Beyond Green Travel: In Vietnam, Emptied Graves Make Room for Mass Tourism

In "Beyond Green Travel," ADVENTURE Global Travel Editor Costas Christ gives an eye-witness account of the ups and downs of ecotourism in dispatches from around the world.

At Vietnam’s China Beach, local villagers must dig out family members’ remains from old burial grounds to make way for new resorts.

Over the last 15 years, tourism to Vietnam has grown by more than 1,000 percent, putting it among the fastest growing tourism economies in the world. The U.S. failed to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese during the “American War,” as it is referred to here, but tourism seems to be succeeding in doing just that.

Historic towns like Hoi An, which I first visited in 1994 and was taken by the beauty of its narrow streets and ornate wooden bridges, are now lined with handicraft shops, souvenir stores, restaurants, cafes, and tailors (the best in town is “Yaly” on Tran Phu Street, where 15 dollars will buy you a perfectly fitted silk shirt made on site).

Wandering Hoi An’s streets, which still retain some of the charm that led to tourism’s growth here in the first place, I found most of the local people I spoke with echoing Mrs. Chuong, who sells hand-carved chop sticks in the central market: “Ten years ago we had nothing and today we have jobs from tourism and can raise our families and buy food and clothes for our children.” 

The local view on all this tourism expansion in Hoi An is overwhelmingly positive. But it does come with a price, literally.

Beyond Green Travel: In Vietnam, Emptied Graves Make Room for Mass Tourism

Environment: Putting Greenbacks Where the Green Is

Good news for the good guys: $60,000 is up for grabs for two environmentally focused nonprofits.

As of today, March 15, Redwood Creek Wines, a Modesto, California-based vineyard, is accepting submissions from U.S. nonprofits with grand plans—but meager means—for their Greater Outdoors Project, an initiatve aimed to “help maintain or improve America’s wide-open spaces.”

The winning organization will get a $50,000 grant; the runner-up $10,000. In addition to the cash prize, the top nonprofit will land a national advertising campaign set to run in outdoors magazines—including ADVENTURE—in December.

Applications and guidelines are posted online today through May 15. After that, a panel of judges—including our 2007 Adventurer of the Year, long-distance hiker Andrew Skurka—will review the submissions.

But the public gets the final say: From June 15 through July 31, you can head to Redwood Creek’s site to check out the judges’ top five picks, then vote for your own favorite. The winning projects will be announced at the beginning of August, so stay tuned.

–Andrea Minarcek

Environment: Putting Greenbacks Where the Green Is

Kayakers Attempt First Descent of Tibet’s Last Unexplored Whitewater

Loaded up with kayaks and filming equipment, the Rivers in Demand crew began making the overland journey across China this week en route to the Tibetan Plateau for the first part of their ambitious new expedition. Today (March 14) Trip Jennings (one of our 2007 Adventurers of the Year) and his teammates will begin a first descent attempt of the upper Salween, the last unexplored section of whitewater draining the Tibetan Plateau.

On its upper reaches, the crew expects to encounter severe Class V rapids with dangerous levels of commitment and exposure. The glacier-fed Salween cascades down from some of the highest mountains in the world, frothing through profound slot canyons, guarded by underwater boulders, torrential rapids, and waterfalls.

The last free-flowing major river in South Asia, the Salween flows between Myanmar and Thailand to the South China Sea, but controversial plans exist to build a Chinese-funded hydroelectric dam on its lower stretches. The group hopes to draw attention to the consequences that this development would have on the millions of people who depend on the river.

If all goes according to plan, the crew will drop in on the Salween today at an elevation of more than 11,000 feet (3,353 meters). Keep tabs on the their progress at china.riversindemand.com. The site features a bit of context for the Rivers in Demand project, along with regular audio and text reports from the crew as they descend through Tibet and China. We’ll keep you posted as they move on to the Great Bend in the Yangtze and the middle Salween.

–Lucas Pollock

Photograph by Travis Winn, taken on a 2007 scouting trip of the Salween

Kayakers Attempt First Descent of Tibet’s Last Unexplored Whitewater

Deep Survival: Brain Vs. Gadget

On a solo backpacking trip this winter, reader Nate Freund was stranded high on California’s Ontario Peak during a snowstorm. Read his story, then see Deep Survival author Laurence Gonzales’s analysis of the situation.

Submitted by Reader Nate Freund
After reading your article "Folk Wisdom" in National Geographic ADVENTURE [April 2008], I was inspired to write to the author whose concepts played a critical role in my survival.

