Workcamp Diary - World Heritage Workcamp 2010 in Ha Long Bay
Monday, 02.08.2010 - 1.Day
Today is our first day of the Workcamp. We started in Hanoi with our first presentation at 11 o'clock. The local Volunteers prepared some presentations about Vietnam - the culture, the history and and important facts - SJ Vietnam and they gave us a short introduction about the World Heritage Workcamp. To get to know each other we had some games where we introduced ourselves and learned more about each other.
At 4pm we started with our private bus to Halong Bay. Everybody was excited because the most of the people of our workcamp knew Ha Long bay only from photos and pictures on the internet.
After a long drive through wonderful landscapes we arrived in Halong City, the capital city of Quang Ninh Province, at 9 pm. Unfortunately was our Hotel overbooked, so that we had to find another hotel for the night, but the local volunteers arranged this very fast and without any problems.
Tuesday, 03.08.2010 - 2.Day
Our second Day started with a breakfast in the French bakery next to our hotel. After the great breakfast we had a meeting with our coordinator Tung who explained the schedule and the activities for the next days in our workcamp.
After this morning program we ate Lunch and met each other to the second meeting on this day, where we divided the whole group into three small groups. These groups got the task to drive with the local bus to Bai Chai to see the beach and Ha Long Bay through their own eyes to get an impression about the World Heritage Site Ha Long Bay. Another task was to interview the local people and tourists about the environmental situation in and surround Halong City.
In the evening the groups got time to prepare a presentation about the results from the interviews this afternoon. to demonstrate the problems of Halong Bay they took pictures from the visible problems the people have to face in this area - garbage in the sea or on the beach. The photos and the interviews gave us a view behind the nice tourist pictures an let us think and discuss about the real environmental problems.
Our Daily news
World Heritage Workcamp 2008
Tuesday, September 23rd
Our cooking group prepared a traditionel vietnamese breakfast for us: a delicius noodelsoup. Then we were picked up by a bus and brought to the habour of Ha Long Bay. When we arrived the boat was one hour late and we had to wait, but it was not that bad because we used the time for a nice cool drink. When the boat finally arrived we left imediately to the bay area and started cruising around the island. The landscape was amazing. We seperated in groups and then we had time to take a closer look at the Ha Long Bay and we could take alot of beautiful pictures.
After that we sat again in groups and discussed the nice but also bad things we had seen. We described the problem of garbage in the bay and tried to find solutions for these problems.
After that, one of our tourguides made a presentation about the reason for The World Heritage Project in Ha Long Bay. It was very interesting
Doing the presentation we had already arrived at a cave we were about to visit. We got a very interesting tour in the nice and cool cave but some of us did really not wear the right shoes and sometimes we had to take care of our heads. We were told about the rock formation and how the cave was created 7 billion years ago.
Hungry and exhausted we got back to our boat and had lunch. After that we got of on another island for a break of one hour. Some of us used the time to climb the top of the island, others went swimming and some just had a sleep at the boat.
In the end we headed back home to the harbor we had left the morning.
Wednesday, September 24th
In the morning we split up into groups to prepare some ideas for our discussion tomorrow with the Ha Long Bay management committee. We looked at three separate areas
- The impacts of the growth of tourism on local lives
- Economic impacts of economic growth through tourism
- Applying the concept of ecotourism to Ha Long Bay
Each group came up with some questions to ask the management committee about each of these areas. We then presented these to the other groups.
In the afternoon there was heavy rain, and our visit to the local mines was cancelled.
In the evening we learnt about Patrimonito as a symbol of the UNESCO World Heritage Youth Guardians in a presentation by the two Korean volunteers. We also prepared some questions to ask the youth tomorrow about how they feel about tourism in Ha Long Bay.
Thursday, September 25th
We woke up late and had instant noodles for breakfast. Even though we overslept, we managed to leave the house on time, to go to the Ha long bay Management department.
The vice president introduced the issues of Ha long bay ; The geographic facts, the effects of tourism, pollution problems and how they handle them. After the presentation we discussed the topics that we talked about yesterday. (The economic, environmental and social impacts of tourism)
The representatives of the department also gave us an insight to different projects. For instance the Eco Boats (educational trips to the bay), the fisherman village project (dust bins to the families, pick up garbage everyday) and different school projects (information and discussion).
