TRAVELS WITH MY MUM
HAVING PRIORITISED HOLIDAYS with FRIENDS OVER FAMILY TRIPS for ALMOST A DECADE, HOW would KATIE O’MALLEY GET ON TRAVELLING AROUND VIETNAM with HER MOTHER?
One writer heads to Vietnam with her mother – with surprising results
It’s around midnight on our last night in Vietnam. My mum and I crawl into bed inside our bamboo bungalow and switch off the light. Outside, coated in darkness, sprawls a sweep of green rice fields in the Muong Hoa Valley, northern Vietnam. Just as I close my eyes, the sound of scuffling outside the bungalow pierces the silence. ‘What’s that?’ I whisper to Mum, grabbing her hand. ‘It’s nothing,’ she replies, unconvincingly – a noticeable hint of hesitation in her voice. Moments later, we are standing on the bed; my mum holding a kettle, as I shine my phone towards the door with one hand, while the other tightens its grip around a metal fork. Whether we plan to eat or maim our ‘assailants’ is yet to be seen.
Hours before, we had been trekking the 1Okm here from the pretty but tourist-packed village of Sa Pa, around 325km northwest of Hanoi, trudging our way along winding paths, past grazing buffaloes. We were walking alongside a group of local women, the Black H’mong, dressed in indigo-dyed embroidered jackets and leg warmers, who come with you through the fields in the hope you might buy bracelets or scarves at the end of the route. They aren’t official guides, but they’re friendly and it’s a good way to support women in the area and do some international bonding. Despite the babies strapped on their backs and the sticky heat, the H’mong women nimbly hopped from one muddy ridge to another as we tried to keep up. I watched Mum holding hands with one, chatting away in simple English about how we ended up in Vietnam, and felt a rush of pride.
My family has always been adventurous. When I was six, my parents, my brother and I moved to Western Australia. My dad was a GP and decided to take a sabbatical. My mum was a lipspeaking interpreter, and she taught us the English curriculum from Monday to Wednesday, then we went to the local school on Thursdays and Fridays. Weekends involved car trips to the Outback, lying like sardines in the boot of our Volvo at open-air cinemas, and daring each other to eat witchetty grubs. Longer trips meant kayaking alongside a whale and its calf in the Indian Ocean or swimming with sharks at the Great Barrier Reef. When it comes to holidaying with my family, normal has never been an option.
As I reached my twenties (I’m 27 now), the desire to travel en famille ebbed away in favour of adventures with friends and boyfriends. But
that all changed last year when Mum came from our family home in Merseyside to London, where I now live, to take me out to dinner. As we cracked open a second bottle of wine, we talked about the expectations that society places on our respective generations. For me, that means I should be thinking about settling down and saving up for a house. For Mum, now 57, it’s often assumed all that is left is retirement. So, there and then, we decided we weren’t going to let other people dictate how we lived our lives. In keeping with family tradition, it was time for a new adventure. A month later, we’d booked a 12- day backpacking trip to Vietnam. We were drawn to Southeast Asia, as neither of us had been, and we wanted to share a new experience together. Vietnam ticked all the boxes: it’s big on culture, it’s cheap enough to do a mix of fancy and budget hotels, and we both love Vietnamese food. We were to start in Ho Chi Minh City, fly up the coast to Hoi An and Da Nang; take a one-hour flight to Hanoi, the capital, enjoy a night’s boat ride in Ha Long Bay, and end our adventure with the trek in rural Sa Pa.
I admit, I had my reservations. In the past five years, I hadn’t spent more than a week with Mum. What if we had nothing to talk about?
“WE WEREN’T GOING to LET PEOPLE DICTATE HOW we LIVED OUR LIVES. IT WAS TIME FOR an ADVENTURE ”
What if we ended up bickering? What if she didn’t want to do activities I wanted to do, or vice versa? Or worse, what if she got sick or injured?
