Gia Nghĩa

Lio takes me to a super nice coffee place ☕🌿 for breakfast. I get a salt coffee 🧂☕ and a pain au chocolat 🥐🍫. I work a bit to finish some things I promised before going on holiday 💻.

It's so interesting how every shop, bar and restaurant is decorated for Christmas 🎄✨. Vietnam isn’t especially Christian and it’s not even cold, but they love installing Santa Clauses and Christmas trees everywhere 🎅😂.

After the nice coffee, we go back home to have lunch with Lio’s family 🍚🥢. I don’t understand a single word apart from the waving hands suggesting I should eat or drink more 😂🙌. They are all very respectful and I can see so many differences between our cultures — but this is an amazing experience, and I feel so lucky to be here ❤️.

We accompany Lio’s mum to the market to buy beef, vegetables and fruit for tonight’s dinner 🛍️🥩🥬🍌. The chickens here are so slim, the fruit so wonky and fresh, and the vegetables huge 🐓🍉🥒.

Once we drop everything off at home, we grab the motorbike and go to Lio’s friend's macadamia nut factory 🌰🏭. Khiêm gives us the best macadamia nut chocolate I’ve ever tried 🤤🍫 and shows us how everything is peeled, roasted, packed, and the different products he’s developed with different flavours. We buy some goodies, and the three of us squeeze onto his motorbike 🏍️😂 to go to a very fancy coffee place with ultra-modern stainless steel furniture 🧊✨ to have a Vietnamese black coffee ☕🇻🇳.

After that, we say goodbye to Khiêm, and Lio’s brother-in-law picks us up to visit a coffee plantation 🌱☕, where I hope to buy some 100% Robusta coffee for Pat, Daryl and Lucia 🎁.

We go back home, drop off our cargo, and take a short trip to look for bánh mì 🥖 — the typical Vietnamese bread. We roast the bread slightly over the fire so it becomes crunchy again 🔥😋, and watch the sunset 🌇 before dinner.

Tonight we’re sleeping on the top floor, which has access to the balcony 🌿. It rains heavily at night 🌧️, giving us a calming background soundtrack for our sleep 😌💤.Read more