I was awoken by the roosters, almost coughing out their morning crows. They struggled, it seemed, to outperform their neighbors. It was keeping up with the Jones’ poultry style, and it would not fade until well after sunrise. Everyone here had animals, and with the exception of the pigs, most were allowed to roam. There was a lot of tall fencing and even remnants of old stilt houses. It was a reminder of a time in the not-so-distant past when predators like tigers and leopards once patrolled these jungle mountains. Tiger sightings were almost non-existent and had been for a long time. One had to travel far and deep into the heart of the continent to find the big cats these days.
I opened the shutters of my window to let in the building light dawning outside. One can hear all kinds of exotic noises in the quiet morning of the jungle breeze. It was barely 6 o’clock and it didn’t seem that anyone else was stirring. I opened my door and stepped out into the living area. All of the massive doors and windows were shuttered up tight. It gave the house a feel of an ancient garrison one might find in the Jungles of Han Dynasty southern China. I could hear sounds coming from the kitchen. As I turned and walked around the corner, I could see the kitchen door was opened to the backside of the house. Ba, as I had come to call him, was stoking the fires outside and doing some general outside kitchen maintenance.
Ba means father, and he was the oldest in this particular family unit, and it was his house. Pronouns are big here, it’s not as simple as I, you, we, and us. You are a different word if the person is older or younger. It is even different still if the person is more than 10 years younger or more than 10 years older. Different for men and women. I observed and did my best to translate and settle into a life of immersion. And I discovered an easy way to differentiate.
The pronouns were generational, so to avoid being disrespectful say, by calling someone old who really wasn’t, I did it like this. If I was old enough to be their father, then I used the pronoun for children. Same age as me, peer pronouns. Close enough in appearance to be my parent’s age, those pronouns, and so forth, and so on. The culture was very big on respect and hierarchy, and everyone gave me massive amounts of latitude. I mostly found humor in my mistakes as I navigated these unfamiliar waters. After all, I didn’t want to be rude.
As the house came alive, it was time to eat. Oh, was it time to eat? A delicious morning Pho was served with chunks of fish and chicken and fresh greens from the garden. I walked around the village for a bit, took some pictures, and wandered back to the house. It was time for a second breakfast. Fruit, cold rice paper rolls stuffed with good stuff, dipping sauces on the side, and coconut water.
Ba invited me to sit at the marble round table in the very front of the house and have some coffee. I thought he’d never ask. We sat and talked about how beautiful this place was and how lost it was to its inhabitants. That reality is everywhere in the world. People come to Atlanta to marvel at Stone Mountain. To us, it’s just a big rock. After the delicious cup of brew, I walked out of the village to get a video of the walk-in from the bridge marking its entrance.
It was expressed to me that we were going to An Lao. That, I learned, wasn’t entirely true. An Lao was a district in Bình Dinh Province named for its proximity to the river An Lao. Though there was a town called An Lao, some 8km away, we were not in it. It had to have some distinction, especially in the governmental framework of communism, but I couldn’t seem to find it here. It would be akin to an unincorporated area like High Point or Stewart.
I walked from the bridge to the front door of the house and there was a bowl of last night’s pork blood soup waiting for me. It seemed as if I was anywhere near someone, I was eating something. At around 11:30, the lunch bell rang, and the house descended onto chairs at round tables that had been brought out on the patio. A delicious lunch of braised fish, rice, chunks of pig, many different parts, nuoc mam with chili, and bowls of steamy broth with handfuls of what tasted like some sort of turnip green wilted in its hot liquid. It was basically a build-your-own-bowl kinda thing, and I dug right on in.
It was only my fourth meal of the day, I think, but who’s counting? There are animals everywhere, and we mostly eat outside. The food was minimally trimmed here, if at all. The chicken and fish bones and other inedible bits were tossed to the ground for the animals to clean up. The chickens mostly munched on the seeds, their shells, and fruit peels while the dogs snatched up the bones and the bits of meaty edibles. Nothing went to waste here. Everything was consumed by something. The animals did, however, show that even they, too, were respectful as they never begged or became bothersome. Waiting till dining had concluded before swooping in and licking and pecking the patio clean.
After our delicious lunch, a strange thing occurred. The tables were cleaned and food stored away, and the house slowly fell silent and lifeless. The sun was rising high in the scorched jungle mountains, and the temperature was really starting to show it. It was the first time I had been in Vietnam that the temperature was noticeable. Don’t misunderstand me, it has never been cold in Vietnam. However, the locations I’d ventured to before here offered either cool mountain or ocean breezes. This kept things comfortable, save for a few brief times. Here was a different story.
I could see now why the ceilings were so high and why the steel awnings towered above the property. These features, combined with the marble and granite tiled interior, kept the deeper parts of the house at least 15 degrees cooler than the baking surfaces outside. As I would soon find out in my time in the village, the best way to deal with the sweltering heat of the afternoon sun was to sleep it away. So we did, in hammocks in the outside kitchen, on the beds, on mats on the floor everyone here, bellies full, laid out, and slept the afternoon away. I was no exception.
