Day 3 @ Work

The wedding dress shop where we
 reached accidentally in the morning

We are spending this week mostly meeting with people at various non-profits in Hue. We walked over to Dean's hotel in the morning, spent a little time chatting with him about different approaches to forest conservation and community livelihoods, till Mr. Chuong from CORENARM came, and headed to the office for Hue Union for Science and Technology Associations (HUSTA). There was some mix-up with the directions and the taxi driver drove us straight into the courtyard of a fancy wedding dress shop. We made it to our meeting on time and met some very senior people, including the Chairman. They were very gracious and explained about the work they are doing, which has involved supporting CORENARM and agriculture, but also goes beyond it. I am grateful to CORENARM for doing this for us, this is making our experience so much richer. There seems to be a significant development sector/organization presence in Hue and it is nice to learn about it. We were also told about Hue has a large number of universities and doctoral students. Many of the residents of Hue have highlighted how they enjoy the pace and quality of life here more compared to say a bigger and busier city such as Ho Chi Minh.




We then went to the office of Tropenbos, a Dutch NGO. More here. They have one of the best forestry-related libraries in Hue. The staff there gave us a lot of program material and a copy of a recent book for their library about FLEGT and REDD+. I know about REDD+ due to our work on PES but nothing about FLEGT and am looking forward to reading the book and learning more. Our first field visit is on Friday and I am looking forward to that.

During our meetings, we often get asked where are we from and tips on what we should and shouldn't do (visit the pagodas, go boat riding, be careful of street food but enjoy the cuisine of Hue, names and contact details of other international volunteers, avoid the heat and lots more). Cafes are abundant in the area where we are living and we went to go get coffee for our group meeting today.

This amused me.

Somewhere during the middle of the day we had a discussion (longer than it should have been) about whether it was Tuesday or Wednesday and I think we were split evenly. That should tell you a little bit about how it is going. I am having a very interesting time but I would be lying if I did not confess that the heat has given me the opposite of whatever insomnia is. I can nap at will. I have funny stories about how we have been getting by with miming, explaining that we want vegetarian food, buying clothes for Meagan and more but I will save that for another day.