Based on the guy who threw his shoes at Bush? You play George Bush and you have to escape an entire avalanche of shoes. It’s really funny.”

Like I said.

Nine-year-old boys. Stoners.

Stoners. Nine-year-old boys…

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