Tour with Microventures

So on Saturday we went on a tour with Bloom microventures.org which is a non-profit social business. It provides microcredit to entrepreneurs living below the poverty line.  When you go on the tour part of the money goes directly to the persons home you visit in the countryside.

Website:- http://www.bloom-microventures.org/vietnam/

Ms Mo was the lady we met who is 38 and lives in the Hoa Binh district community with her family and father in law.  This is common in Vietnam to live with the family of your husband. 

Ms Mo

Some of the local neighbours...so cute.

Ms Mo decided to show us how to make sugar cane dumplings.  Above with Loan (our tour guide) and below where everyone got in on the activity.

Part of our group sitting having tea and a discussion at Ms Mo's house.   

   

Another of the neighbors, the little girl just came in and sat down with us.

The kitchen in the house below...the pot is ready to boil the dumplings.

The family had been living off Cassava (a type of sweet potato) growing it on their piece of land.  The price of Cassava has dropped to a point where the revenue barely covers the costs.

                                         
                    This is their land with some Cassava trees on the hill and corn in front.

                          These are the Cassava plants up close...the roots are the Cassava.

Ms Mo came up with the idea of diversifying the family income into livestock production.  She purchased the first loan last year to invest in chickens.

Below you can see she still has chickens but the number has been kept low at this time of the year as it’s very cold and she has to keep them inside the house.  They are really fat chickens though!

 With the profit earned from the first investment Ms Mo started raising pigs for meat.  With the loan we have helped with she is going to expand the pig farm.  It was really nice to see where the money will go.

A particularly photo friendly pig..she currently has 3. 

Below the pig pen beside the house.

After we went there we travelled to another of their loan recipients where they are starting up a homestay place and they cooked an amazing lunch for us.

Below looking through under the house where we ate.

                                                   Below is the house from the street.

They tried to teach us how to weave a basket...some were more successful than others..count me out of that group...I was hopeless and impatient.

What it should look like on the right, a shrimp catching basket and on the left the started baskets for us.

Phil and Kayla having a go at it.

In the near future Bloom will able to offer the tour with the homestay included.  This is the homestay area...looked really cosy.

Below a pic with random buffalo who wandered in to be fed next to the house.

Following lunch we went for a wet and cold walk to see the lake just down the road, which would be beautiful in summer or on a nice day.  That's a fish farm in the middle of the picture.

                         

Below are the baskets, like the ones we made, that are tied together on the back of the boat to go fishing.

                               

We all got back in the bus to head for a look at a local medical centre built by the Australian government, see the plaque below.  It has a very good reputation, people come from miles around to get treatment there.

Interesting food pyramid above, with salt at the top of this chart.

Prices to visit the centre, it costs about $7.50 to have a baby delivered there.

 We went into a local ‘factory’ where they made straw brooms which are exported to China…funny to even say that!  It was interesting.

              We had a quick look at a local primary school, no kids it was Saturday afternoon.

                                                  Picture of the school grounds.

                                     

                                     

Then home to Hanoi.  It was a very cold and wet day but well worth the time taken and the money invested.  Nice to have a day where the money we spend goes to a good cause.  It was also nice to be somewhere where we didn't feel that we were imposing as you often do looking around a village as a tourist.  We felt like we had contributed and the people were very welcoming.

A nice day in the countryside.

Christmas Letter 2014

DOWLER CHRISTMAS LETTER 2014

Well it has been quite the year with the big wedding happening as the first wedding of this generation of my family.  Updates on everyone are below…...

Phil – Well he has had a crazy year following his mention last November of wanting to improve the Hanoi campus of RMIT.  He moved to Hanoi to start as Head of Campus on the 24^th of February and I was back and forwards until the end of March.  The job has been rewarding but also very busy.  Meeting with heads of government, embassies, high schools along with the general running of the everyday operations of the University. There is already an amazing turn around in the culture and atmosphere of the place.  RMIT has now committed around 1 million dollars for improvements of the campus.  It’s also official Phil prefers HCMC to Hanoi. But don’t tell the people in Hanoi. Probably here for another 5 years….  Hopefully Leanne didn’t read that sentence……PHIIIIIILLLLLLLL!!!!!!!(from Leanne)

Leanne – After the move to Hanoi I had some difficulty settling in, it was another big change and I had to find new friends, a hairdressers, nail and massage places, it was hard!  It did take the usual 6 mths to find my feet but now I have a few friends, am teaching English around 7 hrs per wk and volunteering as the volunteer coordinator 2 full days a week at KOTO (you can google them - www.koto.com.au). I now actually prefer Hanoi over HCMC.

