Personal News

Exciting news to kick things off: I finally got my new visa! With a generous two-year validity, it’s a weight lifted off my shoulders. It’s been quite the ordeal, in the past I could always do visas in Saigon but they changed the rules so all visas must be done locally. The adjustment has been a learning curve for everyone involved, even the local immigration department. While the visa saga has kept me busy, sadly my hiking adventures have been on pause. So, apologies, no new nature shots to share at the moment.

In other news, brace yourselves for tales of adventures when my cousin Henry and his partner Grace arrive in Vietnam next month! We plan on meeting down south, maybe seeing some mangroves and Viet Cong tunnels – it should be a good introduction to Vietnam to set it apart from Thailand and Cambodia.

Projects

The Jrai language is the primary language of Yumi’s family and I’ve been spending a lot of time on it recently. I’m passionate about minority languages and I’ve started digitizing the Jrai language books in my possession. I aim to share these treasures with the world by putting them online and uploading them to websites such as Glosbe and Wiktionary among others. I hope to make resources more accessible to learners, native speakers, and fellow enthusiasts.

Glosbe, a great online dictionary, champions numerous minority languages. One of it’s best features is the ability to link translations across languages, so when there is a Vietnamese to Jrai translation, it can show it in English too (or Navajo, Swahili or Basque). Glosbe also has a database of sentences with translations, to provide invaluable context. Already, I’ve begun uploading translations from my Jrai conversation book and I have also contributed approximately 8000 verses from the Bible, enriching Glosbe with Jrai translations.

I hope to continue digitizing my Jrai books, it will take me quite a while even with the few books I have to type them up. Typing in Jrai was a challenge in itself that I’m going to write about next.

Minority Languages and Technology

Navigating technology in minority languages comes with its own set of hurdles. The Jrai alphabet boasts 41 characters including the standard latin alphabet plus letters like ƀ, ơ̆, and â̆. This presents a challenge when it comes to typing, given the limited number of keys on computer keyboards.

Dedicated individuals have developed innovative solutions to address this challenge. Platforms like Keyman allow users to create and share keyboards customized for various languages, including minority ones. It’s a remarkable project well worth exploring, available both as a web version and an app.

Moreover, some Jrai speakers have drawn inspiration from Vietnamese history, crafting solutions such as TNkey. Taking cues from Vietnam’s development of the telex system in the 1920s, this method involves typing specific sequences of letters to generate desired characters. For instance, typing ‘o’, ‘w’, and ‘r’ consecutively yields “ở”. While telex enjoys widespread support on modern devices, perhaps one day TNkey will follow suit.

Looking ahead, I think the next frontier involves developing a comprehensive modern phone keyboard. Unlike platforms like Keyman, a standard keyboard seamlessly integrates into various apps and offers features like word suggestions and autocorrect. Achieving this entails digitizing the language’s word list, a task I plan to undertake after digitizing my Jrai books.

There’s still a lot more I could write about regarding technology and minority languages. For instance, what happens when you set your phone’s language to Cornish? However, I’m going to save delving into those topics for another time.

As a fan of both hiking and the allure of jungle settings, there’s not much that excites me more than embarking on a trek through dense, untamed foliage. Recently, I found myself drawn to the mysterious depths of Chư Păh. . Little did I know, my adventure would be accompanied by a nifty app that has made me rethink the way I interact with the jungle – stay tuned for more on iNaturalist at the end.

My journey began in a village marked on the old US maps as Dang Rơia, now famous for it’s ruined church (complete with bullet holes). I had a chance encounter with local farmers sat taking a break from their work. Their curiosity piqued by this strange foreinger driving down a dirt road, they asked me what I was up to. I said I was going for a hike and they said there’s nothing this way and I should go to Chi Nam instead. I told them I’d already been up Chi Nam 3 times, they told me to try Chi Dang Ya, I told them I’d already been up there. I told them I was going to continue on that road and see what I could find. They merrily waved me goodbye. Little did I know, this encounter would set the stage for a truly remarkable adventure.

