The massage

The Massage

So, here is a story I have been meaning to write for some time. The most interesting massage experience. Interesting might just be code for awkward!

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The Hue Backpackers Bar

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I spent many weekends in Hue. It's only three hours on the tourist bus or train from Danang, my home away from home and has plenty of bars and tourists and things to see and do, without being as crazy or pushy as some of the other tourist towns.
I very rarely went out in Vietnam, heck - I very rarely go out in Australia, the crush of people, the loud obnoxious music, the expensive drinks (in Australia anyway!) but in Hue I tended to frequent a chilled bar. After all, it does get to be a treat to speak with other people who have English as a first language after months of straining to understand conversations.

It all started walking back to my hotel after an early dinner and a walk around the citadel. I was thinking that I should make an effort to be more social and just so happened to wander past a bar playing Smoke on the Water at a volume that was less than ear splitting. Decent music and decent volume are both attributes rare of Vietnam and so it swayed me to go on in. I had a great time, had a couple of drinks and chatted with an Aussie man I eventually realised was the owner. Cheap (but tasty!) drinks, a pizza that actually featured REAL CHEESE, and massive and delicious burgers… I love Vietnamese food, but had amazing Vietnamese home cooked meals every day of the week. I missed Western food sometimes so I was sold on coming back the next night for dinner and more drinks.

A month later I was back. But this time I was accompanied by 6 Uni students who were doing a physio placement with us in Vietnam. Needless to say, the influence of the students meant the next morning I was feeling somewhat more shady than usual. It was a combination of the student influence, a series of free shots from the lovely owner, watching people do the “duck egg challenge” (have a shot, eat a cooked egg containing a mostly grown duck foetus, then drown a beer) and then that boat ride we decided to take at 2am which proved that drunk people should never be allowed on unstable boats, resulted in a very stressed boat driver and almost landed us all in a river!

After a light breakfast, light because I couldn’t stomach the extremely greasy egg and postmix orange juice that was presented at my hotel, I was walking through town and saw an advert for massage with mud or coffee wraps. At that point having coffee scrubbed over my whole body seemed like a good hangover cure. Besides, at $12 for a massage and body scrub I thought it seemed important to stimulate the local economy a bit. I did waver for a while, recalling the last massage I had in Vietnam, but the staff seemed friendly and professional and spoke good English.

I figured it couldn’t be any more awkward then the massage I had in Hoi An a few years before – and the last experience wasn’t that bad after all.

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A Flash Back

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After a long day of walking up Marble Mountain, and being the last day of our trip and in possession of some Vietnamese dong to use up, we thought a massage seemed like a good plan. We were taken to separate rooms and I was instructed to remove my clothes "underwear you keep". I waited a few seconds for the masseuse to leave me to my undressing. After all, it seemed to me that standard procedure is to leave the room, allow people to get undressed and lie down, then return. After what became an awkward pause I established she would remain in the room so turned around and took off my shirt and pants.

I should probably be clear that in Vietnam I am tall. Most people would be about a head short than me. So level with my chest. I am also a red head with white, white skin. Skin that glows with whiteness. Skin that is almost translucent in the bits the never see sunlight, bits that may be revealed during a massage situation.

When I turned back to lie on the bed she pointed at my bra "You take off now" the removal of which resulted in a long break while she stared at my white skin. I felt like some sort of Vietnamese specialist stripper with this woman’s face level to my chest and about 30 cm away as she stared and quietly said “Dep (beautiful), so white”. I took the initiative to end by lying face down on the plinth.

I am pretty sure that halfway through the massage when I was face down other people came in to look at my skin and admire the whiteness that no amount of skin bleaching will allow them to achieve. I am also pretty sure that the lying on my back while she massaged my scalp was more so that she could take the opportunity to gaze upon the whiten, translucentness of my chest.

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Back To The Current Massage

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We started downstairs with a relaxing foot soak and pedicure. As I relaxed back into a deep chair with my feet happily plopped in a bucket of water a few of my students wandered past. We talked and they considered returning after breakfast for their own massages.

Feet pampered and dried I follow the masseuse up the typically Vietnamese stairs (long, windy, with differently sized steps and half the width you think they should be) into a pokey little room and the lovely, English speaking lady leaves. Replaced by a much less communicative and abrupt lady who seemed the think that because her phone was on vibrate I would not notice the constant stream of text messages coming and going.

