Arriving into Asia from a shiny, organised Western country which is paranoid about the spreading of disease can cause a bit of a culture shock for the average backpacker. The stenches of raw sewerage; the habitual spitting of phlegm; the fly-ridden “butcher” stalls laid out across the dirt streets. It can almost be too much to bare. But despite the initial feelings of skin crawling disgust, it can be surprising how quickly we become desensitized to our new surroundings. Here are ten tell-tale signs you will notice on your leap from novice backpacker to practically a local in Asia.

1. Given the choice between a drop toilet and the western-style equivalent, it’s a deep squat every time! You’ve gotten over the nose burning, eye watering smells that accompany that shallow hole in the floor maskerading as a W/C, and the fact that your more than likely going to be stairing at a bucket of someone else’s shitty tissues while you do your business. Instead you find comfort in the fact that you know what your getting. There’s no nasty’s hiding under a toilet seat and no dirty toilet water waiting to squirt out at you from an oddly plumbed ‘wanabe’ western device. It’s simple and effective! In fact you’re thinking “maybe I should get one of these installed when I eventually go home… if I ever go home?”

2. Curry for breakfast no longer seems like a crime. There’s no more raised eyebrows or nudges to friends as you pass by locals using their hand to shovel what should be a Saturday night takeaway into their mouths at 6 o’clock in the morning. Instead you’re now one of the first in the local Warung to be tucking into that mornings spicy delights and you cant get enough of it!!

3. Cold showers, stained bed sheets, dirty cutlery and electricity for only 6 out of the 24 hours in a day are now expected as standard.  You’ve stopped asking for things to be fixed or changed and realised there’s no need to be such a princess about it. You braved it and lived to tell the tale.

4. You’ve stopped walking past those grubby looking local haunts and into the aesthetically pleasing western style bars that remind you of home. You’ve even stopped religiously dousing your hands in anti-bac before every feed. You’ve accepted the fact that your 700 times more likely to get the shits over here no matter where you eat, so you might as well pay a fraction of the price for that lovely little extra.

 5. Gone are the days of eating with knives and forks. Instead you are happy to ‘do as the locals do’ and tuck straight into your Dal Bhat or Tahli with your right hand. Your fingers drip with a concoction of lentil soup, potato curry and rice and it no longer feels like a novelty. Your back to basics and it’s like you never eaten any other way.

6. Materialistic items and vanity seem ever less important. Straighteners and hairdryers lie untouched at the bottom of your backpack. In fact you’re not even sure when it was that you last saw your reflection in a mirror. Your hairs unkempt, your feet are always dirty and you barely ever wash your clothes, but you couldn’t care less. You’re just comfortable being you.

7. You no longer sit toes curled and knuckles white as your bemo driver weaves in and out of oncoming traffic, around blind cliff-edge corners on the wrong side of the road. Instead, you sit back and enjoy the views, safe in the knowledge that if the overcrowded, seatbelt-less tin can you are riding does crash or plummet down a hill side, you’ve not got a chance in hell, but at least you’ve had a good time.

 8. You finally understand why people visiting England from Aisa get such a bad reputation for their crazy road crossing tactics! Pavements rarely exist but where they do, you quickly learn you’re much less likely going to injure yourself walking alongside the unruly traffic than you are constantly dodging the holes, boulders and wires which bed the pavement floors. You also quickly learn that the only way to cross that road in front of you is to take a deep breath and step out into the stream of oncoming verhicles and hope for the very best.

9. You no longer reach for your camera at the sight of a chewing cow sprawled on a dusty track surrounded by honking mopeds and tuktuks in the middle of a city. Its just your average Holy Cow in a street. No biggie.

10. You have finally learnt to sleep through the deafening sound of 1000 cockerels, 4am prayer calls and the chorus of howls from the entity of the worlds stray dogs… all of which seem to take place every morning, in sync, right outside your bedroom door