Despite the warnings, I ventured forth, parking my bike near a ford and taking a path that led through the bush into the mountains. As I delved deeper into the wilderness the bush gave way to jungle, the verdant canopy overhead enveloped me in its embrace, shielding me from the harsh sun and immersing me in a world that felt untouched by human hands. What secrets lay hidden beneath the dense foliage, waiting to be unearthed?

I spent two days in the wilderness, carrying a tent that allowed me to explore deeper into the jungle without worrying about losing daylight. Venturing to the top of the mountain ridge and then descending into the denser jungle on the far side seemed like a promising route to the next valley, a familiar terrain I’ve hiked before. However, it quickly became apparent that this was a miscalculation.

The path downward on the far side offered stunning views but proved to be treacherously steep and ultimately led to a dead end. Retracing my steps, hauling my gear uphill at the end of a long day was far from ideal. With just 200 meters left to go and the sun setting, I found myself needing a rest every 100 paces! The thought of a warm meal and a beer at camp helped push me through the exhaustion.

Despite the challenges, those two days in the jungle were a testament to its magnificence. Each moment revealed a new facet of its beauty, from the towering trees to the tranquil babbling brooks. As I reflect on my experience, I can’t help but hope that wilderness like this can continue to thrive in our modern world, preserved as a treasure for future generations to cherish.

iNaturalist

During this expedition, I used a great app that transformed my outdoor experience: iNaturalist. Introduced to me by my friend Joshua, this app offers users the opportunity to capture photos of wildlife specimens they encounter, identify their species., share with the community and contribute to a database for scientific research.

The app quickly became an addictive hobby for me, effectively gamifying my excursions into the wilderness. Every observation I took pulled me deeper into nature, sharpening my eye for plants and bugs. It’s been a real eye-opener, sparking this love for biology and making me feel a lot more connected to the world around me. As I keep using iNaturalist, I can’t help but think about how tech is changing the way we see nature. It’s not just about ID’ing species; it’s about inspiring people, especially younger people, to care about our planet. Embracing the diversity of life around us, from the smallest insect to the tallest tree, fosters a deeper appreciation for the interconnectedness of all living things and the importance of preserving our natural world for generations to come.

You can find my iNaturalist profile here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&user_id=will718&verifiable=any

They also have an even more gamified version called Seek which I’ve not tried yet

Gosh It’s been a long time since I’ve written a blog post! In the last one I was talking about moving to Pleiku and now 3 years on I’m settled here and a lot has happened! I’ve decided to try updating this space more often about life in Vietnam and my projects (let’s see if I can keep it up).

Life in Vietnam

The festival of Tết (Chinese New Year) ran from the 8th of February to the 14th. We spent a lot of quality time with Yumi’s large family, we sat in the shade, ate until we burst and sang karaoke. 2024 is the year of the Dragon which is Yumi’s zodiac sign which according to tradition means she has to be careful with her luck this year.

I managed to carve out some time for hiking and camping during the week-long bank holiday break. There are no guidebooks or modern maps available so I consulted the old 1:50k maps that the American’s made in 1970 and cross-referenced with Google Maps satellite images to find points of interest and I’m making my own maps based on what I found on the ground; I discovered a few great circular walks during the holiday and I’m looking forward to taking other people out on them. For those with local knowledge, this was all in Chư Păh district, near Chư Nâm.

In other news, today I saw the first emigrant butterflies of the year! In the region of Pleiku, the butterflies (Catopsilia) pass through on their way from Cambodia to the Philippines . Seeing the sky filled with these delicate insects around midday is a beautiful spectacle! Sadly it’s basically impossible to capture the magic on camera so I’ll share an AI-generated image that attempts to encapsulate the essence of this mesmerizing phenomenon.

The arrival of the butterflies heralds the season when the Jackfruits are best to eat in Pleiku. Jackfruit is my favourite fruit!

Projects

One of my recent endeavors involves crafting an arcade machine for my classroom. Designed to plug into the computer like a keyboard, this project aims to bring some of the digital activities in the classroom to life as it’s much easier to interact with than keyboard and mouse.

I bought arcade machine buttons online and an Arduino Leonardo board. First I made a prototype out of a cardboard box but now I’ve designed a container to be laser cut so it’s durable enough to be in the vicinity of kids.

