The people around Mai Chau come from a variety of the 54 cultural groups identified in Vietnam. There are White Thai, Blue Hmong, Flower Hmong, Muong, Day and Viet people. Our guide, Hyunh, is White Thai, and explained lots of the differences in terms of cultural dress as well as the regions they live in and types of crops that people grow. We couldn't really keep it all straight... However, up in the mountains people grow nearly everything they need for themselves, with a huge variety of fruit trees, vegetable gardens that include corn, sugar cane, cassava, eggplants and many varieties of melons/gourds/pumpkins etc. There are also chickens everywhere, pigs, water buffalo and a lot of personal fish farms. There's also more commercial operations, like the one we visited on our boat tour/drinking session. As a result, it is almost a completely self sustaining system, with surplus sold at markets and most waste being consumed in a way that results in the production of more food. Plants are fed to fish and other animals, fish ponds are drained into rice paddies, other waste is used as fertiliser, chickens, buffalo (and some goats) roam around eating the vegetation on the sides of the roads and through the surrounding forest/jungle. Snails are harvested from the rice paddies (a bridge too far for us), as well as mice and rats (yes, to eat). There is also an abundance of fruit, with papaya, lingon, jackfruit, durian (gross!!!), pineapple, pomelos, figs and bananas. It's an impressive approach to food production, although it is worth remembering that it's also a lot of hard work, despite the idyllic setting.
We also got to see an up close visit of a chopstick factory, of which there are many scattered throughout towns in the region. People harvest the bamboo from the jungle and take it down to the factories. We constantly saw this in action, with a variety of methods to bring the bamboo into town, including being towed on trailers behind motor scooters. The factories are impressive operations in their own right, although the approach to WHS is from another time. They're very noisy, and there is a lot of moving, chopping machinery. The process uses a good fraction of the bamboo to make a range of different chopsticks, from the familiar "break apart" disposable versions to fancier round chopsticks for restaurants. Waste material is collected and sent by truck to the local paper factory. It's a very sustainable type of industry, with no noticeable impact on the amount of bamboo growing everywhere, and little in the way of real waste - at least that we saw.
Tourism has had a huge impact in the area, with a vast number of homestays and resorts for people coming from all over the world, as well as large numbers of Vietnamese people - in particular coming up from Hanoi for a couple days. This has clearly driven a lot of development and lifted the standard of living in the local area, with a huge number of jobs created for local people and new economic opportunities for people working as cooks, cleaners and staff for the resorts, as well as tour guides and drivers, and lots of homestays with little restaurants, coffee shops and local souvenirs. We also got to experience a couple of cultural shows at our resort, with a dance performance from local White Thai people, including one where you had to jump through the clapping bamboo sticks. We declined to participate...
Overall, it was definitely an interesting experience to get amongst the local villages and see it for ourselves, and we could at least feel like we were having a net positive impact while we were there.
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