Walking With Giang

My brother-in-law and his Vietnamese partner, Gaing, live and work in Ho Chi Minh City. They visited us this weekend.


Today I walked with Giang.

I explained to her that a 'fat man's agony' is a type of stone stile.

She told me that every morning, before she went to school, she had led her parent's cow into the forest so that it could graze.

I showed her a kissing gate.

She told me how, as a child, she watched bombs fall.
How her family hid in the forest when they heard planes.
How children from her village lost arms, legs and feet when they played with the bombs.

Soon Giang will be my sister-in-law.


And finally, for those of you who had noticed that I wasn't looking forward to this weekend:-

I hadn't wanted my 83 year old mother-in-law to stay with us for the weekend, in case she fell down our steep, narrow staircase. She fell down our steep narrow staircase. G and his brother spent Saturday night/Sunday morning in A and E. She escaped with a crushed vertebra.

I was heard muttering "told you so."