Today is Tet or the Lunar New Year. Everyone here makes a big deal about it, cleaning the entire house the day before, they have everyone over for dinner and get all dolled up by painting their nails and dying their hair because there's this belief that how you spend your Tet is indicative of how your entire year will play out.
We've been in this town for almost a week now and tomorrow morning we're going to Nha Trang. I mentioned that this was a beach town and I was looking forward to beaching and doing nothing. Despite my best efforts, I never got to swim at the beach here because I was just under prepared and didn't bring swimmers etc. I ran to the beach once in the morning. It was nice, but I didn't want to have to run back to the hotel with wet sandy feet. Mum and I walked there the other day but she didn't want to sit on the sand. When I asked the neighbours family if we could go they're like 'the water is really muddy, don't swim here' lol which is kind of good, I guess? We did go to the beach today, though. No one told me and mum that we were going. We were both under the impression that because it's Tet we'd either stay at home or go and visit relos, but nope. They booked a private bus that took us to a lookout with a nice water hole (where I fell in lol) and to a beach where a boat took us out to a pontoon to have a seafood feast. I was super cut that I didn't bring my swimmers :( the water was crystal clear. We could see the sea floor at depths of 5-8 m! So upset lol
Anyway, another thing I wanted to talk about is travelling with mum. In my previous post I was super pissed off haha, but this last week has been amazing. We don't fight or argue or even bicker, unlike every other trip we've been on together. I think flying with a baby just stresses us all out haha. The baby has been occupied with his family members too, which is both good and bad because he's annoying everyone else now but I miss him haha. Every morning when mum and I stop by and visit, he'd yell out my name through the front gate so I think he misses me too, haha.
Staying in this town for a whole week was really good. I prefer staying in one place for a long time and really exploring the area and finding all the hidden gems than moving around every 2-3 days like we did in Europe. The down side with this though, was that the neighbours family always insisted on us coming over for breakfast and staying for lunch and then taking us out for dinner, so we kind of had to do things on their schedule and by the end I literally felt like we were wasting so much of their time and I felt so guilty. They kept telling one of their cousins to take me out, ride around and show me the city/ hang out with his mates and I did feel like I was bothering him by doing so. But yeah, we rode on motorbikes everyday and I even go to ride for a little bit! I chopped open coconuts for the family to drink and walked through their vineyard and played with their dogs. It's been pretty dope.
Kinda over the flavour of viet food tbh, everything is kind of really sweet. Can't wait to eat a tablespoon of vegemite when I get home!