Ba Be holiday

It's very cold suddenly - a complete contrast to the week before the holiday which was blisteringly hot. The baby is asleep in his cot, with the electric heater on full on him, and the husband is downstairs cooking a very fiddly recipe from Risotto With Nettles, the memoir of Anna Del Conte which Mum gave him. It involves shelling, boiling and removing the skins from 120 pistachio nuts. Let's hope it's worth the effort! We are just back from Ba Be Lake where we spent the Tet holiday. Refreshed and in need of Western food. The food over Tet was extremely dull: variations of cabbage, egg, peanuts and rice twice a day, with a fried egg over noodle soup for breakfast. It was actually not as bad as that sounds once I asked them to put less salt in.


The homestay was the one where Nicholas had stayed when he went to Ba Be with some friends to look for the very rare Night Heron which hangs out there, so we took the opportunity to go and have a look at the fowl. It was right there in the same place as before, sitting about a metre away from its nest, looking in the poor light rather like a skittle. Still it's the rarest bird I've ever seen.

They were very nice in the homestay and despite the festivities did their best to make us feel welcome. They loved Bernard and especially enjoyed babysitting him during our mealtimes. They were sad to see us leave, I think. Mr. Chat's wife was of the critical-to-be-kind kind, however, and she occasionally frayed my nerves with comments such as:

She doesn't know how to feed the baby properly. Let me do it. Here, see. Oh, the baby eats so little!

The baby is cold. (despite many layers of clothing) - this comment every few minutes, from everyone we met on the road as well.

Put a scarf on him/ another hat/ a blanket.

Don't go out today; it;s too cold.

She doesn't know how to put the baby's trousers on properly.

You shouldn't sit up to breastfeed him, you should lie down with him and go to sleep together.



Having said that she loved the baby almost as much as Mr Chat did. We would certainly consider another similar holiday, as it was a super-cheap way to get away from it all. Bernard loved it, and we really appreciated the charm of Vietnam once again, tucked away from the pell-mell of Hanoi.