What is it about the countryside?

When we arrived home on Monday, we found that our poor host, O, had been whisked off at short notice to travel to the capital to review an event. She'd had only two hours to pack, during which time she had actually gone shopping for us, so that we had some food to cook for ourselves. M, being generally brilliant at this sort of thing, was able to craft us something lovely out of the ample ingredients. Amusingly, among them were cornflakes! I am not sure I could bear to go back to eating cornflakes for breakfast now!

We had been planning to go to Dalat, so we booked a bus and somewhere to stay, in the hope that we could be away and back at the same time as O, and get to see her again before we leave Vietnam.

And so, here we are!

The bus journey takes most of the day. During it, I am virtuous enough to keep my resolve and write another chunk of Neville, who is very pleased. He and I are getting on better and better. He definitely improves with attention. 

I also read Alain de Botton's Art of Travel, which M has been raving about. In his opening chapter, he recalls a trip he made to Barbados, which had been long anticipated. When he got there, however, surrounded by swaying palm trees and warm sands, he finds himself worrying about whether the lunch was included in the price, a tricky problem at work, and arguing with his wife about something petty over dinner. It seems, he reflects, sadly, that I have accidentally brought myself with me.

I can identify. 'I thought we would be all zen and chilled out' I write, bemusedly to my good friends, 'but we still worry about small things - and sometimes bicker about them, in a way we don't even do at home'

I am hoping this is normal. That this is travelling. That you aren't supposed to have a brain transplant somewhere on the flight here which renders you unruffleable and beatifically calm. The answer, from both friends and Mr de Botton, is a resounding yes. You are still a human being, wherever you are currently located. You still love deeply but perhaps imperfectly, you still worry about everyday inconsequentials. You still sweat the small stuff.

You spend more time together, says a friend who has travelled a lot with her partner, so there is more opportunity to bicker. Nothing is routine. So there are more decisions each day, more pressure. Even on holiday for a week, says another, my husband and I can get snappy together about what food we should eat!

M and I are lucky enough to be largely harmonious in general. I have had no doubts about our love for each other, but noted a rise in the number of petty disagreements.

"Guess what!" I say excitedly to M, as the bus rounds the corner towards our home stay, "We're normal!"

M of course, has known this all along.

Tell you what though, I think I'm still going to aim for perfect calm and harmony. In a whole year, we might have time to make it.

Following this reflection on the obvious, we arrive at the homestay suitably exuberant, and are greeted equally exuberantly by the family. We are warmly invited in and shown to the kitchen where a group of other travellers are laughing together and trying, somewhat thwartedly, to help make dinner. There are a number of generations in the house. Small children run in and out of rooms, crying out various woes, chasing each other and tumbling unexpectedly down the stairs. Our host and his wife are smiling and humorous, and his sister in law who is cooking the dinner, instructs us through the medium of limited English, smiles and several warm, impulsive hugs. I think I might be being especially gormless so seem to be treated to extra hugs and affection. I love it.

We chat to the other travellers in a way which hasn't happened very naturally when we've crossed paths with travellers on other trips. We chat all through dinner, and then repair to the lounge where we continue. We laugh a lot, conversation flows. In the end we and a German couple we have particularly enjoyed talking to, sit up discussing films before retiring to bed.

Tomorrow our host will drive us into the city, and if we are back by three, he will take us on a walk around his farm.

What is it about the countryside? The greenery? The pace of life? Everyone seems full somehow, of so much more life (though I am excepting from this the energetic and city dwelling O). I feel myself relax, the best parts of me exaggerated, the worst quelled or tamed.

I am ready to eulogise, Wordsworth style, on the virtues of countryside dwelling. And to think I found Wordsworth really boring. I am a philistine. Nature and I are one. This is the home of my soul.

I undress, happily, and then realise one besandled foot has been bitten to death by mosquitoes.

Not all nature, I think crossly, rubbing yet more anti mosquito lotion onto every available inch of my body, and a few unavailable inches, is welcome. In Wordsworth's considerable volume of collected works, 'Ode to a Mosquito' is conspicuously absent. That manuscript must have been mislaid over time.