Vacation accomplished

During our vacation to Vietnam, I easily introduced Bruce to about 30 different relatives.

By which I mean to say my mom introduced us both to them. It appeared that I have a lot of extended family. It’s ridiculous to try and keep track. Cousins of cousins of cousins, people who are daughters/sons of my grandma’s sister/brother. Mostly they are all related by blood, and the rest I believe had become family somewhere down the line.

Eventually, everyone kinda fell into the category of “aunt” or “uncle”.

Some relatives I haven’t seen in 7 years, and there were even more that I had met for the first time.

We spent a week in the countryside, in a town a few hours south of HCM where my grandmother and mom grew up. It was there that we met about 25 of my relatives for the first time.

No matter how we are related (and sometimes not), everyone welcomed us with open arms. My family is not well off by any means, but they always made sure we were never hungry. Not a single relative in the country spoke a word of English, but that was never a problem for Bruce. Their hospitality transcended language and I was proud to introduce them to him…and him to them.

Back in the city, we ate most of our meals from Ho Chi Minh City’s best chef: My aunt (really, a relative of my Grandma’s brother). She made sure to cook up a variety of Vietnamese specialties for Bruce to try. Beautiful, sinfully crispy banh xeo, Vietnam’s answer to crepes, stuffed with pork, shrimp and veggies. Braised fish, chicken congee with Vietnamese slaw made with thinly sliced fresh banana blossoms and herbs.

Banh Xeo: crispy Vietnamese crepes made with rice flour, coconut milk and tumeric. They are typically filled with sliced pork belly, shrimp, onions and bean sprouts

Chicken congee with a Vietnamese salad of banana blossoms and fresh herbs

In between her meals, she would seek out snacks for us from the best vendors- most of which were not too far from our street.

Vietnamese Xoi: sweet glutinous rice dessert with peanuts and fresh grated coconut

For 3 weeks, we almost forgot the life we had temporarily left behind in Hong Kong.

We had a new routine: eat, chill out, nap, repeat.

I had made the decision to leave my iPhone back in HK. I wanted a break from social media. We went from living in a city where no one walks around without their eyes down on their smartphones, to a city where smartphones were a rarity. Thank goodness!

I just brought my laptop to write. There have been so many wonderful moments on our vacation that I was so inspired to write about. Other moments, I was lying in a hammock and could care less about keeping up. I blogged and emailed for the first week or so, and stopped.

Sometimes I had internet, sometimes I didn’t. As fate would have it, I couldn’t log into Facebook the entire time- a blessing in disguise.

Free from the distractions of keeping up, updating and being updated, we worried about more important things.

Like which cafe we would go to for our next cà phê sữa đá.