Despite the frequent texting breaks, it was actually a very good massage. I definitely relaxed and was enjoying the cool, dark air conditioned room and the muscle melting massage.

Once the massage portion was done I was stood up and was told to sit on a little stool in the corner. I should point out that I was stood and directed to the stool entirely without words, just with guiding hands pushing and pulling me to wherever she wanted me to be. The masseuse left the room and returned sometime later with a giant scrunch of Dexter style plastic wrap. This was laid over the massage plinth.
At this point I began to wonder which of my organs would be harvested first by whoever was involved in the very detailed text-a-thon that went on during the massage portion.

I was then pulled into standing, and the lady started to pull my underwear off.
"Too dirty, too dirty!" I must have looked confused at her accusations that my underwear was too dirty to lie on her suspiciously stained plastic sheets as she got a tub of coffee scrub then repeated that it was too dirty to wear underpants while pointing at the brown scrub.

“It’s fine.” I said with a smile and shrug. She looked upset. “Old anyway” I stated flippantly, and got up on the plastic wrapped plinth before she could argue.

I won that round and she started to slather the coffee scrub over my back. I relaxed into the massage bench and returned to enjoy the relaxing massage, the scrub and the smell of coffee clearing my somewhat stuffy brain. Relaxing and letting my guard down was in fact a mistake. Before I knew what was happening my underwear had been whipped off and the coffee scrub was getting far more personal than I expected, or needed. I was rolled so that my front could also be scrubbed. I honestly hadn’t thought through the fact that my nipples would be getting scrubbed with shards of coffee when I agreed to this massage situation.

Once all (absolutely all) of me was well scrubbed I was wrapped in the disturbing plastic sheeting with arms pinned to my sides. The masseuse then showed me a bottle of water on the side table, turned the air conditioning to maximum "no move now" and left the room.
Sometime later, after I had been shivering and wistfully staring at the water bottle that was forever out of reach of my wrapped up arms, she returned to unveil me.

"Shower now" as she led me by the hand into the adjoining bathroom.
Again I had assumed the protocol for cleaning the scrub off that I would shower myself, dress, then head downstairs to the exit once I was done. How wrong I was.

The shower portion of the massage was not the independent affair of my dreams.
Instead I was washed. By a determined and surprising strong woman half my height.

As she had to reach up so high to get to my back, or underarms, she put hands on my shoulders and pushed me down into a squatting position on the floor. Vietnamese people from tiny toddlers to wrinkled grandmothers have an amazing ability to squat. Whether they are cooking on a fire or waiting for a bus they will be in this amazing deep and painful looking squat – which seems to be perfectly comfortable for them…. But is incredibly painful for those of us less accustomed. She assumed my less than perfect squatting abilities and put my hands on the sink to hold myself up and give me the extra balance.

Wet, naked and covered in mud I squatted on the tiles in a sad dark bathroom and was circled by the tiny masseuse who came at me armed with a high pressure shower hose and handful of whitening soap. Thoroughly cleaned, I was towel dried and sent on my confused, but somewhat less hung over way.

Later that day I walked past the massage house, I was called over by the staff who were very proud to tell me that my friends “The boys, the cute boys” had come back and got a massage. I was assured that their massage was satisfactory with exuberant cries of “Very good massage for boys, very happy. Big smiles!”

I am assured by the boys that their massage was lovely, not at all awkward and they were in the same room, permitted to keep their underwear and didn’t engage in any “happy massage”. 

The rice harvest

I am finally getting around to looking back over all my photos and making some collections.

This one is the rice harvest.

Depending on the field quality and how much rain a particular region gets, most rice fields will yield 2 or 3 harvests per year. All planting, picking and separating is done by hand. Although some towns did have thrasher machines to more easily get the rice off the grass.  

These women seemed to enjoy the distraction of photographs. They loved looking at the photos on the screen. 

I found it incredibly hot just looking at these ladies. Jeans, jackets, scarves, gloves and usually face masks all to keep the sun from making their skin darker.     

Every harvest field seems to have a spectators area

Shaking the rice from the stalks, letting it dry in the sun - often on tarps by equally often on the side of the road, and tossing it to separate the  husks as much as possible before loading into sacks 

The rice grass left to hay before being bundled up for water buffalo 

 The next morning we found another rice field to explore

the breakfast food van

next up I should have a collection of fishing photos!
let's wait and see how damn long it takes me to get them up now!

