A TRIP TO THE COUNTRYSIDE

         Having got off a coach, I decided to sit on the pavement for a while before walking home. It was about 4:30 a.m. There was not much traffic on village roads. I felt sort of safer in black clothes though I was alone. Perhaps the tranquility and fresh air here comforted me a lot. I took a careful and quick look around and was surprised that the whole small town looked no difference in its shape except for changes in residents' houses, a bit more modern, but diverse in size and architecture design. The darkness didn't want any sunlight to change its place, so pale brightness from streetlights were not strong enough for local people to travel on streets. Bikers sometimes broke the quietness with juicy gossips and lights attached on their bikes were always on.

"Set yourself free. Walk and enjoy what is called the purest and most peaceful ever."

        Totally covered with a thick layer of gray tar, the road pushed my feet forward in a high speed. The sky was spotted with faint stars and they were disappearing. There seemed to be no certain border of colors even though it leads our view to the horizon line. A typical landscape in the central south plain surrounded by ranges of mountains extending endlessly, blanked with brown and fair color of straw roots as another harvest has already finished. The sun began to come up in hope that it would be a shining day. Harvested rice were ready to be spread out on all concrete and asphalt roads. Concrete roads are considered to be much more adsorbent and better in drying rice by using the heat of the sun. Sunshine in the past became a crucial part of traditional rice storage which was cheap and convenient for local farmers to lower their productivity costs.

A concrete road in a town in Binh Dinh Province

            All could be seen were rice paddies with straw roots, wild grass and water. In a bird's eye view, they looked like a large carpet, weaved from strips in different shades of green and yellow. Sometimes a herd of water buffaloes grazing new fresh straw at dusk colored the carpet with some black as a sign of living things. 

Harvested rice fields by dawn

            Children here never let field be lonely. As soon as a nearby paddy has done its main job, it will be used for another recreational purpose- a playground where children play a lot of folk games in. Nowadays, football becomes more popular than others. Rice harvest season is known as the busiest but also most enjoyable. The elder didn't want to stay in and were eager to head out in the fields so that they could pick up grains dropped or stuck in rice stalks. Many a little makes a mickle. My grandma could collect a big sack of rice by herself.

            Twenty minutes flew by. I was at home then. I took my first steps through the gate and was in surprise that the house was surrounded by brick wall hedges or metal fences. My house was not a case. Our neighbors did the same thing which could be a trend at that moment. Brick wall hedges and metal fences are probably working well in solving problems of estate disputes, but also beautify the village. Those days, rice weren't still dried, so most of roads were busy and crowded. My mom had enough time for pick-up-me breakfast and she bought a wrap of  hot sticky rice. The ingredients and the flavor were exactly like those in the past but a plastic bag. Banana leaves used to be our first and only choice many years ago, but now it's another story.

            Being tired after a long day on a coach, I lay down on bed and took a nap then. As a dusk fell, we began to collect and put all sun - dried rice into plastic sacks before delivering them home for storage. This stage is as hard as others. Normally, each household gets a large amount of rice to be dried on roads, spreading for a long road. As a result, it takes us at least two hours to finish and it also depends on number of labor. These days, flying kites are still one of rural children's favorite hobbies, but kites have been evolved into a variety of sizes, shapes and materials. Most importantly, children themselves no longer try to learn how to make a kite from recycled materials. Over the past ten years, my friendly neighbors and I often came together to the fields and watched others fly their old paper kites and ride buffalos in the fields. We did a great job to make big kites, but never succeeded in rising them up to the sky despite doing our best many times. Anyway, it's put into a little corner of my mind as something funny to retell about. 

The sky at dusk

          When the darkness came, the moon went up high as an only huge flashlight hung in the sky. Today was a clear day, so we decided to sit down on the front yard and played a counting game. It was no doubt that children here were quite good at counting stars. The dark didn't stop us from trying another game: hide-and-seek. It was fun, but dangerous too because sort of things like snakes can drive someone into danger.

           A few days before I moved back to Ho Chi Minh City for work, I heard from my neighbors that local authorities are planning to convert a half of the field into residential area. The countryside will be urbanized soon, resulting in what we might  guess - the vanishing of customs, habits, rituals and beliefs related to wet rice cultivation.

FIRST RIDING LESSONS

        

        

What was it like to ride a motorbike for the first time ? 

