Never say no = Back to Diem Đien and beach fun

We'll only be in Hanoi for a few months, so we've tried to adopt the philosophy of "never say no".  If an opportunity presents itself, we're going to try and take advantage of it, no matter what.

Our plan this last weekend was to take it easy after a whirlwind introduction to Vietnam.  Relax, clean the apartment, do a little laundry, that sort of thing.  So we were a little surprised when Libby's advisor Sac called us at about 1 pm on Saturday.  He said he was going back to the fishing village on a bus for the weekend, he had organized an art project on the beach, and did Libby want to come?  And the whole family was invited this time.

Two hours later we were packed up and at the Hanoi bus station heading to Diem Đien for a whirlwind weekend.  Libby knew what to expect since she had just been there with Sac's art students, but the rest of us were in for a treat.

Me with the grandma, the matriarch of the whole operation.  She was a wonderful, generous woman who easily welcomed about 35 people into her small home:

Grandma making dinner (the squid is cooking here):

There were seven or eight stations that looked just like this, plus rice.  Groups of five and six sat on the floor and helped themselves to a bowl of rice mixed with fish, pork, squid salad, vegetables, and soup.  Delicious.

The boys were a big hit with the ladies of the class:

Poor Ellie.  She got stuck helping with the dishes because that's what was expected of the girls.  I told her if she helped that I would take a day of her dishes the next time in the rotation:

After a mostly restful night in a basic but comfortable hotel in town, we returned to grandma's the next day.  Libby said the fishing village is beautiful, that it is hard to take a bad picture.  She wasn't wrong:

Best way to dry out the fish?  Use the sun, of course:

After a morning breakfast of beef pho in the local market, the students and faculty said good bye to our hosts and headed for the beach.  The art project that the students did is chronicled in another post, but there was plenty of time to have fun too:

This last picture is of the edge of the beach, because it is also important to point out all of the trash that has washed up and is not cleaned up.  In fact, even the public places where we were had trash on the beach, and it was difficult to find a place to put the trash that we had generated throughout the day.  We've noticed this is a problem in Hanoi as well.