Renovations aren’t very interesting so I won’t bore you with the details about them. Instead I’ll tell you about what we have been up to over the past two weekends.
So, two weekends ago we went to visit some German friends who live and work in the next province over, Bac Lieu. Bac Lieu is smaller than Soc Trang and attracts about the same number of Western tourists, i.e. next to none. So a group of Westerners walking around town is quite a spectacle. Even more spectacular is when the group of Westerners pile into a 1969 American jeep which is then driven off by a woman! The jeep is a relic from the Vietnam War (or the American War, as they call it here) and it was the only car available to buy for one of the Germans who is working on a GTZ project on the coast of Bac Lieu. Being driven around the countryside in the jeep is a pretty unique experience!
There are basically only two things to do in Bac Lieu. One is to go to the Kitty Café (which has an incredibly loud nightclub downstairs – I spent about 10minutes in there once, I was deaf when we left) and order a tom yum noodle soup and a tuna sandwich. The other is to go out to the government-owned restaurant on a wharf over the ocean. We did both of these, just like we did last time we went to Bac Lieu. We did vary our routine a little this time though, and drove out to the coast to visit a Khmer temple. The temple was incredible; the interior walls of the main temple were covered in Indian-style paintings. It looked as though the paintings were representations of the life of Buddha, though I can’t be 100% sure about this – I’m no expert in painting interpretation and Buddhism!
We drove back to Bac Lieu along the coast and saw all the prawn farms that have been set up there. A lot of farmers have converted their rice paddies into prawn farms, this has caused a lot of environmental and social damage, with salt water intruding into the soil (meaning rice and other crops can’t grow), mangroves being cut down to make way for prawn ponds and farmers lacking the knowledge and expertise to farm prawns.
We left Bac Lieu for Soc Trang at about midday on Sunday and got caught in a massive storm enroute. We ended up spending about 2 hours sitting in a roadside café waiting for the storm to pass. It was a huge storm. There was almost continuous thunder and lightning, the rain was absolutely bucketing down and the wind was blowing the rain almost vertically into the café. The plastic chairs and tables in the café were being tossed around by the wind as though they were merely pieces of paper. It was very impressive and a little bit scary. What was even scarier than the storm though, was that people were still out on the roads driving their motorbikes. I can’t imagine how many accidents must occur during stormy conditions.
Since that weekend there have been storms and/or rain every afternoon. I’d say the wet season has definitely started. Sitting out on our front porch and watching the rain (as well as all the people caught out in the rain – ha!) has become a regular pastime for Dan and me. We have our folding chairs, now we just need a pitchfork and a shotgun. We have the fist-waving down pat.
And so onto last weekend. Dan, Boris and I were invited to attend the World Environment and World Ocean Day celebrations in Vinh Chau (about an hour drive away from Soc Trang). The celebrations started at 6.30am, which meant we had to leave Soc Trang at 5.30am. I’m definitely not used to the Vietnamese custom of getting up early and starting work early!
The celebrations consisted of a series of songs and speeches, all in Vietnamese. So we had no idea what was being said. The only bit I did understand was when Dan and I got mentioned as special guests. We had to sit right up the front with all the important officials. There were also a few cameras around so it is possible that Dan and I ended up on Vietnamese news. (Hopefully we didn’t look too tired.) The official part of the ceremony was followed by tree planting in the streets of Vinh Chau then breakfast at a local restaurant.
We got to the breakfast at about 7.30am. It was like no breakfast I have ever been to before. We were served fish, and beer, and clams, and beer, and more fish, and beer, and crabs, and beer, and prawns, and beer, and more fish, and beer, and beer, and beer. I managed to avoid the beer (unlike Dan and Boris, who had to drink with everyone there) and joined in the drinking rounds with a can of sarsaparilla (ewww – still better than drinking beer at 7.30am though) until one of the men decided that I had to drink something that at least looked like beer. My sarsaparilla got taken away and I had to drink a yellow energy drink, diluted with water to make it look beer-coloured. It was one of the strangest and opulent breakfasts I have ever been to. Who would have thought that I would one day celebrate World Environment and World Ocean Day by eating every edible creature from the sea.
One of Dan’s favourite sayings these days is “Every week is different in Soc Trang”, (he’s become a bit of a philosopher, I think it’s all that time spent sitting out on the porch, staring at the clouds. Except for when he’s shaking his fist at passing kids that is…). Although it pains me to admit it, he is right. So far this week has brought a power cut (again – for a while there it was every second day, then it improved to sporadic power cuts, now it seems to be every second day again) and the discovery that one of the workers at the bakery can speak English – so he can tell me what the cake fillings are, meaning I can avoid the durian flavoured ones. (Durian, ewww. The smell alone is awful and it’s so upsetting to eat something which turns out to have durian lurking inside of it.) Stay tuned and I’ll let you know what other exciting events occur in Soc Trang this week…
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