Whitney – There was a lot of focus on the wedding which was amazing. Whitney & Cameron did all of the work and also paid for most of it, hence the limit on numbers, so a big thank you to them for putting on such a great party!  We enjoyed our visit home in August for the event. Whitney, now living in Brisbane, is working for JLL, a company that looks after shopping centres, in her role as assistant property manager.  She also completed her Real Estate licence this year for her role.  She is enjoying having family around her in Brisbane.

Hannah – Started her first year as a graduate with the ATO (Australian Tax Office).  She moved around 3 different departments during the year and was offered 3 full time positions for next year, some people were not offered any.  She has decided on Trusts.  She and her boyfriend Zac share a townhouse with Whitney and Cameron which seems to be working out really well. 

Jaimee – Currently in India on holiday with her boyfriend Will, she has just finished her first year at Swinburne Uni in Melbourne studying Marketing. She is working mornings as a receptionist at Future Eye a communications company where she was working before she started Uni.  Her and Will are going to move into their own place in the new year after Will starts work at PWC. 

So….that is the update.  We are so grateful for our family, our friends and our health.  Without any of these we would not be able to be doing what we are doing.  We hope you have a great Christmas and New Year and look forward to hearing everyone else’s news at some point.

 from the Dowlers 

Luang Prabang, Lao - relaxing....

We hadn't made it to Lao yet during our now 2 years of living in Vietnam.  We had the opportunity of a public holiday so tacked on 1 day and we had 4 days to enjoy our visit.  It only take an hour to fly to Luang Parabang in Lao which is obviously very close to Hanoi.  Visa is easy to do at the airport, although US dollars in hand are useful.  I had to actually go out of the airport to the ATM to come back in and pay for our visa.  They only took local money, Kep, or US dollars.  The welcome was very calm and quiet like a country town airport.

Straight from the official website 'Situated in northern Laos the township of Luange Prabang sits on a peninsular at the confluence of two rivers, the Nam Khan and the famous Mekong.  With its charming combination of timber Lao houses and European colonial architecture it is easy to see why UNESCO declared it a World Heritage site in 1995'.  The province has a total population of just over 452,900 which includes 12 distinct ethnic groups.  The Khmu are the largest ethnic group in the province and make up the majority (around 44% of the provincial population'

It is very Thai feeling and the food is more to the Thai style. We arrived in time for lunch and a wander in the main street.  Soooo much quieter than Hanoi, which was a nice change.

 

The view from the window of the hotel which was in a great spot and the manager was fabulous, it was run by a Canadian lady who gave us lots of tips of where to go and where to eat.

The next morning we headed off for a cycle ride around the city.

Coffee with a view of the Mekong.

Some pics of the beautiful 'Wats' or pagodas in the city.

The museum in the centre of the city.

A familiar site around the city, no helmet but they are keeping cool and out of the sun.

One of the lovely buildings that are part of the street scape in LP.

                 Tuk Tuk's are the way to travel and you can pick them up on the street anywhere.

Loved this in the local school yard, workplace health and safety?!?!?!

We headed out to look at the local waterfall, one of THE things to do, so of course we had to...

On the way to the waterfall there is a bear sanctuary, you can see them from the pathway.

You can just make out the bears.....

Walking literally through the waterfall.

Committed to having a picnic even though there had been lots

of rain and the waterfall had overflowed into the picnic area...

and below you can see just how close we were to the waterfall having a cup of tea.

So VERY early the next morning, 6am, we got up to have a look at the local people lining up on the streets to give alms to the Buddhist monks...an amazing thing to watch.  We were sitting on the front step of our hotel to take these pics.

                                        

        Hundreds of monks went past us and the ladies gave each of them a tiny bit of food each.

                                        

                                         Monks out and about...a familiar site during the day.

We took a local boat and rode along the Mekong to some caves....a long 2 hour ride up river and a quick 1 hour to get back with the river pushing us back.

Some local kids swimming on the side of the boat

The cave has been made into a pagoda

The view after climbing a couple of hundred stairs.

Buddha statues all through the cave

Keeping the umbrella use up...great on the boat as well.

We called into a small village where weaving is the local industry. Below the some of the yarns drying after being dyed. 

 I picked up a lovely runner from this lady that is now on my coffee table.

We headed out to the weaving place in Luang Prabang the next day.  There is a free tuk tuk out there and you can do weaving and dyeing classes, not our cup of tea but it would be lovely weaving looking at the Mekong.  It was really nice and relaxing, we had lunch out there as well.

The shop at Ock Pop Tok, and the lady wearing a traditional style of costume.

                                         Found some mango and sticky rice to eat before we left....yummo!

and that is Luang Prabang, next time we will have to go to Vientienne but we will definitely be back for another relaxing visit to Lao.