"Fully Furnished"

Furniture and décor choices differ vastly between cultures, so we’ve learned in our 4 years over here.  And we were reminded once again when we showed up in our rental house in Vientiane in September.  Backing up a bit, we looked at the house on a visit to Vientiane in June.  The day we arrived to take a peek, a group of monks was at the house performing a ceremony to rid the house of any bad spirits and welcome the good ones before a new family moved into it.  I took our arrival on the day of the monks’ ceremony as a sign of our destiny to land in this spacious house with a big garden, right in the area of town we wanted to be.  We didn’t actually see the orange robe clad monks doing anything ceremonial during our glance around as it was lunch time.  We looked around while they sat on the floor enjoying their sticky rice.  Apparently during a house blessing ceremony, the monks are then to watch a bit of TV and send some text messages, as that’s what they were doing by the time we were ready to go outside and talk to the landlord about renting the house.    I was happy to see the monks so comfortable and content in our perspective home-to-be as it made me feel as though they had contented the spirits and we’d be comfortable here too.  

And we are, now that our furniture has arrived from Bangkok and I’m sitting on my comfy custom-made sofa with my legs propped up on a bean bag.  Prior to our furniture arriving, however, we spent 3 long weeks using the furniture that came with the advertised “fully furnished” house.  Apparently the downstairs living room was meant for very formal tea parties among people with impeccable posture and the upstairs living room was designed for beach lounging (see photos below).  Not wanting to spend any unnecessary time on either the straight-backed, overly ornate wooden seating or the rattan loungers, I would retire to bed soon after putting the kids down during those few weeks.  As the mattress was like sleeping on the wood floor, however, it was not as nice to go to bed so early as it might have been (not to mention the fact that our 2-year-old was sleeping with us for those few weeks while we waited for his bed to arrive).  Could they have chosen any less comfortable furniture for this rental house?  Answer: No.  Thankfully we’ve obtained a house full of furniture since moving to Bangkok and it’s all here now for our enjoyment while the Lao furniture and lounge chairs sit snugly in the storage room.  Happy spirits and happy us.