Turnbull Family Pacific Tour 2015

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...

Over the last couple of nights in Hanoi we've walked around the local night market, where the neighbourhood had cordoned off some streets for pedestrians only. What a treat to walk around with some room around us, rather than being cheek-to-jowl with so many scooters and people. Most people were eating outside on the sidewalk on tiny plastic stools about a foot high, at little plastic tables about knee high. There must be at least seven million of these little stools in the city, one for every person. So the last couple of nights we joined the crowd of locals with a smattering of tourists at one of these outdoor places, and had our dinner on small plastic stools like everyone else. All the locals were out, some dressed well and others more casually. Small bones were on the ground from all the happy customers who had come before us and enjoyed some pidgins I believe, which were a speciality there. I gave that menu choice a wide berth along with frogs and other exotic items, and we s...

At our small hotel we interacted mostly with Bella, who spoke English pretty well and who provided us with friendly and efficient service throughout our stay. She also told me her take on life in Hanoi and Vietnam. She started off with a history lesson of the last 150 years in Vietnam and then moved on to a dissertation on their oral and written languages, both modern and ancient. A bit dry and along party lines no doubt. She eventually confided on daily life here. Her biggest concerns are the high cost of living relative to wages, lack of government services (especially health care), and graft - what she called black money . She revealed that the official monthly salary for all government workers and government funded private companies started at $200 USD per month, with increases over time based on seniority. But she said it is often hard to find these jobs and black money plays its role. She said everyone knows about black money but nobody is supposed to talk about it. She ...

Yesterday we went to see the National Museum of Vietnamese History . The building itself was an elegant, ochre-coloured structure completed in 1932 by the French, and incorporated a blend of Chinese and French design elements. Some of the museum covered ancient history but we went through the recent history exhibits which described the French colonial period, and the wars and insurrections with the French, Japanese, French again, and Americans. The exhibit had a large collection of artifacts over this period, including the flight jacket from a U.S. F-4 pilot named Colonel Norman Cagadixo who was captured when his fighter jet was shot down on May 12th, 1967. I found this disturbing and tried looking him up on-line to see what happened to him, but I couldn't find any information. The Vietnamese people I've interacted with fall into three groups so far - people beeping at me to get out the way or at least not veer into their vehicle, hawkers trying to sell me something which I don...

We flew from Vientiane to Hanoi yesterday. After sorting out our visas with some difficulty at the airport, we purchased new SIM cards for our phones and took a taxi to our hotel. My first impressions of this city of seven million were of a new clean airport; impressive highways without much traffic; beautifully landscaped surroundings along the way, tended by workers in straw cone hats; flags flying over billboards celebrating the 70th anniversary of the communist party's declaration of independence; and a fabulous modern bridge on our way into town. Then I saw a different side. I noticed a heavy smoggy haze hanging over the city. As we drove onto the smaller streets, I saw brightly coloured colonial buildings in various states of disrepair. and packed crowds of scooters and people making their way along crowded streets. This city is so different from my experiences. The shops along the streets are often six or eight feet wide with goods spilling out of them. People wo...

We visited a Belgian restaurant last evening which served a hundred different varieties of expensive beer to go with steamed clams and fries. Come to think of it, we've been eating western food for quite a while now. I think partly as a change of pace from local Asian cuisine, and partly because the recommendations we get on-line tend to favour western style restaurants. We mixed it up for lunch and dinner today and ate some local Lao style meals. One of my meals came with some tasty fat mushrooms I couldn't identify, which reminded me that I've seen a large variety of mushrooms on offer in Laos. Back in Luang Prabang the locals would pick wild mushrooms and sell them in the market, either fresh or dried. The first time I walked down to one of the main street corners in Luange Prabang I had to watch my step to avoid the mushrooms laid out on the sidewalk to dry in the sun. We were walking around the night market last night and we spotted the first busker I've seen in La...

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...