The Drunken Picnic at Thac Ba Lake

“Một! Hai! Ba!”

We chorused before draining our shot glasses together.

My father and I joined my mother and her coworkers’ picnic in Thac Ba Lake when we went to North Vietnam last November. On a cold Thursday morning, we piled into a boat and travelled to a little island in Thac Ba, where, hours later, we would all get tipsy from drinking too much rice wine.