I came back two weeks ago from a wonderful trip to Vietnam. Just enough time for the images, tastes and feelings to settle a bit, allowing me to write a reflection on my journey.
Stunning landscapes, a vibrant green with golden yellow touches and the sound of the water flowing in streams and waterfalls in the north, slow river in the south. Sweet smiles from everyone,  the people met along the trails in the north, the scooter drivers in the cities and the boatmen in the canals. Great food, shared at laden tables, sometimes consumed in uncomfortable positions on the ground, cooked also with our help onboard a boat and at homestay, to be dipped into bowls of sweet or spicy sauce (we'd gotten pretty good at using chopsticks by then).
Against this backdrop, I recalled moments that made me think deeply about my journey.
In the Xin Man district, it was rice harvest season. The rice was cut and gathered by hand in bundles with sickles, then threshed in the fields using basic rotating machines (two bundles at a time for each pair of workers). They let us try and some of us had fun loosening rice grains by running the bundles along those cylinders, letting them fall onto tarps spread out on the ground.
At a certain point, a woman with a child on her back (a grandma most likely) who was supervising the work with an unusually serious, almost stern, expression,  came over to the thresher. With a determined air, she grabbed two bundles and rapidly cleared them of rice grains, then keeping working quickly and setting the rhythm for her helpers who had been slowed down by our presence.  In that moment, I felt uneasy, as if I'd been watching their work with the complacent eye of a tourist enjoying a good time.
Yet, this good time that we had nonetheless spent with the locals at the Khuon Lung homestay, where, after an excellent dinner with numerous toasts of Vietnamese wine (a rice distillate), we joined a celebration of traditional songs and dances. Wee tried the bamboo pole-jumping and concluded with a magic circle around the fire: the Toe dance of the Thai ethnic group, which I learned has been recognized as an intangible Cultural Heritage for Humanity. 
Dancing together made us feel part of a welcoming community and cultural diversities dissolved into the rhythms of music. In the meanwhile, among those present, a bowl of Cốm, green glutinous rice from the new harvest, symbolizing freshness, renewal and vitality was passed around.
At the Keo Pagoda in Hanh Thien, there were many people for a holiday celebrated with visits to the Pagoda offerings and various prayers rituals, as well as stalls selling all sorts of sweets.  
Wandering around the temple, I encountered two women holding a small, crying child who wailed even more upon seeing me, perhaps frightened by my difference. My smile didn't reassure him, so instinctively I used my phone to show him a picture of my youngest granddaughter, as if to say ' I'm a grandmother too, don't worry'.  The baby fell silent, momentarily curious, before starting to cry again. Much later, while leaving the pagoda and browsing the market, I met the grandmother, mother and the child again, suddenly finding my hands full of chestnuts given to me with a big smile. Even without words we had communicated, we had shared who we were and what we had in common.
I thought about the human symbolism of offering, present in all religions, as a way to bring the divine closer, to obtain positive answers about our lives, to give thanks.  
This way I express my gratitude for these and all the other experiences of the trip, happy to have navigated in the not so clear waters of Had Long Bay, in the pluvial Trang An Canals,  magic place rich in spirituality, along the Mekong delta; happy to have walked trails immerse in nature or biked along industrious towns and to have visited aqueducts, cisterns, gardens, libraries, and to have greeted so many children in the schools where GTV operates.

For further experiences of responsible travel, consult the following section 'Responsible travels to Vietnam'.