[TRIP] One-day field trip to Hoa Binh

I'd binh been to Hoa Binh on the 4th of September for the ESS field experiment!

I interviewed local people about to what extent has dam influence their life and the standard of living for the local community and took a water sample from the reservoir and the river.

Hoa Binh is 76 km far from Hanoi, so it's nearby Hanoi.

This city (province) is very well known for its minority community but also the biggest hydroelectric dam among all in Southeast Asia!

The day I'd been to Hoa Binh was actually 'The independence day of Vietnam', so it was difficult to find interviewees.

I aimed to interview 50 people, but I could only interview approximately 30 people by the end.

Floating houses on 'Da river'...

I could see some locals fishing around here.

I asked fishers how many fishes are caught on a daily basis. They answered that compare to the time when there was no dams, the amount of fishes being caught has decreased dramatically. This can be inferred that there was an inadequate fish ladder for aquatic animals to migrate.

Fishing trap, which made to catch catfishes.

Since the day I visit Hoa Binh is an independence day, not many noises were caught by this noise meter. Compare to Hanoi (80-90 dBC on average), it was really quiet and calm.

After I finished my interview in the downtown of Hoa Binh, I moved to the reservoir region to take the water sample.

Surprisingly, the water from the lake was clean as tap water!

But consider that the size of the lake is bigger than the size of Hoa Binh city, this is a reasonable result.

Sadly, access to nature nearby the lake was resisted for the visitors and nature nearby was destroyed already so I could not even conduct a biodiversity study on local nature.

Before I went back to Hanoi, a guard allowed me to visit Tượng Đài Bác Hồ (Statue of Ho Chi Minh), which has an observation deck towards reservoir direction.

Beautiful view...

On the way back to the home, the weather got darker and rain poured immediately. The time by this was 5pm.

Coincidently, the dam opened its gate to floodwater downstream. And this was the rare event that happens once or twice in a year!

One day trip to Hoa Binh was very worthy. Besides the point that...I stepped on animal's poo, all experience that I made in here was hilarious. :D