ReCycle 2014 – Cycling and Tree Planting in Ninh Binh, Vietnam

Again, we were together (everyone from an accountant to the travel consultants, tour guides, managers and friends) hitting the road on our annual reCycle event which we all had so much fun.

While we were riding on the buses to Ninh Binh, everyone got to introduce themselves again (even though they mostly know each others well) as it’s important to hear what everyone think about responsible tourism, what could one do more to better perform responsible tourism through our daily tour activities.

Mid May, it was quite hot in deed for cycling, however, everyone was eager to ride the bike, our bike ride started at 10.15 am by that time the temperature was in between 32 – 36 degree celsius, further more our first ride was rather challenging, it was with quite a lots of hills climb going into the Cuc Phuong national park, but with the spirit of the reCycle and the support from the cycling tour guides, everyone made it to Mac lake which was about 15 km up hills and under the burning heat of Vietnam summer.

The team was pleased that they made the first challenge, having some rest time right after lunch by the beautiful Mac lake, we all together had some cycling races among the team, it’s was quite fun with the slow race – which means one has to cycle as slow as possible but they get to keep balancing their bike, not falling down or touching the ground. The winner of the slowest ride is Mrs. Hang – Footprint Travel Consultant.

The second one was the fast race around Mac lake, there were 3 team arranged called Recycle, Reuse and Reduce, with challange of 5 rounds around the lake of about 4 km in total, each team had two bikes and four members, they were making brainstorming and have used all the team work skill to compete the games, it was quite interesting and everyone liked it so much, the winner of the this race is team Recycle.

Tree planting was right after the race, I personally love planting trees and felt so grateful that our company organized this event, not just about being in the nature that we were together but the meaning behind is to help go against the climate change, Vietnam’s primate forest is now just about 10% of the total coverage while other countries in Southeast Asia has more than 40% of the coverage.

Within this reCycle event, Footprint and friends planted 100 trees and they also donated money to the gardeners in Cuc Phuong national park for keeping the trees alive, further than that, our tour guides visiting Cuc Phuong national park on their guiding jobs will pay a visit to keep them more healthy to grow too.

Every person joining on this trip fully understand that they will contribute to save the planet and to follow Footprint’s guidelines that everyone brought their own bottle for their waters during the trips, they just needed to refill from the big water tank from the buses, from this, our action was to save more than 200 plastic bottles which has a huge impact on our environment.

Our night in the park filled with fun from singing, games and the prizes for the races, following by a sound sleep on the shared house on stilts to all members, this probably resulted from a hard day of activities (luckily that I did not hear anyone snoring 

Our day two was splitted into 2 options, first option was to follow the original program of cycling under the heat to Hoa Lu ancient town, and the other option was to cycle deep in to the national park for some foreign friends from Capilano University who was the first time visitors to Cuc Phuong.

Both groups enjoyed their part very much, Ngoc one of the members said, I could not believe that I could ride more than 20 km under the heat of 35 degree celsius and Hanna – our smallest member even did it full of 35 km which she also called it “amazing me”.

It was not just about riding, but the ride was going through the limestone areas of Ninh Binh, which is spectacular.

For those 9 members cycling deep in the forest, Caitlin said “One of my highlights was mountain biking through the jungle and then stopped at the endangered primate rescue centre despite a heat index of 48 degrees!”

We completed the reCycle event of 2014 with a boat row in Trang An for some new comer to Ninh Binh, the rest had a very good sleep on the buses back to Hanoi with great memories of the two days together with fun, teamwork, education, inspiration on responsible tourism and more…

And we can’t wait for the next reCycle 2015 going to be held in Pu Luong nature reserve, come check us out for your