After the fun fair night, everyone was dead tired by then, so only a couple of us actually went to take a shower. And a bad time at that too... try showering in cold water at, say, less than 10 degrees Centigrade? And some actually showered in it, I don't know. Luckily for me it was blasting cold water at first, then it turned warm. Even then it made little difference - I'm still having that cold I caught down there after the shower.
And if Fansipan was something fresh, so was the interacting with the kids, and actually farming off a given plot of land that belongs to the villagers our group was attached to. Well, it definitely is something that we wouldn't be able to do in Singapore. And oh, those kids were still playing with the balloon sculptures we made last night. Wow, these kids must've really enjoyed it to the full from last night's fair.
We had to cross a bridge to reach the other side of Ban Ho, so here's a view of the left side of the bridge.
It still did hurt, somehow. When I showed Khnah my hand, he showed me his - he was pointing to the many other worse blister scars he had previously. Wow, perhaps I shouldn't be complaining anymore...
We carried on hoeing, until the entire plot of land was ploughed. There were a few instances where the land wasn't ploughed deep enough, so we had to do it again and again on the same spot until it was done. Not to mention that there were a couple of rocks that we hit under the ground while ploughing - ouch!
Anyway, it was lucky that we got a small plot of land - the others were working on bigger plots, and some were even told to collect dung from the heap. And that was only the preparatory part. When we got back after working under the sun for an entire morning (which wasn't quite as hot as it would be in Singapore), we could see some sleepy faces already.
See what I mean? Sleepy faces!
It was kinda understandable, I reckon. I mean, everyone slept an average of about only 4-5 hours, considering that people slept as late as 2am and woke up at 7am, some even earlier. Anyways, we had luxury of a 2-hour lunch, since the farmers said the seeds couldn't be sown while the sun is so hot, which might make the plants unable to grow properly.
And that was only 2 hours away from getting your hands dirty for food's sake. Because they didn't have artificial fertiliser like we do, so they do it the old traditional way: using cow dung. It was really damned funny watching the others have a dung competition - who's gonna dig the biggest piece of dung today?
"More shit! We need more shit over here!"
"Phwroar!" goes the load.
We had loads of fun down there, getting ourselves dirty. Good ol' organic vegetables fresh from the farm. I mean, where in Singapore can you get such a good chance to actually be planting vegetables in the backyard? Here, you don't even have a backyard to talk about, let alone planting your own food, as opposed to the villages in Vietnam.
Okay... Using a face mask for such a task is kinda far-fetched... The dung doesn't smell as bad, now that we've been into that serious shit.
Now that's serious shit. Phwroah!
Our finished plot. There aren't enough baby vegetable plants to go around, so we sowed seeds in the remaining plot instead.
After doing all the planting, we were told that the effort of 10 of us for an entire half-day was equivalent to that of 2 local women working for 2 hours. Whoa, simply amazing. I guess skill comes with practice, huh, considering that these people work the same plot of land for much of their lives...
It was tough, but it was fun. Imagine ourselves planting our own food - would you bear to waste your own effort that goes into your own mouth to feed yourselves? Lesson learnt on wasting food: you put their work down the drain - do their profession some justice by finishing your food today.
And oh, dealing with buffalo shit has never been so fun before.
That being said though, the workload wasn't finished. We had to saw the big chunks of firewood and chop them up. Feng the Woodcutter seems to be very proficient at it - after a couple of successful chops with the axe he was running it like a machine. Give him the wood and it gets split in no time. Ah, the smell of bamboo wood is getting more and more familiar - been smelling it since Mount Fansipan.
Soon after all the chores were done, we went back to the homestay again. This time, it was a different new experience, even though we've walked that same path back to our homestay many times. For we know that the next day, we would be leaving Ban Ho Village right after the ploughing of the terraced fields...
For some reason, I just can't make myself leave. Look at the scenery, the hospitality of the villagers, those kids, the life down there... It's hard to let all these go, but ultimately, we still have to go back to where we belong to. Still, that being said, that sense of attachment to that place of serenity and escape from highly-urban stress is still something I struggle with till today.
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