vietnam

just have to start this blog post with fantastic news - today, 1st april 2012, amie's and arnold's little baby girl alice was born. congratulations to all three of them!

a couple of weeks ago, i went to vietnam over the weekend to meet my brother and his family. just the thing going to vietnam over the weekend is quite amazing to me. to be able to meet calle, phuong, nhu and ludvig in a small village in vietnam is incredible.

the village is where phuong grew up (and nhu spent her first four years) and i was really thrilled to be able to go there. phuong wanted to show me paradise islands and other more touristic things and couldn't really understand why i wanted to come to the village. i, on the other hand, think it's a once in a lifetime opportunity to see vietnam from a more local perspective and not just as a tourist and am really pleased to have seen it and met all her relatives. and believe me, there are a lot of relatives!

wise people say a picture is worth a thousand words so i'll let the them speak for themselves:

to keep all the mosquitos and other bugs out, i had this lovely mosquito net. we stayed in a very nice guest house, where they had lovely wooden furniture, just as they did in every household we went to

nhu and her cousin bin having breakfast at the breakfast café

breakfast day 1: noodle soup with beef, really nice!

ludvig, phuong and phuong's grandmother. a funny thing was that whenever phuong was carrying ludvig, people came up to touch him and look at him. as he was a caucasian baby in their eyes, they were amazed by how phuong could be his mother. at one point, some people thought that ludvig was mine and calle's baby and that phuong was our maid - quite understandably, that really pissed her off!

♫ "vi har det bra, vi har bak i bilen, och vill ej va med om nån krock.." ♫

dinner

breakfast day 2: another type of noodle soup with beef - again, really nice! i actually liked the noodle soups with beef so much that i am currently looking for a place in singapore who serves vietnamese food so that i can have it again

ludvig and i

the breakfast café

calle, ludvig, phuong and phuong's grandmother at the breakfast café

grandmother lent me her rice hat - "dep" (not sure about the spelling, but it means nice)

i decided to do a permanent hair straightening. a little bit worried considering my hair is thin, fine and blond and these people are used to thick, black, good quality hair, but it turned out great, it doesn't even curl up in the extreme humidity in singapore. and it costed me about £10 or 100kr

ludvig thought the whole hair dresser business was tiring and fell asleep

bin and nhu

ludvig, phuong, me, ludvig's cousin (can't remember her name), phuong's sister thao and their friend alex

in vietnam, there are motorbikes everywhere and the traffic is absolutely mad. there is only one word to describe it - chaos! i tried to capture it in a photo, but this does not in any way illustrate what it's like

local beer - ba, ba, ba. one thing i learned in vietnamese: mopp, haj, ba - yo! (means one, two, three - cheers! and i do not take responsibility for the awful spelling)