TaPhin: Where Life Goes by Different Rules

There is a road in SaPa that goes all the way from the mountain down to the valley. I once called it the stairway to heaven. If SaPa is the stairway to heaven, TaPhin is heaven itself! 

We left SaPa on Monday morning and arrived in TaPhin village before noon. The car dropped us off near the entrance of the village in an area known as Doi Mot, or the Commune One. We walked down the valley, crossed a river and trekked up the mountain for about 30 minutes to get to where four home-stay owners run their businesses. The scenery was breathtaking. 

We spent the whole afternoon meeting the owners, touring the homes, asking them about the challenges they are facing, inspecting the capacity and potential development of the homes, and talking to them about promotional and marketing strategies. 

We split up into three groups in the evening to stay in different homestays in Doi Mot, in order to experience what tourists experience when they stay in those homes overnight. I stayed at Ms. Ly May Lai’s house and got to meet her family and extended family who were visiting from China. I offered to help prepare the dinner and May Lai showed me how to clean the pumpkin leaves before she cooked them.

Fresh and local aren't just trends here!

The process of preparing meat is very different from what we are used to in Vancouver. Even in scratch kitchens in North America, things are not as ‘from the scratch’ as are in the village! I didn’t expect the pork and chicken to come out of beautifully sealed packages, but I was still surprised when they just grabbed them from outside, killed them in the kitchen, clean and cut them, and then cook them right away! When I told my host that my family eats rice, I was asked if we have a rice field!

Preparing dinner

Getting ready for dinner

We spent the whole evening cooking on one stove at the corner of the house. There are usually two stoves in each house in TaPhin: one for cooking and one for preparing the herbal bath. May Lai was sitting by the stove the whole time and cooking the dishes one after the other. When one dish was done, it was put into a plate and sent to the table, but no one started dinner until all the dishes were done and placed on the table. The process of preparing ten different dish on one stove and in one pot took about an hour. The whole family then gathered around the dinner table and rice and alcohol were served.

Herbal baths

Even though I was planning to have a herbal bath, I was too tired to stay up late that night. May Lai’s house has two guestrooms. Since I was the only guest that night I got the whole room to myself. The room had 7 beds in a row with red/pink flower patterned blankets. A blue mosquito net was hung on top of each bed, and there was another door at the other side of the room which opened to the washroom and herbal bath areas. I called it my own en-suite shower room. 

Bamboo bug!

Roosters woke me up at 4:30. This was not my first time away from home opening my eyes in an unfamiliar environment, but it sure was the most authentic one. Outside the glassless window chicks and piglets were playing; the sound of a woman singing in the distance had added a mysterious feeling to the foggy view of the valley; and the smell of the burned bamboos in the fireplace was like no other worldly smell. Even the big bamboo bug that May Lai’s father had found outside and brought in didn’t look scary anymore! The time had slowed down letting me grasp and take in this new experience. That morning as I walked down the valley and crossed the river through the fog, I knew I was a different person; I had seen the heaven. 

Ms. May Lai and Hedieh

(Written by Hedieh Ahmari, student volunteer)

A Night in Taphin

A key objective for this trip is to, once again, bring the women entreprenuers of TaPhin back to Hanoi to meet tour operators.  We did this last October and have found some success in operators sending tourists to the Taphin homestays. 

There is a reason why people enjoy staying at these homestays and last night I had the pleasure of staying at the homestay of Ms. May Kieu.  I met May Kieu on our last trip, she has a quiet demeanour and a smile that lights up a room.  She is passionate about her homestay business and always ready to share her culture and engage in a participatory experience.  

She spent time showing me some of the items she plans to take to Hanoi and how she makes them.  Each is hand embroidered and each section has meaning, some show girls and boys, some have trees and flowers.  The piece is then sewn together with a sewing machine.

Showing me how she makes wall hangings

Her homestay is beautiful, with private rooms, platform beds, full washroom with heated shower and a kitchen with a huge fireplace.  All of this makes for a comfortable atmosphere. 

Beautiful Fireplace for Cooking

One aspect that is special about these homestays is the fact that the villagers grow almost everything they eat.  It puts 100 mile diet in a whole new perspective.

