Cat Cat village and egg coffee

Today we visited Cat Cat village, a small village down a mountain slope, well set up for easy tourist access with good stone steps all the way down the village and along a river. Catheleen and Elizabeth had already been there yesterday but I talked them into joining John and me today. The kids wanted to take a motorcycle taxi ride to the place but I insisted on a car taxi. It was a moot argument as it turned out. After a one kilometre car ride the road was blocked and we needed to switch to motorcycles or walk. I enjoyed the short motorcycle ride with John and I on separate bikes. Once Elizabeth heard a motorcycle ride was back in play, she and Catheleen agreed to join us, and they took a motorcycle ride down to meet us. We later took motorcycles back up to Sa Pa. Zoom zoom.

The village was worth the trip for the views of the terraced rice fields alone. I had no knowledge of how rice was grown or harvested before this trip. I had some vague notion that rice grains grew in the root of the plant somehow, which is wrong. It turns out the grains of rice grow at the top of the stalk. News to me. I was able to walk down onto a rice terrace and pick a few grains off some stalks. The rice is starting to turn a golden brown as harvest time approaches, and I tried threshing and husking a couple of grains of rice. Sure enough there are white rice grains in there. I'm told at harvest time they cut the stalks six inches from the ground and then bang bunches of stalks against a wall to release the husks. When the stalks become laden with the growing weight of the rice seeds they begin to bend, and look much like wheat to me, except the rice plants are growing in muddy field.

I've started to spot restaurants that will be too noisy based on how narrow and winding the road is in front of the restaurant. If the road is narrow and near a bend then there will be constant beeping from all the scooters and trucks trying to make their way around. We like to sit outside on the patios but the closer you are to the street the more the hill tribe ladies will ask you to purchase their trinkets, even if you are in mid-bite. Regardless, we've enjoyed the restaurants in town and just go inside the restaurant if it's too noisy or we feel harassed. With all the beeping, sometimes this country feels like it's suffering from attention deficit disorder.

I enjoyed egg coffee in Hanoi and I'm enjoying it here in Sa Pa the last few days. It's a Vietnamese drink made with a layer of coffee and a layer of beaten egg yolks, sugar and coffee. It tastes a bit like tiramisu.

I subscribed to a math service called IXL for the kids. There is an app for the kids iPads which allows them to practice on their own time. I'm able to help them if they need it, and I can track progress with various reports. It's working out well so far. The kids like the way it's organized and the way it motivates them to progress. As they get questions right in a section their score moves up, and when they get a question wrong their score drops. The questions get progressively harder as they approach 100, at which point they've "mastered" a subject and don't need to return to it. I'm having them complete at least five hours a week on this with an added incentive - if they complete the math material in their grade level, then they won't need to do any more math on our trip. I don't know yet if they will be able to get through the work by December - we'll need to see how it goes. 

Here's a selfie of Elizabeth and me near a waterfall at the Cat Cat village.