Spending time at the homestay was really lovely but also let me have a look into such a different life from what I live back at home.

From transporting a gigantic (still alive!) fish in a plastic bag to taking a chicken and seeing it being killed and prepared for dinner in the most quiet and somehow unquestionable natural way. I wanted to witness how the chicken was going to be prepared and not look away and to my surprise I didn’t burst into tears. I was calm and watched the process carefully how Bicks brother slit the throat of the chicken. I felt something deep in my heart as if I am witnessing something so natural, something that belongs to life, something where I shouldn’t look away and ignore the fact, that an animal’s life is killed so we can eat it. And to be okay with it in a way, because I even though I can choose to not eat meat but in that moment, I have no control over this life. It‘s the way of living in the village, everything of the animal is utilized, even the head gets eaten. I don’t have to like it but it makes sense.

I loved the inventive ways of carrying something on a motorbike. Bick‘s cousin had an oval cage with 6 chicken on her back of the motorbike. I had to hold a sort of chipping shovel to take bamboo sprouts out of the jungle. The roads around the villages are only big enough to go by motorbike, no car would be able to fit. Sometimes I am surprised how they get to places and build things. There was this massive excavator blocking the street fitting JUST right between two houses. To be able to continue on on our road by motorbike, the excavator lifted itself up by pushing its shovel onto the ground and we went right through the loop of the shovel.

I made paper from recycled paper and learned a lot about tea processing. One day we went into the tea factory of Huang (a friend from the family and my motorbike driver for the Ha Giang Loop), learned how to make fermented tea and helped preparing for the tea festival.

I really have taken the family and the tea master with his wife to my heart even though couldn’t really speak with them. I tried to learn Vietnamese and could say a few words. It was a very emotional moment when I left on my last day. Bick‘s mum gave me traditional clothes that I can wear for helping at the tea festival. She prepared some food in banana leafs for me to take on my journey. I spend a little bit of time with the kids. When we said goodbyes, we both had tears in our eyes.