el dorado

Yesterday, we went to the food equivalent of El Dorado. For Minh's mom's birthday, his family took us to this giant, buffet restaurant. There was too much food to even recall. I usually avoid buffets because I will eat myself sick, but this was on a whole other level. There was sushii, Singapore chicken, spring rolls, so many fresh and cooked vegetables, various noodle dishes, and an entire table of desserts. The coolest dessert I ate was called cloud soup. It was basil seeds with birds nest. The birds' nest is apparently made from the birds' spit and can be boiled down and eaten. It tasted like honey.

After lunch, we needed to walk for a bit because we were all so full, so we walked around West Lake enjoying the cooler weather and the beautiful scenery. There were lotus fields on either side of the road as we walked. It's the end of the growth season, so the leaves were all brown and ready to be cut, but I can only imagine how beautiful they must have been all in bloom.

There is always fishing to be done no matter what lake it is, but this is West Lake.

In the absence of the State Fair, we went to get fried bananas in the Old Quarter. There was so much oil that it dripped down to our elbows and all over our faces. They were so delicious.

After the bananas, we got a couple bottles of wine and took them to the edge of the lake to sit and talk. It was such a wonderful evening filled with great people, great conversations, and some cool weather. There are so many lamp lights in all the trees and lights all around the edge of the lake. It was so pretty!

Today, I got up at the ungodly hour of 5:00 am. Maeve and I went with Ngan's parents to Kim Son, her father's hometown. It is a two-hour drive away from Hanoi. It was such a good day. Kim Son is much more rural than Hanoi, so it was quiet and the air was clean and there were large, open fields of rice. We went to visit the temple that Ngan's grandparents are keepers of. It was a lovely building surrounded with all kinds of fruit trees and bushes. Her grandfather led us in prayer with a bell and chants. It was beautiful. Then they fed us a whole ton of fruit. There were literally rice fields forever surrounding the temple.

We went to see the old stone church in Kim Son. It's Sunday, so there was a mass going on. We tried not to be disruptive but got a few pictures none-the-less.

We stopped at one the house of one of Ngan's family members on the way back from the church. Every house that we went to had a reception area where we were welcomed into the house and given water or tea. It made me feel so comfortable to begin every new meeting with sitting down together over tea. At this particular house, many of Ngan's cousins were running around outside. They were fascinated by Maeve's camera and began posing every few seconds. Immediately after each picture was taken, they would run over to the camera to see the final product. They were so adorable!

Ngan;s family made us the most delicious lunch, which we ate while sitting on the floor. Everyone was in the same room, but the men sat in one circle on one side of the room and the women sat on the other side. The two circles were bridged by Ngan's grandmother. They gave us some alcohol to try, but it was so strong that I could only manage what I would say was a "wuss sip." That was some serious moonshine. For lunch, there was fish stuffed with what seemed to be liver, a vegetable soup, shrimp, greens with liver, and boiled chicken. To top it all off, there was watermelon and satsumas!

The afternoon was finished off with a delightful nap. We then drove back to Hanoi with more fruit and food than I would have thought possible. Come to think of it, this was a lot like a DeHart get-together: people just kept showing up; there was more food than we could eat; every time we slowed down, someone put more food in front of us; we left bags of food. Yep. Exactly like a DeHart get-together.