Lac Village and Ha Long Bay

To read more blogs by the amazing Rebecca Wales, visit her blog at: rebeccaisabroad.wordpress.com

Last week was amazing! I didn’t realize how stuffy the city was until I was out in open fields and surrounded by the mountains. The pollution in Hanoi is definitely something that affects me day to day. After spending a lot of time outside in the city my lungs burn, and it hurts to take deep breaths. When I arrived in Lac Village, I was pumped that I could breath fresh air again.

Lac Village is absolutely gorgeous. The village was originally completely oriented around agriculture, but in the last two decades, the leaders of the community came together and decided to open up the village to tourism. Most people live in Thai style stilt houses, and they dominate the town center. We stayed in one of many “homestay” stilt houses in the community. Almost everyone slept in one large room with sleeping mats lined up on the floor. We all slept under mosquito nets, because malaria is becoming increasingly prevalent in the area.

We had class in the community-meeting house, and sat on the floor in front of small wooden desks. Though we did have classes, we spend most of our time interacting with the community and learning experientially. We visited the district health center, where we were able to talk to the director. One thing that I have found confusing and frustrating throughout my time in Vietnam has been the lack of consistency in the statistics that are presented to us. We are constantly receiving different figures from things such as prevalence of a disease, to the amounts of government funding provided to different programs. These discrepancies make it hard to be comparative and analytical in our studies.

Many hospitals and providers will also deny that they have seen patients that belong to a stigmatized group. We have encountered multiple instances were doctors claim that they don’t have any “crazy people” or mental health patients, but the next town over does. We then visit people in the town who say there are plenty of mental health patients. We have also encountered many cultural differences in the way people talk about health. For example, we may ask if people in the community use “traditional medicine” and they will respond no. We then ask if they see a shaman or take herbs to help with ailments and they will say yes. It is also very common for people to not want to share if their family members have struggled with a health issues. Many people that we have talked to believe that poor health is a result of paying for your bad deeds or those of your ancestors, so sharing a poor health status may cause others to view the family negatively.

We spent one of our days hiking to a remote smaller village about 2 hours and 45 minutes from our homestay. It was incredibly hot (93 degrees), which made the hike more tiring than it should have been. We were led by a local guide who knew the area well. Once we arrived to the village, our guide stopped by the house of the head of the village, who showed us were we could eat our packed lunches. We ate lunch next to volleyball court and a platform with decorations from a wedding that had happened the day before.

We then proceeded to interview women in three different houses around the village with the help of our amazing translators. It was incredibly powerful to hear from each of the women about their perspective on health and community structure. After meeting with each woman, we gave them a gift of sugar and condensed milk to thank them for their time.

We quickly learned that the village was not as remote as we thought, once golf arts came to pick us up and drove us back to our home stay in about 20 minutes. I found myself thinking a lot about how much tourism had likely changed the place were staying. The small community we were staying was completely geared towards tourists, with narrow streets lined with shops selling bracelets, bags, and clothes. Rice paddies surrounded the community on all sides, and there was even water running between or under most houses. I could imagine that many of the home stay houses were built on land that was used for growing rice just 20 years ago.

Once we arrived back in Hanoi at the end of the week we had a very quick turn around, and after one night, we were up bright and early and on our way to Ha Long Bay. I was part of a small group of people on the program who worked to organize the trip, so I was excited to experience the bay after so many touristy booklets.

Everyone on the program went on the trip, including our traveling faculty and program fellow, so we had an entire boat to ourselves for the night. The boat was set up like a mini cruise boat with cabins on the 2nd and third floor and a roof deck along the entire roof of the boat. We started our experience out with a visit to a huge cave called “Surprising Cave”.

It was definitely the biggest cave I have ever been in, but it was evident how much people and tourism had changed its original appearance. We then went kayaking on the bay, which was really cool because we were able to kayak away from all of the boats into very peaceful water. That night we hung out as a big group on the boat, before getting up in the morning for tai chi. We then headed to the largest pear farm in the bay for a tour and an explanation of how pearls are made.

For our final few hours on the boat the sun finally came out, which made the karsts and green-blue water even more breathtaking.

It was definitely hard for me to come back to the city after being in such beautiful places, but I am excited for our last week in Hanoi, and I am starting to get pumped for Cape Town SA!!

#Vietnam