The Journey of a Lifetime Continues!

 After 3 days in the busy capital of Hanoi, the CBT Vietnam team has finally arrived in SaPa!

With all of our supplies, luggage, and filming equipment, we hopped on an overnight train from Hanoi to Lao Cai. We all forgot about the rough 10 hour ride once we woke up with breathtaking views, cool weather, and refreshing smell of the mountainous area of Northern Vietnam.  What a change from the humidity of overcrowded Hanoi!

Once we arrived in the town, we checked into the beautiful SaPa Eden Hotel. While we waited for our rooms to be ready, the team headed to the rooftop restaurant for breakfast. It also gave us the chance to finally snap our own photos of this magical landscape!

For the next 10 days, the team will be staying in TaPhin and Lao Chai working on different projects, including homestay training, product development, and environmental training for kids.

We are all very eager to connect with the community and deliver the training we have been working on these past few months. Everyone is excited to stay in the homestays and build lifetime memories with the locals.

Did you know the project now has Instagram? Follow us at http://instagram.com/cbtvietnam!

Stay tuned with the CBT Vietnam blog and social media channels for more details on our work in the villages!

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Planning. Prepping. More Planning....Repeat!

The white board says it all: we have a lot of material to cover and tight deadlines to meet! It's crunch time for the CBT team as the hour of departure nears (merely 2.5 days!). Material is being developed as we speak to cover the project outcomes for this trip. On our training wish list are items like:

• Business/Tourism Association consolidation in Ta Phin
• Planning sessions with local government in Lao Chai
• Stakeholders workshops
• Product development in Ta Phin
• Environmental stewardship for Lao Chai youth
• And more!

Logistical planning for the trip is near completion. The students and faculty from Capilano University have been prepped, and are working with Hanoi Open University student and faculty to get all the details in place. Departure is so close I can practically smell the luke warm airline food. Now to get all my homework done!

Looking forward to hearing from CBT blog readers out there, share some of your Vietnam experiences or tell us about you favorite Vietnamese dish! We will need suggestions for our first night in Hanoi. Hit us up on Twitter @CBTvietnam or find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/cbtvietnam

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Phase 2 begins: First trip starts in 4 days!

The CBT Vietnam slogan for this month is: "if you're not running, something is wrong!" We're joking, of course! But seriously, Phase 2 of the PATA Foundation funded project in Northern Viet Nam is underway and it is going to be a busy one!

Returning to Vietnam will be Dr. Chris Bottrill, Dean of Global and Community Studies at Capilano University, Instructor Stephanie Wells, and students Jase Wilson and Taryn Bodrug. Once again we will be joined by Ms. Ngoc Anh (Vice Dean of the tourism faculty at Hanoi Open University - HOU) as well as a team of HOU student volunteers.

It is going to be an exiting, ground-breaking trip for our learners and community leaders in Ta Phin. We will be working on the following:

• facilitation of a business trip for 12 entrepreneurs to the big city of Hanoi;
• here our entrepreneurs will meet with private tourism companies to begin:
• partnerships will be created;
• and, negotiations will ensue.

Tourists to the region would usually book a hill tribe trekking tour that lands them in Sa Pa -visiting villages such as Ta Phin and Lao Chai for merely an hour or two. The home-stay operators from Ta Phin are collectively working towards creating packaged experiences where tour guides bring visitors directly to Ta Phin home-stays. This will be a fantastic development for our home-stay owners and the village of Ta Phin. 

In the village of Lao Chai, the CBT team will continue delivering training on entry level skills. Our goal is to help residents of Lao Chai to increase their capacity to pursue their own brand of successful community based tourism. This is not cut paste here - what works in Ta Phin can serve as a model for success but every case is different. The CBT team will sample what Lao Chai has to offer and connect with local stakeholders.

Our whirl wind two week schedule will start on Thursday September 27th and end October the 9th, 2012. Readers will not want to miss out on what is happening! Over the next few weeks we will be releasing new media and performing regular trip updates. 

So get onto twitter @CBTvietnam and facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cbtvietnam, let us know what you think! We want to hear your voice!

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Project to continue!

Great news has been handed down to the CBT VN team recently. The Dean of Global and Community Studies at Capilano University (Dr. Chris Bottrill) has announced that an agreement has been reached with the PATA Foundation to continue the project in order to add to the recent surge of successes and momentum in the region of Ta Phin. Included in the extension of the project is funding for the village of Lao Chai.

The next two years will be exciting in the villages as the CBT team will look to further polish the host of products in Ta Phin and hand the project over to local ownership. The project in Lao Chai is in its infant stages, there is much work to do. Surely valuable experiences are just around the corner for Capilano University faculty and students, and likewise for our Hanoi Open University counterparts.

The CBT team would like to express our deepest gratitude to the PATA Foundation, and the hard work of all involved over the duration. We are all looking forward to what the future has in store!

Huge Thanks to the PATA Foundation!

To all you readers: help us out! Like our Facebook page here or follow us on twitter @CBTvietnam . There will be lots of updates to come! Stay tuned for more!


Also, check out our website at:
www.cbtvietnam.com

www.capilanou.ca

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