After the lunch break we went to the Youth Union of Ha Long City. The voluntary organization intends to protect the environment of Ha long bay, co-operates with the police to regulate the traffic and started the campaign to make Ha long bay one of the new 7 world wonders. Together with the youth union we discussed general environmental problems and possible solutions. Then we held a drawing contest for the boys and girls and they drew their own Patrimonito symbol. The winners got SJV t-shirts.
After the volunteers presented different songs from their home countries, we went back home to get some dinner.
Friday, September 26th
We started the 5th day of the work camp with a typical Vietnamese breakfast. We had noodles.
Another rainy day in Halong city… in the morning we prepared the activities that we will do with the children on Tuesday. We were divided into 3 groups.
The first group was in charge of our mascot Patrimonito. They prepared a short explanation of what the World Heritage is including the creation of the symbol and some definitions. The artist of the group used its skills to make drawings of World Heritage sites.
The second group worked on an introduction of the environment in Halong Bay. They prepared a visual exhibition with some pictures to make it easier for the children to understand.
The third group invented a game in three steps. At first, the children should collect rubbish around the school. Then they will make a Patrimonito with all the rubbish and finally they will have to throw the rubbish into garbage bins to score points. The winner of the rubbish collect will get a crown as well as the person with the highest point.
After having a seafood lunch prepared by the group number 4, we used our creativity in order to make key chains for the children. The volunteers created the patrimonito figures, flowers, suns, stars, ships and other eco-friendly figures. We also started to create the boards for the activities.
We finished the day with a great dinner and a relaxing evening after having the daily meeting.
Saturday, September 27th
We started out the day with splitting up into groups in which we all made two pieces of clothing for our fashion show in the evening. These were made out of several different materials ranging from plastic bags to old newspapers. The purpose was to make clothing out of garbage to raise awareness about recycling.
Before we started to make the actual clothes, we were shown pictures of similar styled clothes made of scrap material. This was to inspire us and to get an idea of our own designs which we first sketched on paper before we started to make them. We had additional help from two Vietnamese girls who both had some experience with designing.
Because of the continuous rain, we had to change our plans and have the fashion show in our house as opposed to on the beach. In addition to the people participating in the fashion show, people from the neighborhood came around to see the show. So we still managed to have quite an audience. All in all the fashion show was short, but we had lots of fun.
Monday, September 29th
After breakfast we walked all the way to the harbor where we were going on a boat to a floating village in Ha Long Bay. In the village we visited some children in a school whom we told about our organization, SJ Vietnam, and one of the teachers told us about the school and the village. Some of the people in the village live all their lives in the bay and have never been on land. The teachers live in the city but come to the floating village in the weekdays to teach the children. The children go to school from when they are 7 years old until they are 11. After we got to know each other a little better, we made a drawing contest with the topic I Love Ha Long Bay. The 10 best drawings won one of our famous keychains, which we also learned the children to do themselves.
It seemed as if they had a good time, which was important for us.
After visiting the village we had a delicious lunch on the boat and we relaxed for a little while before we moved on. We were supposed to interview some fishermen about their work, how they live and about their opinion on the environment. We were split in to groups where we had to write some questions for the fishermen, but it turned out that only two from each group could go see the fishermen.
At 3 PM we headed back to the harbor where we had to walk home again.
Tuesday, September 30th
On our second to last day at Halong Bay we visitted a middle school and a high school, both were private institutions. We followed the same overall program with an introduction about SJ and patrimonito, key chain making, drawing contest and games for the smaller children. Added to this there was of course several songs performed by us and the locals.
In conclusion we managed to carry out our message about Patrimonito and the environment in Halong Bay. This was done in a way that enabled us to interact with the locals and learn a lot about their culture as well as being fun for all parties.
Wednesday. October 1st
We finished our workcamp with a visit to Ha Tu coal mine, which felt like it was a million miles away from the beautiful Ha Long Bay we saw on the first day. The mine was huge, dirty, like a scar on the landscape with no sign of life within it. From the highest point on the site we could see out over the Bay, but if we turned around we just saw a huge hole in the ground, the contrast between the two could not have been more apparent. When we talked to representatives from the company they told us about plans to try to restore the natural environment of the area. They have planted one species of tree on the upper levels of the site and grass on the lower levels. Right now it is hard to imagine the site ever returning to its original state.
As well as our tour around the site we met the youth union of the company and introduced a little bit about ourselves and the work we had done so far.
