Who needs ornaments when you've got oranges?

Yesterday morning we were going to go visit an ornamental tree village. I'd been informed of this mini-trip several days ago, and ever since I'd been curious about what such a thing would look like. I thought perhaps it would be somewhere full of topiaries. It was a long ride and an early start. You know you've been in Vietnam a good while when you almost feel comfortable enough to fall asleep on the back of a motorbike. It turned out that 'ornamental tree village' mostly meant part of the province where many people grow decorative plants, especially now that Tet (Vietnamese new year) is fast approaching. Conveniently, one such establishment was literally next door to Kim Long's parents' house. This particular place grows small kumquat trees for several months, and then wires them all together into these conical shapes in big pots. If properly cared for, they last up to two months. But, most of the time they are discarded right after Tet. This sounded somewhat wasteful to me, but then I thought about our Christmas tree practices.

You know it's a scary bridge when Vietnamese people
dismount to walk their motorbikes across

Just the usual spiders between powerlines

$250 ornamental tree

After our tour of the neighborhood, we came back to the house and helped finish the prep work for our 10am lunch. Spring rolls were being rolled, and I managed to hold my own in the rolling. All the women were in the kitchen, and even though everyone was speaking Vietnamese, I didn't feel left out. Soon it was time to feast. Soup, our fried spring rolls, pork and green and white vermicelli, curry, and salad.

And, as always, there was even more than this

The night before it hadn't slept well, and after all that food there was a hammock calling my name. I didn't want to be rude, but when I confided my sleepiness in Trang she insisted that I go to the hammock. Two hours later...
I woke up a couple times but, as I was still laying in the hammock, I just kept falling back to sleep. Finally, I got myself out of that sleep contraption and soon after it was time to go. On the way back we took a long detour to look at more decorative plants on the way home. It certainly was scenic, but it was also almost an hour and a half on the back of a motorbike, on bumpy dirt roads, in the heat of the day.