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Published: February 3rd 2010
Ah, a morning at rest. Well, when I mean at rest, I mean I was working but not going on any trips. This morning, we had to catch up on writing travel diaries. HB was only a few days behind, so you would think that writing a travel diary with a 5 year old would take no time at all. Oh how wrong you would be. HB has a memory worse than a goldfish. When I ask her what did we do yesterday, it normally results in her crying because she can’t remember what we did. So with a little prompting, but without the use of leading questions (I would make a great child interviewer for the police), we get the day out. Then she has to draw a picture of something we did, and then we write. The whole drawing process takes between 1 - 5 mins, so stupid me thought that she would remember in those 5 mins what we had just discussed. No. When I ask her again, what did we do I get a total blank stare. The response is normally we went to the market to see the birds. No that was in Hong Kong. Agh.
It would be easier to do this with a wall. The problem is she spends her whole day in fairy land, which is great, but not helpful. Whenever we are somewhere, she constantly wants to make up a story and play it out. That is fine, but not all the time. It is something we are working on.
So this dairy writing, that should have taken 15 mins, actually took 90 mins! For 2 days. Yes I know. So we had no time to search for the perfect shell on the beach. Instead we had to have a very quick lunch and meet our guide.
This afternoon was something I was looking forward too. We went to an Orphanage. Looking forward to it may sound strange, but my main goal in life is to open up an orphanage for children whose parents have died from HIV/AIDS. Well not just for them but that is my main focus. So I was interested to see what this orphanage would be like, especially as they have children here that have physical and mental disabilities.
Earlier in the day I explained to HB where we were going, what we might see,
Oranges!?
Green oranges! That is strange. why they were there, and most importantly not to make comments about the children if they looked different. Because as you know all 5 yr olds come out with statements such as ‘he has a horrible face’, or ‘why can’t he walk’. I think she understood, but you never can tell.
Well, this Orphanage does what it can with the funds that they have. There about 60 children there aged between 0-20, the youngest was a 7 day old baby who had been left on their doorstep when only a few hrs old. Doesn’t that break your heart? They have around $15 per child per month to spend! To think that I can spend that in one shopping go and not think about that I have just spent that amount of money. They have 19 children that have some form of disability and 19 members of staff that stay there on a permanent basis. We didn’t see that many children as they were all at school, except for the disabled children. We were given a short tour of what they had there, and trust me when I say it is not much. We only saw one bedroom that sleeps
around 8. There are no personal touches to the room, just blank walls and 8 beds pushed together. With writing tables in the corner for them to study at. The stop after that was the hospital room that had a few children in, mainly the younger ones. This is where they had the 7 day old baby. He was tiny, and laying across a bed with a big fly net over him, like the ones you put over plates of food, with a pillow next to him propping up bottle of milk. I’m sorry, but maybe it’s my training, but that was so wrong. He needs someone to be holding him and giving him some love and attention. I so wanted to pick him up and give him a big cuddle but the ladies said no - after his milk I could. Pity I didn’t get to stay long enough, I could have spent all day in there. I did get hold one little child who was blind. F, HB and I had all brought something to give to the children, and this is where we said goodbye to Singa, Pore and the plastic SIA lunch box. Unfortunately the little
child I was holding took to throwing the box which hit HB squarely in the forehead. She was such a good girl and made NO fuss. I had brought a puzzle square, with the little metal balls in, which disappeared very quickly when, I am guessing, a 3yr old with Down’s Syndrome came up for a hug, and then took a shine to it. I hope it gave him some pleasure just by shaking it to make a noise. We were also taken to the kitchen, which was very basic, dining room, therapy room to help those with disabilities walk and sit. Again, not much in there, a wooden stair case and one of those huge balls you find in a gym, but at least it was something and shows that they are trying to help improve these children’s lives. The final stop was a classroom for the children with disabilities. This classroom was actually really colourful and full of the children’s work and the alphabet. That was really nice to see.
So a big wake up call to the lives to what a lot of children have to deal and live with. I do forget that, I was
Eggs
Don't worry not duck eggs, quail eggs. very lucky with my upbringing (Mummy you did a good job 😱 ) and had everything I could ever have wanted, plus as a nanny I spend all my time with children that have toy stores in their house and then complain about how bored they are. Visiting here has made me so much more determined to try and reach this goal of mine. F told his parents as we were walking into Hoi An that when he is older he wants to fund an Orphanage as well! That was really touching, and you could see both children trying to process what they had seen. For HB it was all about why they don’t have any mummies and daddies, which is understandable for a small child. That one was a hard one to explain.
I felt rather guilty going back to the tailors afterwards to pick up our new dresses, especially as the manager was telling us that for the New Year most children get new clothes to wear, but these children wouldn’t! My dresses where lovely, I had a red halter neck ball gown made and a black and pink Vietnamese traditional dress made. They both looked amazing,
The fish market
This photo just doesn't do the place justice. but still needed to be hemmed.
