Turnbull Family Pacific Tour 2015

We just left Vietnam today en route to Singapore. It's as good a time as any to reflect on our time spent in Vietnam. It seems visitors either love or hate their stay. I suppose it's easy enough to have a bad time or opinion. Just don't keep an open mind to other ways of living, or just focus on the lower standard of living. We were in the developing world after all without all the comforts and amenities of home. There would be a lot to complain about if one were so inclined. It was hard to communicate with the local people most of the time. The traffic was tough. It was often hard to walk on the street let alone cross it. We spent weeks walking in single file most of the time like we were holding a rope up the mountain. There was the constant beeping from motorcycles, mopeds and cars passing by at close quarters. There was the lack of safe work practises in the street. Just yesterday Catheleen was crossing the street when a wire from above fell on her feet; I don't kno...

Today we visited Cat Cat village, a small village down a mountain slope, well set up for easy tourist access with good stone steps all the way down the village and along a river. Catheleen and Elizabeth had already been there yesterday but I talked them into joining John and me today. The kids wanted to take a motorcycle taxi ride to the place but I insisted on a car taxi. It was a moot argument as it turned out. After a one kilometre car ride the road was blocked and we needed to switch to motorcycles or walk. I enjoyed the short motorcycle ride with John and I on separate bikes. Once Elizabeth heard a motorcycle ride was back in play, she and Catheleen agreed to join us, and they took a motorcycle ride down to meet us. We later took motorcycles back up to Sa Pa. Zoom zoom. The village was worth the trip for the views of the terraced rice fields alone. I had no knowledge of how rice was grown or harvested before this trip. I had some vague notion that rice grains grew in the root of ...

We took an overnight train north from Hanoi to Lao Cai , which is just on the border with China, and then took a bus up into the mountains to Sa Pa , a small mountain town about 1,500 meters above sea level. We are here for a few days to enjoy the scenery and weather mainly. Yesterday's high was 22 Celsius with sunny skies. Considering how hot it's been on our trip so far, this is a welcome reprieve. The bus ride up through the mountains was spectacular, with views of terraced rice fields on the mountain slopes. Some of the slopes looked to be on 45 degree angles, with each terrace only a few feet wide. Harvest time is in a couple of weeks, so the rice fields have long green grass stalks. Since it was cool here this morning, I had no excuse and went for a run around the town, something I haven't done since we left Vang Vieng in Laos a while back. I was reminded I do need to stay aware of my surroundings around here. Case in point, I was running along a walking path around a...

I've tried reading the main English language newspaper in Laos called The Vientiane Times once or twice. There are many reports of meetings of government officials either praising other officials for improving infrastructure or occasionally criticizing others for not making enough progress. There are articles trying to encourage or educate people on something; one article provided a case study on a rice farming family that became more prosperous by learning how to grow vegetables. Another article provided some statistics on progress made to eradicate poverty by 2020, where poverty is defined as adequate food, clothing, shelter, clean drinking water and access to health care. One last article on the post and telecommunications sector "stressed the importance of imbuing civil servants and workers with stronger political ideology to ensure the successful implementation of the ministry's plan in the coming years." I'm not making this up. Apparently the Laos constituti...

There's an old French colonial saying, "the Vietnamese plant the rice, the Cambodians tend the rice, and the Laotians listen to it grow". This was not intended as a complement to the Laotians, but perhaps it should be. The Laotians are pretty laid back and daily life runs at an easy pace around here, which isn't a bad thing in my view. Last night on the way to the night market I saw a large number of vendors along the main street selling strange items to the locals that were unfamiliar to me. They consisted of cones made from banana leaves, with orange flowers like marigolds placed with toothpicks on the apex and around the base. Earlier in the day I had seen rice shaped into flat circles and left to dry in the sun, and we finally connected the dots. The rice circles are used as a base for the cones with flowers, and sold to the locals for use as offerings at spirit houses. The locals have the same type of spirit houses as most of the businesses and homes we saw in Th...

From what I've observed the Thai people are more outgoing than the Laotians, and more likely to smile and say "sa-wa-dee-kah", which is Thai for hello. The Laotian people appear to be more reserved and less likely to look you in the eyes and say "sa-bai-dee", which is Laotian for hello. Maybe they are too polite - a flaw shared by both Laotians and Canadians? In the country-side yesterday I saw farmers and villagers living and working in some pretty basic conditions. People carried bundles of sticks on their backs, I suppose as fuel for fires. Farmers worked the rice fields wearing iconic straw hats shaped like cones. Women carried two straw baskets attached by rope to a wood stick that rested on their shoulders. There were many muddy roads, small one-room houses with corrugated steel roofs, and an abundant use of simple bamboo structures and platforms to keep people and goods off the muddy ground. Despite the modest houses, the wooden doors on the buildings w...

Last night we went out for dinner for local Lao food. The meals we ordered tasted similar to Thai food but with some variations - less spicy and sweeter. We'll need to try some more dishes to form a better appreciation. I want to try something called riverweed, which I'm guessing grows in the Mekong river. There was a storm last evening that cut our plans short to visit the night market with the kids, and lasted through most of the night. Between the storm, someone coughing up a lung next door, and a rooster that should get his eyes checked if it thinks 4 AM is anywhere near dawn, it was tough for everyone to get a decent night's sleep. I did for the most part though, thanks again to earplugs. We enquired whether the person next door with obvious health problems had checked out - he had. I hope he went to a clinic, although I understand they are hard to find in this part of the world. Today we took a tour. Our first stop was XangHai village which was billed as a whiskey mak...