To break the ice, I planned a first-night surprise. ‘You’re joking, right?’ my Dad messaged me, after I told him I’d booked a night-time Vespa tour through Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam’s largest city. It would be the longest time my parents had spent apart since they were married 3O years ago. As someone who has run marathons, Mum’s sporty and fit. A natural risk-taker, she’s no stranger to injuries. But as our trip loomed, I began to worry that she’d get hurt zipping around on the back of a scooter. How was I to know there were around 7.4 million bikes weaving through the city? Imagine my horror as I watched Mum disappear into the traffic in the financial area of Ben Nghé. For 1O minutes, my eyes darted anxiously over all the multicoloured helmets, looking for her. How could I explain to Dad that I’d lost her on our first night?
My driver pulled up at the first stop – a street-food restaurant in Banh Xeo 46A (an Anthony Bourdain favourite), famous for its Banh Xeo (crèpes). ‘This is so fun!’ Mum squealed as she ran over, handing me a can of Bia Saigon beer (a bargain at 17p). Amid the smell of crab noodle soup and barbecued frogs’ legs, I briefly understood the feeling of a parent who’s momentarily lost their child in a supermarket. The sense of responsibility was overwhelming – she hadn’t a care in the world.
At 8am the next day, we met another guide outside Saigon railway station for the hour’s drive to the Cu Chi tunnels. We were fascinated by this underground labyrinth 3Okm northwest of Ho Chi Minh City. The network of tunnels were used by Viet Cong soldiers to hide from American forces during the Vietnam War. We peered into trenches, booby traps and bomb shelters, and managed to crawl along the hard red earth inside a tight, 1OOm-long tunnel, shocked at the thought of how long the Viet Cong spent doing the same.
My fears about us not enjoying the same things were unfounded: over the next few days we took a trip north to the pretty, historic town of Hoi An and photographed each other on its famous Japanese Covered Bridge, gorged on white rose (shrimp dumplings), and tried the sweeter-than-sweet Ca Phe Sua Da (coffee with condensed milk) at Hoi An Roastery (hoianroastery.com). From there, we flew to Da Nang and headed to the secluded bay on Son Tra Peninsula, aka ‘Mythical Monkey Mountain’. As we checked into the gorgeous InterContinental Danang Sun Peninsula Resort, staff warned us to keep the balcony doors closed to avoid the roaming monkeys. My mother’s face lit up – an indication that I’d be the one enforcing a strict ‘no, we can’t bring one home’ policy. The first night in our palatial black-and-white room, we snuggled into bed together under a plush striped throw and listened to the faint chatter of the monkeys outside. We discussed the pain of heartbreak and loss (I’d recently split up with my boyfriend of four years and she is estranged from my gran, who lives in Spain) until 3am. After years of sleepovers with friends, I’d never considered how fun it would be to have one with your mother. And there’s nothing quite as comforting as holding your mum’s hand as you fall asleep, no matter how old you are.
“I HOW COULD I EXPLAIN TO DAD THAT I HAD LOST MUM on OUR FIRST NIGHT? ”
In our last week, we sailed across the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Ha Long Bay, where we tried sunrise tai chi on the top deck of a boat, tiptoed underneath stalactites in the Sung Sot Cave and raced each other up the 4OO steps of Ti Top island (Instagram gold). We headed back to Hanoi to watch a traditional water puppetry show, and dined on crab spring rolls and stir-fried lobster at the popular Grandma’s Restaurant ( grandmarestaurant.com). We laughed and talked and didn’t fall out once. I was mostly the ‘adult’, making sure we got to places on time, whereas she seemed to relish not having to make the decisions and threw herself into everything.
So, there we were, on our final night, two grown women standing on a bed, armed to defend each other from the unknown threat outside our room, when two mice scuttled in under the doorway. We burst into a fit of giggles at how ridiculous we were.
Would I go backpacking with her again? In a heartbeat. We found a new understanding of each other – as people, not just as mother and daughter. The trip allowed her to gain a new confidence – she may be older, but she has lost none of her wanderlust.
Mum loved travelling with me; we have almost identical likes, dislikes, strengths and vulnerabilities, which makes us want to take on the same challenges. She felt proud that she and my dad have nurtured my love of travelling, and she enjoyed taking the foot off the pedal for once and allowing me to take the lead. I came to realise that making new memories with my mum is just as important as doing it with my friends. And while I may be her child, as I have grown older I have developed an instinct to protect her – even if it is just with a metal fork.
“I HAD never CONSIDERED HOW FUN IT WOULD BE to HAVE A SLEEPOVER with my MOTHER”