Vacation in Vietnam-A Homestay

After debarking from our Indochina cruise ship we drove 6 hours to arrive at our next Vietnam destination, Bon Lac, estimate of 250 miles. We had to navigate through Hanoi and it's atrocious traffic and head southeast of the capital city for our scheduled homestay. A Vietnamese homestay is like an American Bed and Breakfast. We paid $125 to stay 2 days/1 night in a stilt village home. I love this kind of thing, getting the opportunity to stay with the local people and experience life through their eyes. The entire village is compromised of homes that are built on stilts and has about 1000 people. We were so glad to finally be there safely, thankfully we all had books, games and Ipods to keep us occupied along with our informative guide providing interesting tidbits of knowledge about Vietnam.

We passed many, many miles of farmland being tended by hand, water buffalo and plow, no modern farm equipment seen anywhere. Our guide, Woang, told us that each person in Northern Vietnam is given 120 sq. meters of land, thus it's an asset to have many children. Mark calculated for me that is about 3% of an acre of land. Being such a small plot of land it is easier to tend to by hand. The plots of land are well cared for and beautiful. We saw lots of plots of corn, rice and vegetables-cabbage, onions, tomatoes,turnips, potatoes, peanuts...In the north the farmer is able to plant and harvest 3 crops/year. Many plots of land have graves with markers on them. Woang told us that family members are buried on personal land in the countryside, after 3 years the bones of their loved ones are excavated and cleaned with alcohol by family members and then left to rest for eternity. He said it is a final act of love to care for their bones and tend to their markers.

We also stopped a couple of times along the trip. One stop was at a roadside coffee shop allowing us to taste the famous 'red' coffee. Woang tells us that Vietnam is 2nd in coffee exports only to Brazil (?) and that we must taste the famous 'red' coffee. It is coffee made from the bean that has been eaten by tree rats and then passed through the rat's digestive system. It was very tasty especially after they mixed it with sweetened condensed milk. At the coffee house, two men were playing ping-pong. Mark asked to take on the winner and was promptly taken to ping-pong school!! These guys could spin a ping-pong ball like I've never seen. We all had a good laugh together even though we couldn't communicate otherwise. At the coffee house there were also bottles of rice wine with intact cobras and scorpions for sale. Apparently, it is very expensive to purchase these bottles but very important to the Vietnamese people for medicinal purposes. The one with scorpions is used for back ailments.

He also filled us in on all the dog eating rules. Apparently, we just missed the 'lucky' days to eat dog, needless to say, we weren't disappointed. If you eat dog the first ten days of a month-"that very unlucky!". He said you wouldn't even find a market vendor selling dog during those first ten days. He also warned us never to eat "bicycle chicken" but rather "walking chicken". When we later passed a bicycle with many cages of chicken headed to market he pointed out that was "bicycle chicken". We never could get him to explain to us how you would know the difference at the market. He eats enjoys all kinds of blood-cobra blood, turtle blood, dog blood-"very, very good!" We decided to take him at his word on this!

At the homestay we were greeted by a mother, father, grown son and wife and grown daughter that run the hotel out of their home. Their people group have roots from Thailand and we were able to communicate some with our limited Thai skills, that helped us bond some with the family. They prepared one large room for our family with sheets as room dividers, we each had a mat, warm cover and pillow. Our meals were so delicious at their table and such generous portions. I couldn't wait to try to join them in their open fire kitchen the next day and they were kind to oblige. I spent time squatting with the ladies cutting vegis for our lunch and then they allowed me to squat with them in the kitchen around the fire rolling spring rolls. I rolled at least 50 spring rolls, there was a lot of talking and laughing, probably at my expense, (I'm sure they had never had such a strange guest that wanted to cut up vegis and cook with them before!!) but I really enjoyed my time among the women and men that were cooking and I'm quite confident in my spring rolling ability now! I'm sad that I didn't get any pictures of their kitchen, Mark and the boys were out exploring the village with the camera as I was cooking.

We took a couple of walks around the village and countryside, at one home a young man was working at his loom making silk scarves and even uses a spinning wheel still. His home is on stilts, under one room is his work area and under the other room is his water buffalo stables-can you imagine sleeping or cooking over the water buffalo and all of his smells? I enjoyed our time in the village very much. We flew out of Hanoi on Monday to DaNang and Hoian, Vietnam. I have had much time to catch up on the blog and post slideshows because it has rained hard all day today. We had planned to go fishing in a round boat today but that was cancelled and spend the afternoon at the beach. We have spent most of the day reading, watching movies, and catching up on internet stuff. We fly out tomorrow for the last leg of our vacation in Saigon in south Vietnam.