Tonight’s dinner consisted of rice which came from their fields, grated pumpkin and steamed pumpkin leaves from her garden out back and chicken which was brought in the house squawking at 7:00pm and we ate at 8:00pm.  During dinner she informed me that she also keeps chickens specifically for eggs and grows carrots and eggplant for additional vegetables.  I noticed a shelf full of pumpkin leaves on one side of the room, she said that those ones were no longer good and will be fed to the pigs.  When it comes to food waste, there is very little.

But that was not the best part of the evening.  That came when her husband, Loua, went out to their beehive and collected fresh honey.  This honey was bottled to give as a gift to one lucky tour operator next week in Hanoi. I had never tasted honey fresh from the hive and was able to sit and pick pieces off from a huge bowl with her mother-in-law and grandma.  It was delicious!

Enjoying Honey

It is this kind of experience that tour operators look for and they are fortunate to have May Kieu and the other Taphin homestays providing such a great product.

For more information on May Kieu’s homestay visit www.taphinhomestay.com and the Taphin homepage at http://www.taphin-sapa.info/ 

Submitted by: Stephanie Wells

One Month Countdown!

One month countdown before the CBT Vietnam Team from Cap U board the plane to Vietnam! 

When the Capilano University team met last week our arms were just recovering from the visit to the travel clinic. Now with the shots out of the way and the rest of the necessary preparations from our checklists nearly completed we went full speed ahead with completing the itinerary.

The itinerary is packed full of things including; gathering supplies in Hanoi with the help from Hanoi Open University student volunteers and funding from PATA, riding a motorcycle to Tavan with a stop in Lao Chai, continuing with the CBT Vietnam project planning and building strong relationships with the Black H'mong communities in Lao Chai, taking the night train to Sapa where we will spend the week before we host the ladies of Ta Phin back on the night train to meet with tour operators in Hanoi. We also have an exciting pottery crafting experience planned in Ba Trang village, for these amazing women, that will ensure they return to their own village inspired with a special self made souvenir in hand.

Let us not forget that we have planned many meetings including community meetings and meetings with the Sapa Government, tour operators, teachers, and follow up meetings with the homestay owners and village CBT Management Board Members.

Ta Phin is open for business!

Meeting with homestay owners and CBT Management Board in Ta Phin

On Thursday morning, homestay owners and a few other residents with close ties to the tourism industry met with the Ta Phin CBT Management Board. It was a great meeting with incredible outcomes. The packaging and pricing that the Board had drafted was modified with feedback from the homestay owners and approved by everyone who was present. The group also approved a penalty in case of complaints to ensure quality control would be maintained. The group also prepared for Sunday’s private sector workshop.

Meeting with homestay owners and CBT Management Board in Ta Phin

CBT Management Board in Ta Phin taking great leaps

CBT Management Board meeting

On Wednesday evening, we held our second meeting with the Ta Phin Community-Based Tourism Management Board. The focus of this meeting was to make some decisions at the CBT Management Board level that would be brought to the homestay owners on Thursday morning. The Board worked through a number of issues, and the meeting was very productive.

We covered five key items:

1. Product pricing: The CBT Management Board was working on creating a list of tourism products available through the homestays in Ta Phin, and setting a fixed price for each. This will allow them to market themselves to the tour operators in Sapa and Hanoi more effectively, and be able to sell package tours through the Board. The group generated pricing for each of their products to be presented to the homestay owners for approval.
2. Fee for CBT Management Board: In order for the CBT Management Board to be sustainable, we are concerned that the work is being done on a volunteer basis. The group agreed on a percentage for each product offering that would be allocated to the Board in order to ensure ongoing operations and to contribute to community projects. This percentage will be presented to the homestay owners for approval.
3. Charity donations: In the past, the community had a box for receiving charitable donations from tourists for making improvements in the village, but it was not well managed. However, it generated quite a bit of revenue when it was in use. The Board would like to initiate a process for charitable donations.
4. Quality control: In this type of situation, it is important to have a strong degree of quality control. If a tour operator has a poor experience in one homestay, it negatively impacts every other homestay in the village. The Board discussed how they would manage complaints and also considered the creation of an exit survey to gain a better understanding of tourists’ experience in the village.
5. Regulations for tourists: In order to ensure a quality experience, a set of regulations was drafted for the process off tourists coming to Ta Phin. The possibility of creating a leaflet to share this information was discussed.

