Monday 10 March 2008

Wife at Bao Dai Place

This is a girl from Ben Tre where famous for coconut sweets and cakes. Famous for beautiful girls with long hair. Famous for battle field called Dong Khoi long ago.

I ran into her one day after having her phone numbers from one of my colleague. After several months, we decided to get married. We become husband and wife now. We have one son. He is nearly five months old now.

This picture was taken during our honeymoon Da Lat. There she stays in the mid of the Bao Dai Palace's Garden. She looks so beaufiful! We are having a small happy family now!

My Childhood - Part II

There was a river in front of my house, my friends and I used to swim in it in the autumn. I loved to swim in the clear and cool natural water. We climbed up high trees or bridges and then jumped down the river, making it unforgettable moments. In that river, we also loved to catch fish, crabs, shrimps, snails and every edible creature. However, I was afraid of the leech, they were disgusting creatures that I have ever known.

My family was poor, so when I was 7 years old, I had to work as a yarn spinner, my brother and sister did, too. just to collect 2 thousand dong a day for each so as to help my parents to make both ends meet. Life was so hard at that time, rarely did we have free time for playing. We were jealous with the nearby children, sometimes.

It’s was time for me to go to school, and the first school I enrolled was the village school, about 3km from home. It was a really old and small school with only 6 classes. It was difficult time for me to start learning how to read and write, I might not have sharp mind, and not as an excellent pupil, I rarely got 10 marks. In contrast, my brother, who was studying class 3, my sister, class 5, got 10 marks everyday. I remembered once my mother encouraged us that if any of us got 10 marks, she would immediately give 2 hundred dong as motive. Nevertheless, time after time, she could not afford to pay for my brother and sister for they got so many 10 marks in a semester. Poor me, rarely be the case and I was so upset and jealous about that.

At that time, the season I liked most is spring for there came the Tet holiday when I could be well dressed and fed. We loved to visit relatives and neighbors so as to receive lucky money and/or cakes, sweets or just compliments. We loved the firecrackers at the mid of the dark 3oth night. We did not buy firecracker, but make it our own. Now I dare not making firecrackers for it was so dangerous and forbidden by the government.

My Childhood - Part I

I was born in a small village in the northern province of Thai Binh. The place was famous for textile nationwide. My childhood was full of happy memories. I always think that no other places on earth can bring me such wonderful memories. Now that all memories come back to me at the same time and I just do not know where to start.

As a child, I was afraid of winter for it was too cold, though I wore so many warm clothes, my jaw still vibrated. I remember every afternoon, I and some other friends searched for pine corns, made clay stove to burn them for heating, we also collected dry straws, leaves and logs to build a fire, then, searching for some tomatoes for baking. It was so delicious to enjoy baked tomatoes in deadly cold open weather.

My family did not have any buffalo, but I liked riding it or requested for sharing it with other child, not paying any attention to the dirt on its body. Sometimes I slept deeply on its back, too. In the afternoon, we used to play grass fighting or fly kites in the green field. We often made kites ourselves in many shapes such as boat, moon, butterfly, fish, etc. My brother and I often made the biggest one. It was interesting to fly kites.

My hobby at that time was fishing, too. We went fishing in a river nearby, or in the ponds. My family did have a pond, but normally no fish at all. Therefore, I had to fish in natural ponds; still natural ponds do not have many fish. So we often fished from the neighbors’. Sometimes the neighbors discovered and came to confiscate the fishing rods.