After two years of planning this trip, I finally had a chance to show the place where I grew up to my husband. It is located in the North of Vietnam, I often describe it as a small and rural village 100km away from Hanoi. In my opinion, it is easier for people to visualise a village with distance instead of saying my village's name.
We flew back home on Christmas Eve, what a day to travel, not many stores open but certainly less people. Anyway, we arrived around lunch time on Christmas day. As my family don't celebrate Christmas and we were tired from the flights, we took our time to just rest and had a cosy dinner with my family.
Rural villages in Vietnam often don't have any hotels, restaurants, or entertainment services around. It made me feel bad that I couldn't take my partner out for coffee, as he loves coffee and was so excited to try it here. So the only fun thing I could do for my husband was take him to go for a walk around the village, to show him the rice padding where I used to work, the river I used to swim, the roads that I used to walk everyday to go to schools.
A calm and peaceful morning in my village- photo taken from my house's rooftop just before I left Vietnam to go to NZ
In the images below, you can see that my village consists of a main street, and some side streets that lead to the land lots. In those lots there are orchards, gardens and ponds. In my childhood, there used to be lots of space between houses, but now, everything is right next to each other. It is so hard to see empty lands next to the main streets.
One of the main gate to enter my village
my village from above - taken from my parents' house rooftop
This house belongs to my neighbour. Very often in rural villages in Vietnam you will see this special style for a gate. It is similar to the ones in temples or pagodas. But the only difference is it is actually a house where people live in it. I believe every family brand in the village will have a house like this where the first son of each generation lives and looks after the altar where we worship our ancestors. Just one thing if you ask me the meaning of the words on the gate, I don't know as it is written in old Vietnamese characters.
This is our land - it used to be rice padding but it is now converted to an orchard where we can grow fruits and vegetables or instead. For me it is quite sad as the rice padding is deeply connected to my childhood so to see the change isn't a pleasant feeling. But I do understand farmers need to grow things that can be beneficial.
In my village, the day starts very early. At half past four, more or less, the chickens begin to sing and at 5 in the morning loudspeakers are activated with instructions to do exercises. When I used to live in the village, I didn't suffer much from the loudspeaker noise or the songs that chickens sing. However, this time, I also couldn't bear it as it was so loud and I couldn't enjoy a good night sleep.
I asked my husband what he thinks about my village and what he likes the most and he said one interesting thing he saw is that the doors of the house are open most of the day. Relatives and neighbours come to visit at any time, usually in the afternoon for a tiny cup of green tea. Sometimes children appear playing in the dining room.
I am so glad to finally show my husband the part of life that I miss a lot when we live overseas. It was kind of short as we only had one month to stay with my family and we also did some travelling which I will share with you in the next posts.
Thank you for stopping by and have a lovely rest of your week.
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