  - Terrible, embarrassed and worthy are three adjectives that can describe my feelings.-

 Unlike my peers, I did hesitate about learning how to control a motorcycle. Not until I was a junior university students, did I make up mind. In my respective, street bikes are more likely to get into an accident, but the matter of fact is that in Vietnam, if you are on a low budget, they are considered as the best vehicles which can take you to every corner of such a bustle and hustle city. My first teachers were members of my family. They tried to show me some simplest ways to memorize some major parts of a Yamaha Serius and necessary steps to control it.

"Oh, Gosh! My world is shaking and I am about to fall down." said me. 

In fact, I didn't hold my handlebars tight and direct them on the right track.

" Remember that someone is sitting right behind you and your concentration mustn't be lack. However safe they are depends on you." said my father. 

 At once, conflicting thoughts popped into my mind: should I give up or carry on?

Whether or not, I had to handle stress and fears when I got on it. My first practice was still under control of my father. In general, it happened in a safe way. 

           I did another try after my third summer vacation ended, which means I returned to Ho Chi Minh city. Those days, I made a big decision to move to a new dorm. To save up my money for other more important purposes, I borrowed a motorbike from my roommate and managed to carry all my personal belongings to the dorm. To be honest, it became completely a disaster because I didn't get used to it yet. Some main components were placed differently and I needed some time to remember all of them.

After a short while, I decided to start the engine and ride it. Normally, moving on flat roads seemed to be a lot easier. Eventually, I reached the dorm and figured out that I had never ridden a bike over any step😕. All of a sudden, a younger boy showed up and he gave me a new idea of managing this situation. Why didn’t I do the same way he has already finished ?  I ended up holding the handlebars while the engine was still on and tried to take my underbone with me. I slipped my mind that I didn’t get any experience of doing that before. It came to a deeply embarrassing moment that I was unconsciously dragged by the bike. My hands were holding handlebars and I was running along with it at the same time. “ What’s on earth going on? Stop!” I freaked out and dropped my handlebars in time. I fell down right afterwards. “ Thanks my goodness.”  My so - called horse didn’t fell on me and just some scratches above my knees and elbows. I was given a big laugh from lookers-on. How hilarious! Nowhere I could hide myself at that moment. 😄

             Anyway, I learned a lot from the failure. An worrying issue was that a mirror was broken and wave alpha was not mine. I came back to my rented room and apologized for my crazy mistake. She did say nothing and took me to a small motor care shop for replacing a new one, but no mirror could fit. Then, she told me that learning from falling was learning to ride. She used to fall down on the ground for the first rides. That was reason why she let me go alone with my stuff.

Street bikes such as underbones and scooters are popular in Vietnam.

         My third lesson of riding a bike was when I went on a trip with my elder sister in a highland city. This time, my confidence and courage was built up, so I asked her for controlling her Yamaha Serius and she sat right behind to instruct me in urgent cases. The roads in the mountains are absolutely different from those in cities. The roads snake their ways through mountains and are uneven, which requires riders a great deal of concentration of adjusting their gears and gas as well as controlling handlebars and brakes. I undoubtedly failed to achieve these goals. In a great attempt to reach an uphill slope, we were almost unable to go up and ran down instead. "Shift your motorbike to first gear and you can go up to the top." We followed that instruction from a passerby and we did it! " We nearly died because of you! How terrible!" said my sister.😓 Since then, my family hasn't allowed me to ride a motorbike on hill roads. 

MEALS IN THE FLOOD SEASON

What are the simplest meals you've ever tried? 

      

       During the Covid19 outbreak, many of us might cut our money to the bones and cut up our grocery budget, which brings me back to one of the toughest times in old-time flood seasons in the 2000s.
      
       Unlike those occurs in the Southwest region, floods in the middle appear to be sudden and severe. Tropical storms entered continuously and brought torrential rains, caused rivers flooded out. Banks were nothing to them. Strong water flows struck and destroyed many parts of banks. All families in neighboring areas were forced to evacuated to higher land. Located in the center of a small plain, our village was not surrounded by any such fast-flowing rivers, but the low land was separated by hundreds of ditches, channels and ponds. 
      
      The alarmingly rising level of water forced local authorities to let a very great amount of water stored in reservoirs out due to the fact they were not big enough to stop water from flowing out. Any attempt could damage to dams. Soon our rice field was soaked in water. Good luck didn't smile at some families who owned unharvested paddies. 
      
