Advertisement
Published: November 11th 2007
So last weekend a group of us went by bus to a small town a few hours south of Hanoi, to help clean up the area after having been severely flooded a couple of weeks ago.
After a three and a half hour bus ride with way too many people and way too much puking (yes I know, disgusting, but I guess the Vietnamese suffer more from motion sickness than we do..) we finally arrived in this village which I do not remember the name of. We started off with a lunch which included snail, pig intestines and weird looking fishy things, and got a chance to use the excellent toilet facilities - hole in the ground. After this first impression I was somewhat demotivated and not very excited to see where we would be staying. But my worries were quickly forgotten when we were taken to our house for the weekend - a traditional wooden house which was absolutely amazing! Although we only had two matresses for 8 people to sleep on, we had the whole second floor to ourselves and a TV and everything - luxury compared to what we're used to! So after relaxing for a little
while we walked down to one of the houses which was destroyed by the flood and helped to move rocks, dig dirt and a tiny bit of building. Although the locals were perfectly capable of doing this themselves, it was great to do some physical work for once and actually be able to see that you were doing something useful. And the locals were so nice! We quickly made some friend who we invited over for drinks after dinner and ended up staying at our house. We had so much fun with them! The next day we went to another house where we had to destroy the old wall of the house, tear down the shed and move huge rocks out of the water. It was very hard but so much fun. I got a few marriage proposals on the way as well.. After having lunch on we had to catch the bus back to Hanoi, and it was very sad to say goodbye to everyone! One of the guys took my hairtie because he wanted to have something of mine - aww!
Although it was very short and we did not make that much of a difference in
the work, it was a great experience and we are already talking about going back in a few weeks time.
On another note, I went to the hospital this morning about my toe, and it turns out that it is still not growing back properly so I have to wear this stupid bandage for another 2 weeks.. 😞
Advertisement
Tot: 0.124s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0545s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Janne
non-member comment
Hi Julie. Looks as if you had a great trip down there. Sad to hear about your toe! Good luck with your new jobs, at the handicap center and the hospital. Want to see pictures of our visit too!!!! Janne