First Day

I've arrived safely, reunited with my Fulbright host Dr. Khanh and Tan and Tran Vo from CanTho City.

I have met Khahn's wife and grandson and eaten spicy snails. We've checked into our beautiful guest house at Park Headquarters and had a productive first day. Saw some monkeys at lunch time on the Dong Nai River. No big deal.

Here the conference room where a lot of the workshops will be happening (although we plan to move outside soon since the topic is park management and nature education). Yes it looks a little intimidating with the heavy furniture and such but I was made to feel very welcome. I gave a presentation about myself and work in Missoula grassland conservation and all the 38 participating park staff introduced themselves and stated their expectations for the training course.

I hadn't envisioned this as a Training Course per se, but the format is fine. We have 35 staff from Cat Tien National Park and then 2 staff from Yok Don National Park (known for elephants, and it has crazy high levels of biodiversity of plants and birds), and one research associate from Bidoup National Park. Bidoup has about 300 species of orchids, among other incredible features.

We talked a bit about Strengths, Weaknesses,Opportunities and Threats for each of these 3 national parks. Clearly, biodiversity, scenery and activities were strengths. Recurring weaknesses that staff identified were English skills, guide training, and attracting tourists. Unclear relationships with private tour operators was an issue- there are private businesses catering to nature tourists and in some aspects this is fine, but in other aspects it seems like a conflict. I look forward to talking more with people about that.

What made a big impression on me today was that when the power went out in the conference room (several times actually), whoever was speaking would just offer to sing a song.

In this case a children's song about a baby elephant in the central highlands of Vietnam (where the park is located).  Completely wonderful. I remember now that singing is more of a normal part of life in Vietnam.

Tonight I'm meeting half the participants in the Golden Bamboo Canteen at Park Headquarters for the beginning of "English Cafe." I'm trying to organize a program where English speaking park visitors are invited regularly to visit with parks staff in an informal setting to practice conversational English.
I am optimistic.

If you are traveling to Cat Tien National Park and looking at this blog, please enquire of Parks staff about volunteering to hang out and speak English in the cafe after your day of trekking in the jungle looking for birds and monkeys.  See you there!