PROFILE - Ly May Lai

Five years ago I befriended Ly Mai Lai. I was living in the village at the time and she was the shy girl who never really talked. I later found out that she had stopped going to school younger than the rest of the girls in her village. And, her English was almost nonexistent.

Because of her proximity to where I was staying we had the opportunity to become very good friends. In the fields, collecting wood, and at dinner, I would practise my Dao-ness, and she would be practising her English.

Today, Ly May Lai's English has become so good that she has just become a tour guide for international trekking tourists coming to Sapa. She has learned about tourists and tourism through running one of the most successful homestays in Ta Phin village.

Just after the CIDA funded Capilano University tourism capacity building project, Ly May Lai, learned from other Ta Phin homestay owners, to start her own. Her brother and father built a complementing addition onto their home; following traditional Red Dao architecture. Ly May Lai, met and networked with day-tripping tour guides and invited tourists to her house for lunch. The connections she made became business partnerships and her homestay has seen regular occupancy ever since.

She is however very busy, and especially with her new tour guiding job. This young entrepreneur has begun training her new sister-in-law in hosting guests, cooking and even English. In August (2010) she created a mini-business development plan outlining some short term goals which included: enhancing her menu options for homestay tourists, building a new herbal bath room, and decorating the guests' common area.
We will continue to post updates on May Lai's developments as she continues to excel as a youth leader in her community's tourism.

Training Trip 1 - Complete!

A week and a half have passed since we (Chris, Kim, and Jen) have made our return to Canada. Overall, the first training trip was incredibly successful. A huge thanks goes to our training team leader Ngoc Anh, and her Hanoi Open University Student Assistant, Trang; cam on rat nhieu!

From learning how to hold a pen so that they could draw pictures, to coming up with personal goals to build new skills in tourism, to drafting a community plan for a new community house and market, the village learners impressed us with their keenness, enthusiasm, and growth.

Here are some of the details of what was accomplished:

• A total of 15 training sessions were completed in Ta Phin and Lao Chai;
• Cohorts ranged from Children (4 - 16), Young Entrepreneurs (16 - 35), Small Business Owners, Street Sellers, and Local Government;
• Modules included: Environmental Stewardship; Tourists' Needs and Wants; Tourists and You; Introduction to Community Based Tourism; Marketing; Community Tourism Planning, and Homestay Development.
  

Hanoi Open University student Trang working with local business owners.

• Learners have indicated a need to develop individual skills (tourism related) and have created plans to learn them in the next 4 months
• Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners have developed rudimentary business plans to either start, improve or grow their businesses through marketing, networking, or small infrastructure developments. They have also agreed to complete their plans in the next 4 months.
• Lao Chai community members have expressed an interest in developing new opportunities in tourism in their community through homestays.
• Ta Phin local authority is enthusiastic about gaining knowledge in Community Tourism Planning and have agreed to create, support, and help build the capacity of a Community Tourism Planning Committee made up of tourism stakeholders in the village.
• The first of a series of community planning sessions was held (attendees included: Ta Phin community members, local youth, local government, Sapa Trade and Tourism). A draft plan for a Ta Phin Community House / Tourism Market spearheaded by the Ta Phin community was a key outcome of that session.

Some of the children sitting in on a lesson in Entrepreneurship.

We are currently compiling and synthesizing all the information and data collected. Stay tuned for profiles of some Ta Phin residents and fun stories of our time in Vietnam and in Sapa. Once again, a very successful trip! We have all gained so much from the experience!

Homestay Training in Lao Chai

The primary trekking product in Sapa is a three hour trek, for the most part descending into Tavan. For many years this has been the route for tourists and Tavan has seen rapid development. But along the way, Lao Chai has merely become a place where many have lunch in Vietnamese owned restaurants set up along the trail, and take pictures of the quaint Black Hmong village communes.

There is yet to be a network of true Hmong homestays for the intrepid traveller who truly wants to be cultured. In recent years, the Capilano University / Hanoi Open University community-based tourism project funded by CIDA built capacity of some Red Dao residents in Taphin. The homestays, although not as busy as the ones in Tavan, have been an enormous success with the locals who have set them up, the tour operators, and the tourists.

Over the next two years, the Sapa Authority has asked if Capilano University would agree to bring some of that expertise and knowledge to the Hmong people in Lao Chai. With enthusiasm we have agreed, focusing only on homestay development. Members of the Lao Chai Hmong community have also expressed their enthusiasm.