Tag: Grassroots perspectives

We’re leaving Hanoi in just under three hours time. It has been a mixed week for us and a real contrast to our busy and productive time in Thailand. Hanoi is a lovely city, although a lot more cars and tourists than when I first came here in the mid 1990s have spoilt some of the charm of the old part of the city. Regardless, it was good to have some rest and the girls have loved exploring all the little streets and many interesting shops. The latter part of the week became a bit frustrating for me. It was good to get out in the countryside on Thursday and do a bit of informal filming, but not as much as I had hoped to achieve in the Red River area.

By yesterday I was ready to be moving, but we’ve had to wait for my former student to return to Thai Nguyen City, two hours north of Hanoi. That’s where we are heading this afternoon and will be going out to see some farmers in that area with Mao. Thai Nguyen province is famous for its green tea production. We’re not sure about internet access from there, so may not be able to send updates until we come back through Hanoi on Tuesday evening.

We’ll be catching a night train then down to Hue.

My number one goal in Viet Nam is to get down into the Mekong Delta and will be doing as much as I can to ensure we make the most of the remainder of our time here. I read this morning in the English Viet Nam News that the Mekong Delta is experiencing drought, forest fire risk and salination problems because of low water levels. Current predictions are for a late start to the monsoon this year. I’m very interested to get out into the Delta area and talk more to people about what they are experiencing, and hopefully we can meet some people who are working for the future.

After a bit of confusion with the local travel agent, who thought we had cancelled our day trip, we were on the road at 10am this morning to the fields around Hanoi. A few tourist spots were also in the itinerary.

We managed to stop and talk to two small rice growers. The first, Nguyen Huu Chan, has been growing rice since 1990 on his 224 sq m plot of land. The second, Nguyen Thi Dung, has been growing rice for 37 years, since she was 7 years old. Both farmers are experiencing warmer weather this season which is good for them as the rice at this time of year is normally very slow growing. Sometimes the weather is drier than in the past. It is hard to generalise from two brief informal interviews, but these two small farmers exemplified what our friends here have said in terms of many people not being well informed about what is happening more widely in terms of climate change and its local relevance.

There are important issues here in Viet Nam. Rapid urban development and industrial expansion are leading to loss of productive land, intensification of agriculture is taking place. These various pressures make the life of the small farmer relatively tenuous, particularly on the urban fringe. There are also other issues such as ongoing deforestation, some of which is illegal, and the need to balance this with reafforestation programmes.

In our upcoming visit to Thai Nguyen Province we hope to share a few positive stories from farmers in that area, some of whom I have visited in the past.

After a hectic, but extremely productive, schedule in Thailand we’ve been enjoying a bit of rest and recovery time since arriving in Hanoi on Sunday. I’ve also been working to facilitate an itinerary for the rest of our time in Viet Nam. Things aren’t as easy here and it is taking a little time to organise something.

I’ve made contact with my former MPhil student, Mao, from my days as a Senior Research Fellow at University of Waikato. We’ll be heading north of Hanoi, to Thai Nguyen, on the weekend and doing some things there for a couple of days.  After that we’ll be coming back to Hanoi and then heading south to Hue.

Tomorrow we’ve booked a local tour, with a car and tour guide to accompany us, northeast of Hanoi for the day. We’ll be visiting a craft village and stopping where we can to talk to a few farmers and do some filming.