Cooking with Mrs hanh II amazing Smoky Vietnamese eggplants

So,  I went looking for my post with the most delicious eggplant recipe ever.  Mrs Hanh made this a number of times for us,  and taught us to cook it as well.

We even got to try it ourselves one weekend and it was assessed as good...  although she was probably just being nice - hers somehow magically gets an amazing smoky flavour,  even though no smoking was involved.  Anyway,  upon looking I discovered that I never got around to sharing that recipe,  so I had to make it up for my family and fine the recipe when I get home to share!

EGGPLANTS OF POWER AND MAGIC (aka Smokey Vietnamese Eggplant Recipe)
Stuff you need to have:

Eggplants: The long skinny purple type work best. I believe this recipe will do sauce for 2-3 eggplants, but you can stretch it if needed :) The big fat round guys do work too, but you will find that the eggplants fall apart in the "squash water out" step, or you cut them up because it's too hard to fry when they  are so big!



 Mrs Hanh's Amazing eggplant of awesome

Sauce
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
2 TbSp fish sauce
3 cloves garlic
one long red chilli
3 spring onions


Carefully slice eggplants as in the picture. By scoring them this way you will drastically cut down cooking time! Place eggpants with slits cut in into a saucepan of simmering water with a teaspoon of salt and simmer until soft and squishy to the touch (or the poke as the case may be)

Mix sugar, water and fish sauce together and stir well to dissolve sugar, add finely diced chilli.
Fry diced onions and garlic until soft and add to the sauce

Once eggplants are cooked place in a colander and squeeze excess water out with the back of a spoon. Fry eggplants in about 1-2cm of oil until brown and crispy.

Drain excess oil (this can be kept and used for frying spring rolls for added flavour - stay tuned for spring roll recipe!).

With small amount of oil add sauce to the cooked eggplants and cook for approximately 5 minutes, or until it smells so good you just have to eat it!

Tip onto a plate - if you have somehow kept your eggplants mostly whole (mine never are!) cut them roughly. Put chopped peanuts on top of the eggplants.

Saying goodbye, and hello

In  the last week or so we have said goodbye to two kids from the redcross orphanage,

Den,  this cheeky little munchkin is heading to Canada.  I met her new parents and her new big brother (a four year old from the north of Vietnam) at the orphanage on Thursday. 

Interestingly Den is usually a very outgoing and active kid. 

In fact when I arrived on Thursday and they told me she was leaving she was laughing and gave me a big hug.  Once the parents arrived she became very withdrawn and quiet.  She wasn't scared of them at all....  But it was obvious that she knows something big is happening,  and they are involved.  Their first child was adopted at 5 months old,  so the acclimatisation will be very different this time around!

This little lovely has also gone this week.  That day was crazy!  The carers were fussing about giving here a bath and dressing here in the new clothes and saying goodbye,  her parents arrived with two kids and all the other kids by this point were starting to rebel and demand attention.....  Then we turned up with half a dozen wet sandy kids we had taken to the beach and needed to wash and dress.  So a lot of chaos that day!

Then,  I walk into the physio room and discover a teeny tiny baby.  I am told he is 4 weeks old. 

He mostly hangs out in the physio room so they can lock the door and not have to constantly stop curious children from waking him,  or poking him in the face. 

Sometimes I just can't tell if some of the new babies who arrive here are small for their age, maybe due to being born early, being sick or not having enough food..... or if Vietnamese babies are just little compared to the Aussie babies I am used to! 

At the da nang baby orphanage I had to say goodbye on Friday.  Very hard! I just love these kids. We had a fun morning of drawing,  playing in the ballpit (they are not scared of it any more!) singing and cuddles. 

 I noticed a couple of babies sleeping on the baby bed but didn't look to see who they were until the carers pointed them out to me.  Turns out they were new babies.  Twins!  And only 10 days old,  so teeny tiny. 

Catching up with the kids - Da Nang baby orphanage

Here is the line up of kids at the Da Nang baby orphanage, and how much they have changed while I have been here! 

This little guy is about 4 or 5 months old now. He is the little baby who was found at the gate in May and looked a little yellow and jaundice-y when he arrived. Luckily the carers thought he looked a little yellow and took him out for plenty of sun - which did fix him up quite nicely! Now he is happy and healthy, rolling over and starting to sit up (with help).

