Hue - Day 3

Tuesday 15th April

The second of our early mornings and Tom and I were first to breakfast again. We had to be ready to get taxies to our study sites.

We met up with the students in our groups, our site was a street that is a potential site to be improved to promote tourism. A lot of discussion from the Vietnamese students was comparing this area to Hoi An and how it could potentially be like Hoi An...

Today's visits were really interesting as we got to talk to some of the local people and go into their homes.  We were able to interact better with all of these people and got a great insight into their thoughts thanks to the students and professors we were with.

One of the houses we visited

One local (who must have assumed do to the make up of our group that we were government people) came up to us to complain about the lack of community involvement in a particular project which ended up having to be redone anyway because the original plan did not work. This was an interesting topic as we had been told by the Da Nang University that all of the developments that are carried out are what the people want, and also community engagement is carried out. We were always skeptical of this comment, believing we may have been presented a bit of a front to what actually happens.

Rice fields in Hue

It took a while to get talking to the students but eventually we all sat down for a drink and got some ideas down as well as asking things about them. Tom, Carly and I have 3 Vietnamese students in our group. One can speak English very well, another is pretty good and the third doesn't say much and possibly doesn't know much English.

At 11am we parted ways for a 3 hour lunch break. Tom, Scott and I went to the Japanese restaurant around the corner from the hotel before having a bit of a rest and then heading to the University for more discussions in our groups at 2 pm.

This process of working in groups was a lot harder than I anticipated.  It is difficult to get the opinions of the Vietnamese students because of the language differences but also possibly because of what they have been taught compared to what we have been taught.  They seem to always want to move to a Western way of planning, but we have seen how that has evolved and some of the problems with it. We beleive that there are many ideas that we can take from them but it is so jard to get these ideas when they are set in their ways. It is probably a similar experience in reverse for them.

After Uni a group of is headed to a supermarket recommended by the students. We got some really cheap food and snacks before heading back to the hotel to relax. We went out for tea at 6:30 with a few others at a place that had been recommended to them. Following tea the girls all had to pick up some dresses from the tailors,  so us boys decided to get some more shirts.

The supermarket area

The people in the shop were pretty chatty so we ended up waiting around talking about Vietnam and Australia until the girls were all finished.

Tomorrow we have a day of field trips to various tourist sites with the uni.

- Nick