For the software side of things I’ve been learning to program in the game engine Godot which is a lot of fun! It’s free (as in gratis and libre) and I’m hoping to make some much more involved projects soon.

When I first came to Vietnam, a year ago at the end of August, I had planned to see how I felt after a year, if I wanted to go home or move to a different country. What I didn’t plan for is a pandemic! So moving country is out of the question so I came up with a different solution.

I’m excited to announce that next week I’m moving to the city of Pleiku (still in Vietnam) and this is how it came about.

What does one do in a pandemic when they’re tired of living in the big city? For me, tired of the noise and crowds of Ho Chi Minh city where I’ve lived for over a year now, I found a company willing to help me take a big leap.

Many English centre’s are short of staff these days with teachers not being able to enter the country, small cities are feeling it more than big cities like HCM and Hanoi which have a large pool of expats. So I picked the city I wanted to move to and emailed a few of the English centres. They were amazingly fast at getting back to me.

I ended up taking a job with a well known national chain. APAX English started in Hanoi and now has hundreds of centres, including many in HCM and one in Pleiku. I passed the interview with flying colours but there was still a problem.

Pleiku is a sensitive area for the Vietnamese government. Not only is it a province with a lot of ethnic groups living their traditional lifestyles in the mountains, it is also a border province near Cambodia and Laos where a lot of smuggling takes place! So I could not relocate there with my current papers; I needed new papers to live in the region.

It took about a month to get all that sorted by now I’m very happy to say that I’m moving to Pleiku on Monday the 14th September! I’m looking forward new experiences in a peaceful mountain city.

I was incredulous when we got back to the office after coronavirus and the boss asked “did you enjoy your holiday?”. I had worked every day except 1 or 2 through the lockdown and found working from home just as difficult and more emotionally taxing. Now, Finally, I’m getting a holiday, and in an unusual place.

For a Monday rush hour, the leafy street was nearly empty; only a few dosen mopeds pootled by. It’s a welcome change from bustling ho chi minh city. This is the city of Tuy Hoa which has a few good things to offer a weary city dweller.

The sleeper train from Ho chi minh city took 10 hours (this ride was an exciting milestone for me because after passing Nha Trang I’d ridden every inch of Vietnam’s mainline from Saigon to Lao Cai at the chinese boarder). Tuy Hoà boasts an impressive old Champa tower, the Phu Yen province museum (which was free) but I mostly came to Tuy Hoa for one thing…

Tuy Hoà has an amazing beach! During the day it was completely empty but when the sun began to cool around 5pm it filled up with locals cooling down after work. As someone who cut his teeth sea swimming in Cornwall, the sea here is very warm. You could even rent a karaoke speaker for 50k an hour right on the sand! After a lot of swimming I was famished and this the city boasts some delightful street food.

Tuy Hoà has a great selection of southern style pho noodles, puddings such as durian che and ice tofu. There is also a famous restaurant near the seafront selling Tuna eyes!

Overall I think Tuy Hoà made a great quiet getaway from Ho Chi Minh City which I desperately needed. Next stop is Qui Nhon which is a short bus ride from Tuy Hòa.

I spent a night in Bangkok but didn’t sleep a wink. If you’re thinking about Bangkok’s nefarious reputation you might need to get your mind out of the gutter because it’s not what you think.

Bent over double I managed to squeeze passed the banyan tree that half blocked the narrow alley. I would never have even found this place if it wasn’t for the family I encountered eating their dinner on the pavement who very kindly led me here. This is where I’m staying tonight; in a hostel down this alley.

This is Bangkok, just off Yaowarat Road. I’ve been to Thailand before but it’s my first time in the capital. It had been a long day flying from Saigon via Hanoi then exploring the city, little did I know I wouldn’t get any rest that night…

Meeting up with a friend from Glasgow was a rare treat. Unfortunately Mook had come home due to a sick family member but it was still great to eat street food and compare life in Southeast Asia to life in Scotland. However the reason for me being in Bangkok was very different.

It was the eve of Chinese New Year. The festival is also celebrated in Vietnam so I get a week off work and I’ve taken advantage of that to travel. Have you figured out why I chose to stay by Yaowarat Road?

