An Internship in Vietnam

Almost two and half weeks have gone by since I started my internship at the Center for Marinelife Conservation and Community Development, or as everyone calls it, MCD. I think you know you've lucked out when the first three days of your internship are spent on a staff retreat to Co To Island. Co To is the largest of a small chain of islands about 150km north of Ha Long and little south of border with China. I spent three days there, meeting the staff and their family members as we motored from secluded beach to secluded beach, ate fresh seafood and swam in the warm clear water. After a brief stay in paradise, back to the bustle of Hanoi. Time to start the real work.

MCD is a domestic NGO devoted to ecosystem security and sustainable development in coastal communities (check it out here). They are working with SIDA (the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, don't ask me where the c went) on a three year project to address sustainable development, natural resource management, and climate change in two UNESCO biosphere reserves. They have given me the space and support to perform research that lines my interests up with their SIDA project. I am studying the institutional capacity of local governance institutions in the Red River Delta Biosphere Reserve and Cat Ba Biosphere Reserve to integrate climate change adaptation and mitigation into their local policies and projects. It is a new project, and a kind of research they have not done before. They are sending me to each biosphere reserve to conduct interviews and surveys of key decision makers. Ideally, this will culminate in an article I have written, that MCD will use to inform their role in climate change and biosphere reserve management, and will be published in a journal or topical magazine. I do no administrative work, my time at MCD is devoted completely to the project. I am doing all the background research/literature review, designing the fieldwork and methodology, conducting the interviews, and interpreting the results. MCD is providing feedback and support throughout the process, setting up the interviews, and helping with translation. It almost feels more like a collaborative research project than an internship, but I wouldn't be able to do this kind of work without their support.

A quick note if you are thinking about an internship or Vietnam: To get to work you'll have to either take the bus or rent a motor bike. A car or motorbike taxi's will be too expensive to use twice a day. If you're on a budget (read cheap) like myself you'll opt for the bus. Renting a motorbike might cost you between $50 and 70$ plus a month in addition to gas and repair. The bus however, costs about 3,000 dong (vnd) a bus ride. To give you some perspective, right now $1 = about 20600 vnd. So the bus costs you somewhere around $0.15 a ride. If you're like me and you have to take two buses to get to the office you spend 12,000 vnd ($0.58) on the bus a day. You can always buy the monthly pass though, its only 80,000 vnd (a little less than $4).

Should you decide to take the bus, bring running shoes and get ready to throw an elbow or two. Once you're on the bus it's smooth sailing, the man who gives out tickets is more than happy to help confused foreigners not miss their respective stops, it's getting there that's the challenge. It's a rare thing to find a bus driver in Vietnam who believes in coming to a complete stop. The bus will slowly roll along the stop, opening only one of its two doors to let about fifteen people spill out as another fifteen jog along and shove their way aboard. It's quite a sight to behold. I've only seen the bus leave someone behind once, you'll probably make it.

The MCD team, some family, and myself on the trip to Co To