Tagged: Travel

Ecotourism? My *rse

Monday morning sees us in Chiang Mai, for centuries capital of an independent state, sometimes Siamese, other times Burmese, now the hub of northern Thailand....

Scarlet three-petalled flower with large black seeds suspended below. Nam Ha forest, Luang Namtha, Laos.

Spirits of the Forest

The sheer complexity of the ecosystem in protected, mature forest, from lichens spinning their symbiotic webs across old bark to the chaos wild pigs wreak...

Four year old Hmong girl holds a handbag, Luang Namtha province, Northern Laos.

The Good Life?

This is Sing’s eldest daughter, showing off her handbag outside the house her father built. Her name means “Be Loved”. Be Loved’s younger sister is...

On Books

Back in Udomxay, the construction town in northern Laos where our two-day odyssey from Vietnam reached a natural close, we met a crazy Canadian chap...

A Rainy Season Odyssey

The start of the monsoon season in Vietnam’s northern highlands is a beautiful thing. The rivers turn turbid and golden, rapids smearing the surface like...

Babysitting, Hmong Style

It’s not easy being a woman in the Hmong tribal minority of northern Vietnam. Or a girl, for that matter. This little girl is six,...

Putting the Graphic into Ethnographic

As you can probably tell from the picture the Vietnamese Museum of Ethnography in Hanoi offers infinitely more fun than the rather cumbersome title would...