Thai culture doesn’t observe Chinese new year; their new year celebration falls around April and is called Songkran. However there is a large Chinese diaspora in Thailand and Yaowarat Road is Bangkok’s Chinatown. This week the street is done up with lanterns and lined with an tantalizing array of street food vendors. The food is an amazing fusion of Thai and Chinese cuisine. It’s one of the few places in the world where you can still see people selling the controversial shark fin soup (which I did not try!).

And so after an evening of crowds, snacks and Thai beer I headed to the dorm. I’d just settled my head down when the clocks struck midnight and there was a cacophony of drums! It turns out that Chinese New Year here is welcomed with dragon dances which are accompanied by a band of drummers. It was impossible to sleep! So as they say, if you can’t beat them, join them. It was amazing to watch the dancers in their elaborate costumers parading down the brightly lit street. The lions collected lucky money which the audience fed into their mouths.

I spent the next day exploring Bangkok. In the evening I headed to Hua Lamphong station to catch a sleeper train to Chiang Mai for the next exciting instalment of my trip. Keep an eye on this blog for the next update.

I think this trip will be difficult to match next chinese new year! Do you know any great or unusual places to celebrate chinese new year? Leave me a comment to let me know!

This is the final piece in my series Christmas in China

Is it my imagination or does the air smell sweeter on the Vietnamese side of the border? There’s certainly more greenery around. China seemed suffocating now looking back but it’s only 200 meters away. The austere concrete high-rises stop suddenly at the river and then on this side there are rows of typical tacky faux-classical Vietnamese villas. Looking at them now with fresh eyes, I appreciate them as expressions of individuality, if not of great taste.

I’ve always imagined there’s a certain romance to crossing a border on foot. Leaving one countries soil to set foot on another without a plane or boat in between. After getting off my the morning train from Kunming, I took a taxi to the border. I was confronted by a huge queue, several hundred meters long! But I realised this was for goods to declare and people with nothing to declare could skip this queue entirely. The building was not entirely dissimilar to an airport or the ferry terminal in Shanghai. However queuing at passport control which was a nightmare! People were pushing and shoving and the chinese staff did nothing to control it. Eventually I got to a counter and was given the worst interrogation of my life: about why I’d been in china and what my business was in Vietnam. After that I was out onto the bridge. The bridge is a couple of hundred meters long. One side is china and the other vietnam. There was a steady stream of people going each way.

The other side of the bridge had a grand colonial style building, very Vietnamese taste. Inside was peaceful with organised queues and beautiful wooden counters where I was stamped into Vietnam. The officer teased me about my poor vietnamese language skills. I realise that I missed the vietnamese playful sense of humour.

It’s a few hours until my train home and Lao Cai town doesn’t have much going on. Its walking distance from the border crossing to the train station. I wander down the side of the narrowguage railway that once crossed the border and went on to Kunming. Apparently the track is still used on the chinese side of the border but only for freight. I wave to a train and have a moment of childish glee when the driver waves back, followed by the guard in his coach on the back!

I have dinner in a restaurant aimed at western tourists and indulge in entirely inauthentic banana pancakes. I muse over the 2 week journey. Have I learned anything? Maybe that Christmas doesn’t need music, decorations and a big dinner (although I do miss that if I’m honest). Or maybe the main lesson of this trip was that the destination was disappointing and the best bits of the journey were serendipity along the way. Perhaps next time I’ll plan less and find my Shangri-La by going with the flow. Nah that’s cheesey, I’ll stick with the dinner thing.

This is part 5 of my series Christmas in China

To my surprise the man tending the yaks on the hill near Shangri-La spoke to me in English. He didn’t want to be photographed but asked me what I was doing and told me about his nomadic lifestyle.

The name Shangri-La was made famous by the 20th century novel and movie Lost Horizon in which Shangri-La is a fictional community in the Himalayas. However Shangri-La is now a real place! in 2003 an enterprising town in Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture changed it’s name to Shangri-La, or Xiangelila (香格里拉) in Chinese. I found this online when planning my trip and decided I had to visit.

I’d seen the white stupa saddled between two peaks above the town and decided to try and climb up to it. It was gone 5pm and the beginning of January but the sun was still far from sinking behind the mountains due to being so far West of Beijing (where the time comes from). I was keeping an eye on the sun for when I’d need to turn back.

