I’m continuing my travels through Vietnam and thought you’d be interested in this extract from my diary yesterday. “After an ecclectic breakfast of western and Asian food, we checked out of our hotel for a drive through Van Long Reserve – one single track road flanked by paddy fields and with the misty karst mountains rising in the distant. We drove through a province where the nutrient rich soil yields sugar cane. Street side markets sell the purple hued sticks as delicacies. Locals are out hand-sowing the rice plants, knee deep in muddy water. The continuous bending over means many old women are hunched over in their twilight years. It is wedding season and there are large restaurants with their entrances draped with voile and adorned with brightly coloured flowers ready for 3-day long celebrations. We climb higher into the mountains past the Moung tribal area. Living in traditional stilted houses the community are famed for sustainable farming and there are stalls selling rice packed into tubes of bamboo that they steam on open fires. We reach the peak of the mountain road enveloped in cloud then begin our decent to the Mai Chau Valley where we walk around the Thai tribe village and eat at a family home with a selection of dishes served on a bamboo platter lined with a banana leaf. A five minute drive leads us up to our home for two nights – Mai Chau Ecolodge where we borrow basic pedal bikes and bike around the local area avoiding chickens, ducks, goats and dogs roaming free. Life is simple and industrious. Watching the locals hard at work on their plots of land gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “I’ve got so much work to do!” and I vow never to complain of this again! Gaining a wider perspective and understanding of other’s lives can be a humbling, fascinating and enriching experience.” This reminds me of an archive Lunch n Learn reminding you that “the map is not the territory” – read it here. Remain curious and check in with yourself on what learning you’ve gained this week to enrich your life. |