Here are the three babies in January. On the end is Thắng the little boy. 
In the middle is Hạnh. She must have been about one month old in January. When she was found she was a tiny little premmie baby. Apparently the doctors and carers didn't expect her to survive because she was so little, but the carers her nursed her back to health and now she is doing amazingly! 

at the bottom is Duyên. Another girl, maybe 4 months ish here? It is hard to remember ages of the kids.... especially as often the carers are just guessing a bit when they arrive. 





This is Thắng, the boy who was so flopsy back in May, sitting up yesterday.
He is rolling, creeping around on the floor and enjoying sitting up (with some support). He must be around 10ish months old now, he was a tiny little baby when I arrived in January!

He was very much enjoying sitting up, but has a tendancy to push himself backwards and expect someone to catch him so that ha can be lazy and lean into support..... luckily donks on the head don't hurt too much on that soft mat!

Here is Hanh and I enjoying some cuddle times! She might have had a rough start, but now she is rolling and crawling around, sitting up on her own and exploring the room and even standing with her hands held. Taking steps is a little challenging yet, but I think soon she will be racing all over the place! 

And Duyen, She is walking around and is almost one of the "big kids" now! While I was away for two months she developed a deep distrust of strangers (or of strange looking people!) and starts to cry if I get too close now! And we use to have such nice cuddles! I think slowly I am gaining her trust again, but not sure if I will get a cuddle before it's time to leave! I didn't take any photos of her today as even looking at her too long makes her scared!

This photo is from a couple of weeks ago

"The shy girl", Thanh is still sometimes more a watcher than a doer. She often enjoys just sitting with me outside laughing at the kids who were pushing each other around on the toys rather than playing, but is getting right into the ball pit and liking to be pushed around in the balls.

She also has gotten more brave at sticking up for herself.... not more just letting kids take toys off her. She is probably more likely to do the taking these days! But then when someone takes her toy crying until someone comes to fix it is her default reaction!

She is also much less shy with new people. When some friends brought a collection of toys from Australia and visited the orphanage earlier in the year she was quite happy to go over and plonk herself down in a lap to get a share of that attention!

This one is yesterday, the look of amazement when
she discovered that the puzzle makes noises

She is enjoying cause and effect toys and things like puzzles and drawing. So I am trying to take lots of those type of toys and activities to help up her skills a little bit.

Having fun with drawing

I am not 100% sure of this little ladies name (I meet a lot of children every week - give me a break :P)! She is walking around very confidently, playing, kicking balls, and drawing.
These kids just grow up so fast!

Here she is in Jan

This little dude (yes he is a boy, apparently everyone but me think he looks like a girl - I don't see it, what do you guys think?) is new. He arrived while I was in Cambodia, I am not sure of his age, or name (need to confirm these details on Friday!) He likes drawing, and throwing a ball with me. He can also be a bit of a bully, typically he wants whatever toy someone else has - and will just take it!

I was told yesterday that he is getting adopted by an Italian family and should be taken to Italy in about 3 months time, so he might not have to spend too long at the orphanage!

It seems I don't have photos of the other two children - There are 9 all together at the Da Nang Baby orphanage at the moment. Another new girl arrived while I was away, She is 4 or 5 (different people told me different ages!). Apparently she is also going to Italy in three months. If not I am going to look at supporting her to go to Kindy so that she can learn all those pre-school skills and interact with kids her own age.  

The baby orphanage is an interesting place to go, There are less kids here than the red cross orphanage - a maximum of 10 at one time. So the kids seem more well looked after - It is much easier to keep track of 10 kids and get them all through the bath each day! The carers are on top of nappies, so we never do that, and feeding is a breeze with a couple of volunteers there to hep and doesn't take long at all. 

As such if you just sit back and watch everything ticks over quite nicely. Because of this I think it can be harder to feel immediately totally useful compared to the Red cross - where total Chaos always seems to be a hairs breadth away. I think for some of the volunteers they are not able to immediately see what needs doing (play always needs doing if you ask me!) so find it a little boring.

Taking new toys from our stock so they have something different to play with, helping the kids to colour and draw (trying to do more advanced shapes with the older kids), showing them cause and effect toys and puzzles and watching/helping them problem solve how to work them, kicking or throwing a ball with the kids, supervising so they can go outside into the new play area out there and putting them into an out of the ball pit (I need to get a ladder, they always change their minds about being in or out!). Helping the babies get some tummy time, or sit up, or singing songs to them. 

