Saturday 9th April

It poured in the night & d*** was up in with terrible gut problems so, at about 5.30, he reverted to Immodium & prayer, as Owens class had hired a bus for 20 to go out to a giant hydro scheme for a day on the water. On the way we stopped at a stall selling water buffalo meat, again quite an experience.

The bus arrived at 6.45 & off we went north towards Na Hang. Eventually, at about 10.30, we arrived at the lake having driven through spectacular forested hills. Here we descended to a large, flat bottomed, boat about 20 m long with a covered area for us all to sit in. The people all started to prepare a meal which was laid out on mats on the deck for us all. d*** was still pretty shaken after the night & hardly ate anything for fear of the consequences. The boat took us to a small temple which was just below the largest mountain in the area & up we all went to see it. The temple is dedicated to a concubine of General Tran Nhat Duat from the 13th century and famous for its beautiful scenery and sacredness.

The lake, about 8 – 10m below its highest levels, is gigantic dotted with fish farms mostly with single pens of about 20m square anchored off shore. The spectacular limestone mountains are heavily wooded & as apparently bush fires are unknown often drops straight into the lake. It is the upper of 2 hydro electric dam projects built by the Chinese in 2008, on the river Gam.

After lunch we moved on to a 2nd temple & then returned to our start point at about 4.15 & were dropped at Mrs Lim's floating fish farm nearby. This is quite a venture with more than 40 pens, an office & quarters for the workers. Each pen 7m by 7m is in a steel frame supported by plastic drums with walkways of steel plate about 1.5m wide linking them all. Heavy netting attached to the frames hols the fish in & they are largely fed with small fish, up to 10cm caught in the lake. The fish we saw were a variety of catfish which grow to about 4kgs in 2 years & are obviously popular with the locals. They were fed while we were there & the food lead to a sharp feeding frenzy in the pen which was somewhat diisconcerting.

We saw them being harvested which they do by pulling the nets towards one side of the pen & picking them out with giant baskets. They are then sent off down the lake in a boat with tanks & are normally sold live to customers, although some are frozen.

After another feast, also featuring catfish in various forms, which we ate sitting on the floor, as Jane struggled to her feet the camera slipped from her pocket and fell into 30m of water. Even d*** couldn't hold his breath that long to retrieve it. We eventually left at 8pm & enjoyed!! community singing, joke telling & very loud talking for most of the long bus ride home.