       Thanks to a wealth of experience, the elder turned out calm and seemly predicted what was going on at the time." It's a law of nature, a cycle of weather". Refrigerators or freezers were never in our dictionary. What we could store and preserve were dried foods and rice of which qualities were kept by traditional storage methods.

 Rice, sesame seeds, fish sauce and other spices were included in our menus those days. What could you make with these ingredients?  Rice became a main food in our daily meals. So, what would be the best match? Perhaps good lessons from our old generations brought us some solutions. As an old saying: "Adversity brings wisdom", sesame salt was regarded as a creative product that we might be proud of 😆. Called as "sesame salt", the name reveals some necessary ingredients to you: sesame seeds and salt. In addition, a spoonful of sugar is added to make it better in flavor. Here's the way I make this food:

First, roast sesame seeds. Heat a pan with a moderate temperature (90°C ).

Then, add sesame seeds and stir them well. Remember, turn down the fire on the stove. 

(In the past, clay stoves, charcoal, dried sticks and rice straws were popular. My face were always worn some make-ups with ash.😂)

When sesame seeds turn lightly golden (or honey-like color), put them into a small wooden mortar or pounder before adding a tablespoon of salt and two of sugar. Now, pound the mix with a pestle until sesame seeds are completely crushed.

Sesame salt served with cooked rice is a perfect combination of five different flavors which hold full of great charm.

Rice with sesame salt (right)

For longer flood seasons, we were still unable to get to market. What's more, our sesame was eventually used up. We took a look at our current spices and ended up creating something with peanut oil and fish sauce. Oiled fish sauce was chosen as a must-do alternative. Traditional fish sauce smells strong and tastes roundly briny. A perfect blend of fish sauce, oil and black pepper heighten the flavor that mixes well with hot steamed rice. Black pepper plays a key role in keep our body warm because it was biting cold outside; meanwhile, oiled fish sauce flavors rice which provides us a source of energy.

 To begin with, heat the peanut oil in a small cooking pot. 

A spoonful of chopped shallots dipped in hot oil would bring a good scent right before pouring fish sauce carefully in. 

To reduce the salty taste, add water and boil the liquid. 

Finally, sprinkle ground black pepper and take the pot down out of the heating stove. Some spicy chili will enhance the color and add flavor to the dish. 

Oiled fish sauce

Sometimes we made a funny joke with our lips after eating rice with spicy fish sauce. If you see someone who has just finished their lunch with something spicy, you seem to feel like they are wearing lipstick.

These day, sesame salt and oiled fish sauce are no longer in our daily meals, but remind us of difficult times when such valuable lessons about being optimistic and creative work out properly. 

 

   LIFE USED TO BE TOUGH BUT MEANINGFUL

I was born and grew up in a peaceful small village in the central area of Vietnam where people lived up to their rice paddies during the 1990s. At the time, life was tough and most of peasants lived in cottages made of straw, bamboo and clay. The people who were a bit richer lived in more modern brick-made houses with a tiled roof. There was not much electricity here. Televisions and bikes became luxurious things and those who owned one were considered as wealthy families.

Our childhood was nourished with shinning days wandering along the village roads or in a field where we could fly our self-made kites, lay down on the grass and took a straight look at the sky or gathered in one's yard to play folk games. We played so hard and made a lot of noise. Above all, we almost forgot our hot-tempered neighbors whose blood was easily made boiled whenever their naps were spoilt. Thus, we normally did another running which the kids called "escaping". Sometimes, there were some fights among us because we all wanted to win and hated cheated players. So, we set rules that were common in the children's world. Of course, the adults had never known about them. 

A pagoda and a green rice field in a cloudy day

At dawn

As a new harvest was coming up, local people rushed to prepare all necessary stuff, including rice sack bags, sickles, grain baskets, drinks and food. The unity in a village played a crucial role in saving our money. In the past, our light-hearted neighbors helped us to harvest rice and we did the same thing to them. Time goes by, everything has been changed and so has the neighborliness. 

Though the poverty overwhelmed the village, people still kept optimistic about the future. Perhaps my thriftiness was formed from that. One of common saying from the elder is:" Throwing leftovers is a sin. When you died, you would be moved to the hell. Your eyes got hurt by ants' bites." The children were frightened of that. Therefore, we never wasted anything and recycled our unwanted stuff instead. Books and notebooks were covered with old newspapers. We didn't even feel embarrassed about wearing hand-me-down clothes. Confidently speaking, we lived a greener life than ever.😊

How about your childhood? Let me know your unforgettable childhood memories.