Letters en route to Lao Chai!

I am honoured to announce that I am currently the mail carrier of 26 amazing letters written by a grade 4 class at Nelson Elementary School!

A couple weeks ago, the CBT Vietnam team came up with the idea to develop a pen pal relationship between an elementary school class in Vancouver and Lao Chai Elementary School.

So I got in contact with one of my elementary school teachers, Mrs. Chan, and pitched the idea to her. She loved it!

On Friday, I went into her class to visit and talk about the Vietnam trip. When I entered all the students knew me by name and eager to get started. For the letters, we asked them to introduce themselves and draw a picture of their favourite activity to do outside. All the students were so nervous about writing their letters. I kept getting questions like “How does this look?” or “Do they know this sport?” Many of them even did the letters twice just to make sure it was perfect!

Check out some of their letters! It seems like soccer is the class favourite.

When a Village was Heard - Capilano U / PATA Foundation Tourism Project (Sapa, Vietnam)

Here it is! The NEW video by the CBT Vietnam team. We hope you enjoy it! Please fell free to comment below - we love hearing your feedback!


A community tourism training project in the Sapa region of Northern Vietnam operated by Capilano University Vancouver, Canada, and Hanoi Open University, Vietnam, and supported by the PATA Foundation. The project features tourism training to help sustain vulnerable ethnic cultures and maximize benefits of tourism to small and unique villages in Northern Vietnam. Training is done by Capilano and Hanoi Open University students and faculty.

This video is illustrative of a second two-year project that will look to enhance networks between the village of Taphin and private sector tourism companies. The project will also deliver tourism training in the Hmong community of Lao Chai. 

This video was scripted by Chris Carnovale, Chris Bottrill and Kyle Sandilands, and filmed and directed by Kyle Sandilands (www.kylesandilands.ca).

Change is Inevitable

What is the extent of the impacts we are having through working in the villages delivering tourism training? Are the impacts all positive? 

When discussing development within such culturally rich communities, it is important to consider the change that inevitably occurs through our actions. In fact, it is our belief that responsible tourism can be a tool for change that motivates our work within Sa Pa district.

Community-based tourism development, when done appropriately, is unique in that it empowers people who have very little, if any, formal education to improve their quality of life by creating employment opportunities with minimal capital investment. Our approach is to work with communities through the engagement of a broad range of stakeholders and the nurturing of important relationships amongst these individuals.

This project builds on the community's capacity to implement and manage change themselves. And this is an important concept - these communities are not static environments that will remain unchanged. CBT training hopefully gives these community members some additional tools to help them effectively cope with a changing world. And perhaps the recent dialogue, now underway after the September trip, between the villagers and Ha Noi's private tourism sector best exemplifies this.

What are your thoughts on the slippery slope of tourism development work?