There is so much to do! I love visiting this orphanage, I think a lot because the kids are just so sweet and happy, and keep to play and interact and partly because I can relax my physio brain and just play with the kids! 

Travels

The last two week featured visits from Patrick (yey!)

 We hung out in Hanoi for a few days. Spent plenty of time walking around the streets getting accosted by fruit selling women (they have this desire to thrust their fruit baskets at me and insist that photos are taken. I declined this offer.), avoiding scams by bread selling women (I just wanted one sweet bread for each of us... she put about 15 things in a bag and demanded exorbitant amounts of money, when she continued to resist giving only two things I decided I had had enough and walked off..... she then followed and grabbed hold of me twice trying to sell the damn bread) and taking in the insanity that is Hanoi.
These photos were taken on our walk (complete with the necessary ice cream stops) around the lake. Hanoi is actually quite a beautiful city, lots of green space. This lake in the centre of the old town is just one of the garden areas that locals like to come to to relax, exercise and do some ballroom dancing.
The story goes that an emperor was boating on the lake and a magic turtle gave him a sword with which he was able to defeat his enemies. Some time later on another boat trip the turtle returned and snatched back the sword... where it waits at the bottom of the lake.

We also went to see water puppet theatre. This was awesome! I didn't really know what to expect, but the puppets are controlled via underwater rods and levers, with the puppeteers hiding in the water behind a screen. You could only really see the rods if you looked closely, and only because we were sitting above the water a bit. But the arms and heads move around with no visible strings or controllers. It was great. All the scenes also related to water type activities, like rice planting, buffalo swimming, fishing and dragons. The fire breathing / water shooting dragons with segmented bodies that moved through the water were amazing. But I failed to take any photos, partly because I was busy watching and party because the person two rows ahead of us who kept lifting her camera up high to take photos was incredibly annoying - and I didn't want to be that guy!

With our Hanoi Kids guides

I also heard about an organisation called Hanoi Kids. They offer free tours of the city by university students who are wanting to practice their English by regularly talking to native English speakers. The deal is that we as tourists pay for the transport costs and any entry fees. And in return we get a tour, explanations of places that often don't have many English signs and the chance to chat with locals about their lives and experiences (which we all enjoyed so much we ended up spending over an hour drinking one cup of coffee!).



With them we visited the Hanoi Hilton (aka prison originally built by the french to contain and torture Vietnamese revolutionaries, later used to contain captured US pilots). This is a bit of a surreal place with a heavy influence on the mistreatment of Vietnamese by the French and a couple of rooms devoted to showing how well they looked after the American prisoners. I assume that the actual treatment was probably somewhere in between what America says and what Vietnam says.... that's usually the way.

with a statue representative the height of Vietnamese people
at whatever point in time that was (I forgot)

We also visited the temple of literature. It was quite interesting to hear the history of this temple, and the modern uses from the point of view of uni students (who regularly come to pray for luck before exams)

We attempted to visit Ho Chi Minh's tomb.... but neither our hotel reception (when we asked if our clothes were conservative enough), nor the guides actually mentioned that on Friday afternoons it is closed. So we walked around the outside a bit.

The view from our bungalow

Mai Chau was stunning! It took four hours in a van to get there, but definitely worth it! I was a little worried that it would be a bit of a tinsly tourist town (like my experience of visiting that "traditional village" near Buon Ma Thout). It was actually really empty and relaxing, we were even there on a weekend (apparently a lot of locals visit on weekends) but even then it wasn't too busy. The air was clean and the lack of traffic was welcome after a few days in Hanoi! Bike riding and hanging out in the rice fields was fun.
Climbing up to the 1000 steps caves was less fun and more hot, especially as I am told it is in fact 1200 steps! But the satisfaction of beating the steps was worth it... I guess. We also found a mysterious path at the back of the cave which was obviously designed to be explored - it had hand rails.... but then the guide yelled at us to come back and appear to be quite agitated. Maybe there were ghosts back there. I find lots of times that people here do thing I can't explain it all comes down to ghost actions.

Yey, bikes!

 
 Staying in Mai Chau also means you get obligatory after dinner entertainment in the form of "traditional dances".

