Thursday, April 12, 2012

Thinking about Bill Wilcox

    Our last AO home visit was two families in a farming community out in Hoa Vang district.  We were not far from the Flowers Waterfalls you saw in a previous entry.  One of the families had all homemade furniture from materials they had or could grow, including the ubiquitous bamboo (now I'm happy, I got to use the word ubiquitous).  The funny part was, he had all of this great handmade stuff around, and a little modern solar light out front.
                 Its like the Sesame Street song, "One of these things is not like the other one......"


                                 The bed was made with the tools you see here using bamboo slats.

                                          Yes, its a bed, and a very nice handmade one at that!
                  Vietnamese people can sleep on concrete (seen 'em do it) this is soft by comparison.
                         Just roll a bamboo mat out on this bad boy and you are ready for some zzzs.

          This place reminded me of my father in-law Bill Wilcox and this entry is dedicated to him.  If Bill was Vietnamese this could be his place.  If this guy needed something he made it.  If HE couldn't make, well then I recon ya' really don't need it.
     The rice crop is starting to turn.  It changes from green to yellow as it ripens.  Some fields were being planted as we arrived in January.  They get two harvests a year, sometimes three in the Me Kong delta area.
This next group of pictures is all rice paddys.

         As it gets ripe on the stalk it gets heavy and falls over.  This field is probably a couple weeks from being harvested.  I did this close up cause I was curious and I thought y'all might be too.

                                                           That's a lot of rice!

                                                        Me and my water buffalo.
   "Right now only 15% of the rice harvested in the Me Kong River delta is mechanized.   The Party, The Fatherland Front and the Vietnamese Government have set the goal to be a modern industrial country by 2020.  They are working on the issue of mechanizing the harvest of very large areas of rice paddy.  They have also started to build Nuclear and Wind power plants along with biogas and biomass projects.  They are a member of the World Trade Organization and are well on the way to their 2020 goals.  I know all of this because of the research I did for my  politics paper.  Its not necessary to do this but I will anyway (Lachman 2012)."  If I quote myself will I sound smarter?  Nah it ain't published nohow.
Next vacation eat rice in beautiful Viet Nam
Hen gap lai
An

No comments:

Post a Comment