Left the buddhist temple in Buon Ma Thuot around 10am or so and continued along towards Pleiku, a Central Highland province that has lots of ethnic minorities.
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| typical rattan bag that they carry around for groceries/wood/farming stuff/food etc |
set up "shop" in some random patch of wilderness and some villager spotted me and he came over to ask me to go to his home to sleep instead. dinner with his family, though i had already eaten haha. but its bad to refuse them rite =P
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| the guard dog at the front was damn ferocious nia. was so afraid that i get bitten and have to go see doctor again... |
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| large bags of coffee beans and fertiliser at home. think most of his coffee eventually gets to Buon Ma Thuot for export... |
Learnt from him that 1 coffee tree produces about 1 kg of beans, and 1 kg of beans get sold for in the market. pretty tough to earn money cause looking around his small farm, i think there were hardly 100 coffee trees and i have no idea how many harvests he can get in a year. and he still has to buy fertilizers, water, pesticides?, and who knows what else.
Day in the life of a coffee farmer - wake up and have tea. (yes, they dun drink coffee and sadly, i wasnt offered any of his coffee. guess he is so sick of coffee that he doesnt drink them) put about 1 bowl of fertiliser in every trench that houses a coffee plant. (the coffee plants are all in individual holes/trenches about knee length in height, but littered with debris, fallen leaves, eaten corn husks and random stuff). spray water on the plant leaves and flood the trench with water. repeat until all plants have been fertilized and watered. back home for lunch. and god knows what he does after lunch cause i had alr left by then and didnt get to see what he does. most prob an afternoon nap, typical of most Vietnamese.
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| him going about his farming duties and asking me to take a photo of his daughters. |
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| but look, they are running away and dun wanna take a photo! |
about 10mins or so later, they emerged again, this time changed into new clothes that obviously look like their best clothes which they reserve only for special occassions to wear... ah ha! so they were running away jus now to get changed to take a pretty little photo!
the next day, in a small vietnamese town, i stopped to get water from a oil station before planning to move out of the city to camp somewhere quiet. the owner seemed really nice so i asked him if could camp in his gas station for the night. later in the evening, he invited me inside for dinner (& lots of Bia Saigon again...) along with his WHOLE family. like literally, his extended family, children, galfrens of sons etc. there were a good 20 odd people sitting around on the floor for a gathering. no idea if its a special occassion today for them, or jus a regular family dinner.
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| this was not all, it was split up and i sat in another group jus behind this group. |
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| this uncle kept coming over to toast me and making me drink beer till my face turned red. (which happens pretty easily haha) |
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| after some beer, i tried to feed this kid beer but he refused! |
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