Describe a game or activity you enjoyed as a child

When I was small kid, my favourite game was ô ăn quan. It is a traditional game in Vietnam and you play it with small stones. First you draw ten squares on the ground and two big half circle in the end. Then each player take the stones from one square and put them one by one in the other squares, and if you are lucky you can win the stones of your friend.

I played this game with my cousin Linh and also with a boy in my street, his name was Tuấn. He was not a good loser and sometimes he cheated, so we always had arguments.

Usually we played in a small alley behind the house of my grandmother in Huế. There was a big starfruit tree, so it was not so hot there. We drew the squares on the ground by a stick, and when it was raining we played inside on the kitchen floor with chalk.

I enjoyed this game because it was free, we didn't need to buy anything. Also you need to think a lot before you move, so I think it made my brain more better for maths. But the best part was the time with my friends. After the game my grandmother always gave us sweet soup, and we forgot about the fighting. I still miss those days very much.

I'd like to describe a traditional Vietnamese game called ô ăn quan, which I used to play almost every day when I was about seven or eight. It's played on a board of ten squares that you draw on the ground, with a bigger space at each end, and you use small stones or seeds. Players take turns picking up the stones from one square and dropping them one at a time into the next squares, and the aim is to capture as many as possible.

I usually played with my cousin Linh and a boy called Tuấn, who lived on the same street. Tuấn was a terrible loser, to be honest, and he often tried to cheat when he thought we weren't looking.

We'd normally play in the little alley behind my grandmother's house in Huế. There was a starfruit tree there, so it stayed quite cool even in the afternoon. We just drew the board in the dirt with a stick, and if it was raining, we'd move inside and draw it with chalk on the floor of her kitchen.

There were a few reasons why I enjoyed it so much. First, you didn't need any equipment, so we could play whenever we wanted. It also involved quite a lot of strategy, because you had to plan your moves carefully, and I think it actually helped me for maths at school. But mostly I loved it because of the atmosphere: we'd argue constantly, then my grandmother would call us in for a bowl of sweet soup, and everything would be forgotten.

The game I loved most as a child was something called ô ăn quan, a traditional Vietnamese game that's a bit like a simplified version of mancala. You draw a row of ten squares on the ground with a semicircle at each end, put a handful of pebbles in each square, and then take it in turns to scoop up the stones from one square and drop them one by one along the board. If you land in the right place, you capture everything in the next square, and whoever ends up with the most stones wins.

I mostly played it with my cousin Linh, who was the same age as me, and a boy from a few doors down called Tuấn, who was famous in our neighbourhood for counting his pebbles with remarkable creativity.

We'd play in the narrow alley behind my grandmother's house in Huế, crouched in the shade of a starfruit tree. The board was scratched into the dirt with a stick, and when it rained we'd simply redraw it in chalk on her tiled kitchen floor, which she pretended not to notice.

Looking back, I think I enjoyed it because it was the perfect mixture of luck and cunning. It cost nothing, a game could last ten minutes or an entire afternoon, and you had to think several moves ahead, which I'm convinced is why I ended up loving maths. But honestly, half the fun was the arguing. Every game ended in a heated debate about whether Tuấn had cheated, and then my grandmother would call us in for sweet soup and we'd forget all about it.