Wednesday 6th March

Wednesday 6^th March

Glorious beautiful weather out there…how nice it would be, on 2XS, and how hard it is to tell how lovely it is, when I am in a hearing room with no windows for many hours of the day…

And that, as they say, is why they call it “work” and not “play”…

There were dozens, no hundreds, maybe even thousands of photos taken at Nic and Alisha’s wedding.  Such a photogenic couple, all healthy and radiant.  There are also many photos of me with my exuberant son – in many of them he has his large hand covering all of my face, or is pretending to strangle me – he was indeed very happy to see me…

Early on I noticed a nice-looking couple standing behind us during the ceremony.  They looked as if they would like a photo taken of them together, all glammed up, so I offered to take one and we got chatting.  Mal laughed and said they have lots of trouble with their camera because Kate has issues with the video function – she can’t tell ON from OFF.  Recently he was paddling on the King River in Victoria, and had the best ride of his life.  He exhibited rare skill and grace, he told us, and executed some brilliant paddling moves, all the while smiling at his beloved wife, who was faithfully filming.  And what did she film?  Mal getting into the boat…and then Mal getting out of the boat…she had very cleverly missed all of the glory of his white-water ride…

Cat Ba Day

We had bowls of pho again for breakfast, in a rickety little café near Vinh’s business.  We weren’t leaving till much later in the day, so Pete and I went back to Cat Ba to try to go to the beach.  My motorbike boy didn’t speak much English, but he said he loved Australia.  “Why?”  I asked - he lives in one of the most beautiful places in the world, after all.  “You have money,” he said, simply.  Well yes…

It is a lovely walk to the public beaches in Cat Ba, a few kilometres, all very interesting and beautiful.  And hot.  We got part of the way and it started to rain.  Just a bit.  Then a lot!  Pete and I were totally drenched, head to toe, couldn’t see where we were going - time to give up!  It wasn’t in the least bit cold, but there is something very unpleasant about being soaking wet in flappy cotton skirts, T-shirts, shorts…

Vinh had invited us to lunch, in his beautiful house in the hills.  He lives there with his wife, Tui, and their little girl, Mee, who is three, and assorted other helpers and family members.  The house is three hundred years old, made of heavy thick dark wood, just one long room, and then a separate big kitchen and bathroom.  It was originally somewhere on the outskirts of Hanoi, but Vinh, who is very enterprising, moved it on a truck and a barge and re-built it in a feng shui-ish desirable location, between two hills, in a lush jungle setting, overlooking a valley and a bay.  The garden was all very productive, full of herbs, vegetables, marijuana, chooks, pregnant dogs… Tui, who was about seven months pregnant, was sitting gracefully on a thin mat on the floor, serving up the food - coconut and ribs, taro, baby squid, vine leaf-ish thingies, sprouts, all very delicious, but impossible for me to eat sitting gracefully on the floor with the others.  I had to go and find an oldperson’s chair.  We were given local moonshine to drink.  It was called RUOU, and the Australian boys we met later on the junk told us this was a very appropriate name for it, because that is the sound you invariably make, one way or the other, after drinking not all that much.  RUOU!

There were lots of people, mostly not English-speaking, so I sat back on my chair and watched, with growing bewilderment, a Vietnamese soapie on the large TV.  I called Rina’s attention to it - lots of psychodrama, as befits a daytime soap, but why was the main hero, an immaculately-coiffed man in his late forties, wearing neatly ironed blue cotton pyjamas with white piping, all day?  And then a stethoscope, indicating that he must have been a doctor?  In his PJs??

I was also very amused to watch Tui patiently feeding Mee.  I think we have the idea that our Australian children, overindulged little bratlets, don’t appreciate their food.  They are fussy picky eaters, don’t like their veggies, whinge and whine and make our lives a misery at mealtimes, as opposed to Noble Grateful Children in Third World countries, who love and appreciate every mouthful.  Mee was the first little one I had the opportunity to observe at close quarters, and she was a shocker when it came to eating.  Tui kept putting spoons of rice into her mouth, and Mee would carefully move the food into her cheeks, like a chipmunk.  It took more than an hour to get just a tiny bit of food into her, and when we left she still had most of it hiding in her cheeks.