The walking was difficult; due to the altitude I’m pretty sure! The town sits at 3,160m above sea level which meant that I got out of breath much more easily than usual. When I reached the stupa, not only was I rewarded with a great view over the town but there were also yaks milling around. I also noticed that the footpath continued after the stupa.

It had been hard to get out from under the electric blanket into the -9°C cold. I’d embarrassed myself ordering breakfast in Mandarin from the waitress who was actually Singaporean (so spoke perfect English). The cafe had a cosy woodburning stove which I parked myself right in front of as the only customer. The waitress told me that most of the people in the touristy old-town were not local to the Province, let alone the town. She said it’s busier in summer. Personally, I’d come here for the cold; to get away from the heat of Saigon for a while so the off-season weather suited me fine.

I’d visited to the embroidery gallery, the giant prayer wheel at Guishan temple, the Long March museum and was bored of the facades of the old-town selling the same tat that was sold in Kunming. So I decided to trek back up to the Stupa to see where the path went and that’s how I met the yak farmer.

He encapsulates Shangri-La well. Tibetan but global. Rustic but touristic. Was Shangri-La worth visiting? Maybe not. Was the trip worth it? Definitely! After all, I chose Shangri-La at random after seeing the name on the internet.

The path looped around to the town on the other side of the hill. I walked from there to the bus-stop to catch the bus back to Lijiang where I’d change to a sleeper train back to Kunming – my journey unraveling a like callstack popping the previous destinations. Then I would change onto the train to Hekou which sits on the northern bank of the river Sông Nậm Thi. On the southern bank: Vietnam.

This is part 4 of my series Christmas in China

Smoke fills the room from the wood-burning stove in the centre. Mama says the chimney is cracked and needs repairing but I enjoy the smell of the wood-smoke. The stove has a large flat metal top that acts as a table. Around it are old comfortable sofas. Currently they are filled mostly by a family of Malaysians. They pass me a beer and ask me about my travels.

We are in Mama Naxi’s Guest house, just outside Lijiang‘s ancient city centre. Mama means mother in Mandarin but these people here are Naxi people who speak their own language. I learned a lot about the Naxi people by visiting the deserted museum on the outskirts of Lijiang, just passed the giant statue of Chairman Mao Zedong. I never did figure out however if Mama was her name or a title; everyone just called her Mama.

There was also an old man in the house who spoke scant English but we could talk well in Mandarin; his Mandarin was also bad which meant he understood me easily! He also had an air of peaceful serenity and was almost always offering me corn on the cob which he grilled on the stovetop all through the day. He was also in charge of keeping the water topped up. Water in china shouldn’t be drank straight from the top so all day he was boiling it on the stovetop and topping up large metal flasks with cork stoppers.

It was the night of December 31st and I asked Mama if there would be any fireworks. She said there would not be as the Chinese celebrate new year by the lunar calendar. Come midnight and there was a deafening sound of fireworks from all around. From the house we didn’t get a good view.

Lijiang is another city on the tea horse road. It has a sprawling ancient town, but unlike Dali where the ancient town is a few miles from the modern city; Lijiang’s ancient town sits in the middle of the new town. The ancient town is so big and the roads twist all over the place, I got lost every day. I found that the best food came from the local marked that sat just outside the ancient town. They had many fried delights for a much more reasonable price than the inflated prices of the food within the ancient town, which attracts a lot of tourists from all over china as well as Malaysia and Thailand.

I had a few nice trips out while in Lijiang, I couldn’t leave this tea horse road town without having some tea. I went out to look for a chaguan (teahouse). I didn’t find one but I did see people drinking tea in the shops selling tea so thought I’d try my luck and walked into one with no customers and asked. The lady not only served me tea but also gave me a lesson in serving her tea! I bought two circular bricks of tea to bring home. When the shop closed, she took me on a quick tour of the city and then we joined the folk dancing in the square. I couldn’t get the hang of the steps but everyone went around in a circle with their arms around the people either side. I found an example on Youtube.

From Lijiang I took the bus to my final stop on my Christmas adventure; Shangrila!