Our evening activity was a cooking class at the Red Bridge Cooking School. To begin with they took us on a tour of the local market. This is one of these experiences that words cannot do justice to, neither would pictures. You really needed to be there. The first part was fine, that was all fruit - again I was made t o eat some weird looking fruit that was the fruit of a spice that is used in food to colour. It was surprisingly quite tasty, one you got over the smell and what it looked like. This is also where F ate the duck egg. If you haven’t read the Farming and Fishing post (shame on you) then I will explain again. These are no ordinary duck eggs that you would use instead of chicken eggs. These eggs actually have live baby ducks in, that is they are alive until they boil them, then they eat them. Our guide bought an egg and took it apart and showed us the duck, then gave it to F to eat! I couldn’t watch, it was too disgusting, inhuman and rather upsetting. I am
not one to say I won’t eat meat because they are cute animals. They are there to be eaten (I am talking about pigs, cows, chickens etc). If I don’t eat a type of meat there is normally a reason i.e. I don’t like the taste, or for instance watching some French cook a lamb on a spit with the head on then give it to me to eat - that kind of put me off lamb. Anyhoo, the point of this waffle is that Duck is the ONLY creature I won’t eat because of the fact that I like the animals too much, oh and crocodiles but that is mainly because my favourite stuffed toy is a crocodile.
Well this market got worse and worse the further in we went. They had the meat section, which was rotten and festering. Then the best part - the fish market. Oh I do not want to know what I trod in. A mix of blood, spit, fish guts, fish tails and goodness knows what else. The smell was so over powering, that I was almost sick. It was so crammed in there, and hardly any place to put your feet.
I really wanted to get out my hand disinfection spray and go around spray everything. I don’t have the words to describe it. Plus every time I try to think about it my mind comes up with this mental block.
Our cook told us afterwards that she had come to the market at 4:30am to get what we needed for tonight. I am still not quite sure if I needed to know just what sort of place the food I would be eating tonight came from. Mrs G made sure that nobody used any of the fish in their cooking.
To get to the cooking school we had to get on another boat - lots of boats in this trip. As soon as we were onboard HB wanted to start playing a make believe game. What a shock she got. This was the first real time I stopped her and made her sit and pay attention to what was going on around her. Every time she tried again I would gentle remind her, that there is a time and a place for us to play, but this was not one of them. I asked her to find things that
were different from home and things that really interested her. As you could imagine - it didn’t go down to well. But Mrs G has given me her blessing, and said that she also would like to get HB to concentrate more. Poor kid, she has no idea what she is in store for.
Our cooking class took place at night, so out came the mosies. Wonderful. The every forward thinking nanny that I am, I actually packed bug spray. Brownie points for me - YAY. This bug spray is some all natural bug spray, hmmmm I much prefer mine to be full of DEET. That keeps the little buggers away. When asked why I was constantly jigglering my legs, my reply was - they are less likely to land on me if I am moving. I didn’t get bitten once that evening, and I would still put it down to my jiggerling rather than the herbal bug spray. The cooking was rather interesting. We got to make rice paper to make fresh spring rolls with, a traditional dish with aubergine in, the happy cake - which is basically an omelette and finally we learned how to make a
rose out of the skin off of a tomato, and the leaves from a stick of cucumber. My flower was pretty good; my leaves needed a lot to be desired. Making them reminded me of the game show the Generation game, where contestants would be given a task, shown how to do it, then had to produce it and get it marked out of 10. I would give my flower 8 and my leaves 2 - they all broke when I tried to bend them 😞. I obviously need more practise with the big knife they gave me. It was HUGE. Not long, but HUGE. I don’t know what it would be called other than a big knife.
The cooking was fun, but the chief was really direct, when she had finished showing us what to do she would bark at us ‘You cook now! Go!’ It reminded me off when I was in Thailand on a choir trip and our guide would say, ‘You take photo when I tell you too, Take photo now!’ Ah good times.
We didn’t have to brave the waters back to the town; I think my chance of contracting Malaria would have risen
tenfold. Saying that the minivan was no better. They had neon lights on, which they had left on with the door open.
It was a late night for HB, but thankfully the next day was a rest day at the hotel. I won’t bother going into details other than to say it took 2 hrs to write 2 days of her diary. We had a ballet lesson (yes I did bring my Pointe shoes with me to practice, although alas I could not fit my tutu into my case), watched The Sleeping Beauty Ballet and played.
The day after that was the day we flew to Hanoi. Very confusing with Hoi An and Hanoi. So....
To be continued...
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Susan
non-member comment
Oh Anita, what adventures you're having! I'm so glad you're bringing us along with you. I was very touched by your description of the orphanage. Can you tell us what Mr and Mrs G do to allow them such a wonderful trip? And how were the activities chosen? I would never think of a cooking class in Veitnam!