On January 22, 2008, I set out for a solo backpacking trip to summit Ontario Peak of the Cucamonga Wilderness. I was rescued by Search and Rescue forces from the San Bernardino Mountains after a U.S. Air Force satellite detected my distress signal from my Personal Locator Beacon. It was the first successful rescue of this kind in California–one initiated from a legitimate activation of a personal EPIRP carried by a recreational hiker.

I had spent months staring into the snow-capped mountain range from the Claremont roads as I drove to school everyday. My third attempt to summit this season began on a clear Sunday morning. After hiking a mile above the city, I set up camp on top of Big Horn Peak. I woke up the next morning to see clouds covered everything below me.

Deep Survival: Brain Vs. Gadget

Cycling: A Meter for the Heart and Head

Back when I began using heart-rate monitors for cycling training, I knew that power meters were better devices, but I didn’t care—the suckers cost $5,000. Power meters record how many watts your pedaling generates, an objective measure of effort in contrast to the beating of your heart, which varies with health, sleep, and training. Still, even as the gadgets dropped to $1,500, I stayed true to mi corazon. But now comes the $710 Polar CS600 with Power.

The CS600 works much like an electric guitar, with a small pickup strapped to your frame that measures chain vibration and converts it to wattage. At a glance, you see not just the watts you’ve generated but also cadence, speed, heart rate, and even slope incline. Regardless of whether you have a training plan, this is one useful gadget: It shows the power output for each leg, allowing you to correct an imbalance mid-ride, as well as the efficiency of your pedal stroke, which helps you focus on a rounder, better technique. Installation takes a couple hours, and the minimally insightful manual requires patience, but this power meter is the one to have. And that’s coming from both head and heart.

–West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro

Photograph by Joshua Scott

Cycling: A Meter for the Heart and Head

“Flushing” of Grand Canyon Causes Concern

If you haven’t yet taken a rafting trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, no doubt you want to before your days are done. In our national parks cover story last year, Contributing Editor Dan Duane wrote:

“To run the Grand Canyon on your own is one of the world’s genuine once-in-a-lifetime trips, a voyage that’s not only the best in our national parks—by a long mile—but also on par with walking the Inca Trail, trekking to Everest Base Camp, motorcycling across the Sahara, and sailing the South Pacific.”

On Wednesday (March 5), federal flood control managers released millions of cubic feet of water from Glen Canyon Dam to help restore the Big Ditch’s sandy beaches and pools for endangered species and campers. But, as reported by the L.A. Times, some are skeptical that this 60-hour surge, which will be followed by smaller flows this fall, is the right strategy:

“National park officials said that 10 years of research at a cost of $80 million ha[s] shown that the flooding as planned could irreparably harm the national park’s ecology and resources.”

We asked the Grand Canyon rafting experts at O.A.R.S. to weigh in on the debate. Here president and founder George Wendt and veteran river guide Michael Ghiglieri put the issue into context for adventure travelers.

“Flushing” of Grand Canyon Causes Concern

Photography: The Insta-Classic Camera

Rarely is perfection achieved. But Leica cameras . . . well, put it this way: Henri Cartier-Bresson, the godfather of modern photojournalism, was obsessed with his. So was Alfred Eisenstaedt, who used his beloved Leica to shoot that sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square on V-J Day, 1945. Indeed, for the past 50 years, the venerated M series—known for its super-compact chassis, top-shelf optics, and supremely silent shutter—has accompanied some of the biggest names in the photo business (Sebastião Salgado, Ralph Gibson, countless National Geographic photographers).

Imagine the excitement, then, when the first digital iteration of the series, the M8, debuted in 2006. Camera connoisseurs went wild over its intuitive controls and über-crisp images produced by a 10.3-megapixel sensor, but most of us just gasped at the price ($5,500, body only).

Leica must have heard our rumblings of disapproval: In January a fledgling line of “budget” lenses called the Summarit-M hit stores, shaving about a grand off the camera kit. The new 35mm, for example, costs $1,500, compared with $2,600 for its cheapest predecessor. All four Summarits—35mm, 50mm, 75mm, and 90mm—are still handcrafted in Germany, but they are slightly slower, with the fastest f-stop at 2.5. I’d prefer the original with 2.0, but that’s a price worth paying to get your hands on greatness.

–West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro

Photography: The Insta-Classic Camera