This is a kind of awkward affair, the first dance featured eight people standing in a line holding hands, then swinging their arms back and forth. A bit like a grade 1 Christmas show dance. But with adults. After this first dance the men dancers all sat down and enjoyed the bucket bong in the corner while the ladies danced. As the grand finale everyone returned for a bamboo dance. Hard to explain without seeing it yourself. but two people hold two pieces of bamboo on the ground and hit them down twice, then smash them together. Meanwhile dancers jump in and put pf the bamboo, avoid getting their ankles smashed. Everyone was brought up to join in the dance. Which got more and more hilarious as we discovered how bad at timing the group of Vietnamese girls on the tour were..... especially when they wanted to hold the bamboo and do that bit! a couple of people got bruised ankles in that portion of the dancing!

Halong bay

Next stop, Halong bay!
Boating around, drinking expensive cocktails (I have been in Vietnam too long and every seems expensive now. These were $4-6 cocktails.... I will not cope with Australia prices) and relaxing on the beach. Pretty awesome!

Halong bay is made up of limestone cliff islands. The landscape is pretty stunning and once you get out and away from the ridiculous amounts of diesel smoke it is amazing. As a bonus, because it is limestone cliffs it has lots of caves, like this one. I have found that Vietnam in general has a bit of an obsession with caves, and they have many caves. This one featured bonus lights-of-every-colour and rocks that looked vaguely like stuff if you squinted really hard and pretended!

Fishing boats in a sheltered bay

We also kayaked around some of the cliffs and through caves.

Swimming wasn't totally the nicest, because even moored in the "clean water swimming spot" there were patches of oil in the water. I really hope that boat owners (at least the tourist boats) see that people are not into the smokey polluting boats and they need to do some vaguely regular maintenance to actually keep the bay nice!

But swimming did involve water entry from the very top of the boat. So I was into the jumping-off-the-sun-deck thing :)

I had heard from various people that Halong Bay was disappointing, or dirty and polluted. I found it beautiful! Yes, there was pollution from all the boats, but some places seem to be striving to reduce that. Our hotel on Monkey island was collecting all the flotsam that came near the beach and burning it. I am sure it's probably as much about keeping their private beach nice as it i about reducing pollution. But they didn't wait for the tide to wash stuff away.

Hopefully everyone (tourists and locals alike) will try to keep it nice. but we had a great time!

That's pretty much our first week wrapped up. Will add more about the second week later!

sunset drinks on the balcony. life is good

Last projects

One of my last projects for the red cross orphanage, building security gates.

Kids playing in the gated room

To put this into context I need to explain a bit about the orphanage system. So the red cross has 24 kids. 4 of these kids have cerebral palsy and are unable to sit up, or participate in self care activities like feeding themselves.
4 of the other kids also have disabilities, but are mobile and able to get around the orphanage. This means that they can get into all sorts of mischief!
3 of the other kids are around 3 or 4, so they are also quite mischievous and really want to have lots of attention, plus all the older mobile kids can easily steal toys or treats from the younger kids.
The rest of the kids are under 1. Only two of the kids are toilet trained, so the rest need to wear nappies. To look after all these kids are 3 to 4 carers. They work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with 3 or 4 days off a month.

Slightly more controlled madness 

Because they are so overworked, and a lot of the kids are able to climb out of the cots, they tie the kids into the cots with a rope made of handkerchiefs tied together. When we arrive in the morning at around 8am we untie the kids and because we have the extra supervision can let them run around and play. I believe they get re tied up at lunch time when we leave.

When asked why they have to be tied in I am told it is to stop kids getting into the bathroom and burning themselves with the hot water, or getting into the kitchen and hurting themselves. I am sure a big part is also around them making messes in the storage areas that the carers really don't have time to clean up. Some of their reasoning about safety doesn't really make much sense though, frequently the carers don't shut the door to the bathroom which would work just as well to prevent burns, or shut the gate out onto the road!

I negotiated with the carers around trying to stop the tying up of kids. As well as stopping them from being allowed or able to play with each other, or socialize, it also is often tied very tightly and looks painful, and can cause rashes and skin infections. So I decided to pay to get gates put on the main room and so as long as the carers shut the gate, and shut the bathroom doors than the kids should be safe and able to be free!
The gates are a lot higher than normal baby safety gates, but these kids are really good climbers!!


So the first day that we arrived once the gates were completed the kids had all been taken out of cots when they woke up (which I'm guessing is pretty early) and were playing and running around freely!

Talking to the carers they said they really like the gates, and it is a lot easier as they can now move freely between the kitchen and store rooms without having to watch the kids as much.
Definitely a success!!