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From Cropland to Outcropping

By Dudley Blauwet, Dudley Blauwet Gems, Louisville, CO

As soon as gem trekker Dudley Blauwet saw the dozens of motorbikes
parked in the corn field at Khai Trung, Vietnam, he knew the locals had switched
from farming to gem mining—in this case, pink tourmaline.

Miners searching for gems at Khai Trung.

"This is what I live for!" I exclaimed to Duy, my interpreter-guide as we ambled down from a narrow pass, surrounded by the jutting shark's fins and dragonheads of the wild karst landscape. We were just below the 22nd parallel in the north of Vietnam and celebrating a photojournalism trip to a new tourmaline mine, opened just one week prior.

"Mine" may be a stretch of the imagination, if one can visualize hundreds of people crammed into what had been a cornfield now being torn asunder by the most primitive of mining tools: farming hoes and weeding tools, and machetes, and a handful of small hammers, along with bare hands! It was a scene of chaos and the frantic pursuit of riches for poor peasant farmers and itinerant Dao tribal people (pronounced Dzao).The frenzy was infectious, and I was overjoyed to be a part of it; but most of all, I felt blessed by this unexpected once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

A Change of Plans

I had arrived in Hanoi, a large bustling city of about four million people in the north of Vietnam on an early morning flight from Bangkok on May 17, 2007.

Ever since my last trip to Vietnam six months previously, I had planned to use my next trip to write an article about the country’s star corundum locales. It was to be a sequel to gem travel pieces published on the spinel and ruby location called the Sungate Mine, near the village of An Phu, as well as the main pegmatitic tourmaline mine just outside of Minh Tien.

But 34 years of relentless travel have taught me that the best laid plans often go awry. So the next morning when Mr. Chien, an old friend and important business contact, brought news of a major new tourmaline mine just 12 km (7.5 miles) away from the gem trading town of Luc Yen where I was staying, I jumped at his invitation to visit it that afternoon.

Duy and I motor scootered over to the Chiens, and waited for their brother-in-law to arrive. After he rode up on a small motorbike with his wife, the Chiens doubled up on a small Honda, while Duy and I were relegated to a weaker motor scooter.

The Long And Winding Road

The haze had subsided, and the weather signaled one of the sunniest days I had seen in this area. After strapping on our helmets (required by a new law that took effect at the end of 2007), we followed a zigzag route, angling generally north to northwest. Along our way, we passed the huge scar of a lonely limestone karst fin being mined for marble and commented on the large industrial crane sitting on the top of the tiny pinnacle.

Climbing upward in search of Vietnamese tourmaline.

After traveling nearly ten km (6.2 miles), we abruptly turned right onto a small paved road. Next, we started to climb upwards amidst lush, thick, seemingly impenetrable native jungle carpeting the increasingly vertical karst. The landscape became more exotic and I shot photo after photo as new vistas opened with every turn.

We finally crested the ridge and arrived at the narrow strip of land at the top of the pass, crossing under a large gateway that seemed the entrance to Shangri-La. I smiled, thrilled at the wildness of the place and barely able to contain my excitement to see what lay ahead. Already my altimeter indicated that we had climbed about 1000 feet vertically since leaving Luc Yen.

Signs of Mining Life

The pavement ended abruptly and we rapidly dropped downward in a northwesterly direction on a well traveled double path. The vista expanded, and a feeling of adventure became pervasive. We wound downward and the sky above us lightened more; even nature was lending a hand to this excursion.

Just under five kilometers (3.0 miles) from the gateway, we suddenly exited south onto a red clay road, typical of rural South East Asia. We entered a pass about a kilometer (.62 miles) later and I was surprised to find several large earthmoving machines tearing up the red laterite clay on the right hand side of the road for a new iron mine.

We turned in a more easterly direction, coasting on a slight downhill, with sweeping views and no signs of any hamlets. A few farmers were clearing weeds off of small patches of land clinging to the steep terrain. The area appeared to have been cleared of jungle in the recent past and had been slashed for agriculture. A few small green cornfields were haphazardly placed throughout the countryside on relatively steep slopes.

Just as the dirt road ended and turned into a single track, I turned to my left and saw small mine workings slightly above our route. Two men with motor bikes were standing near that pit, holding some stones in their hands and gesturing to us. Both of them had rather large pieces of weathered feldspar with rough pink tourmaline crystals embedded within. When asked where the pieces came from, the dealers responded that the samples were from a new mine just down the trail. My anticipation grew.

Beyond the wall of green lies “gold.”

In the Pink

As we rolled down the narrow, much-used dirt trail, I could not help but notice an unusual number of motorcycles coming up and down it. We continued climbing a long hillside and as we rounded a corner, I gasped to see a motorcycle park on a flat grassy pad, just below a steep hill about a mile from where the single track had started. What astounded me was the number of motorbikes-at least 50, maybe 100-parked in the middle of nowhere, with lots of people milling around.

I felt a rush of adrenalin. There was a continuous flow of people up and down the steep hill in front of us. We joined the frantic mob, breathing hard as we rushed to the top. Halfway up, we met a woman whom I had recognized from the gem market. She stopped us and opened her hand to show four pieces of pink tourmaline rough crystal, each the size of a small marble. I examined them quickly and saw that they all were at least lightly included, but the color was an excellent pure pink with very little brown tones. I declined these pieces, thinking that I would have more time to examine others like them in the Luc Yen market the following morning. Also I would be in a better position to bargain there, away from the frenzy at this remote locale.

The tourmaline rush turns farmers into miners.

We quickly reached a small narrow pass less than a quarter mile from the cycle park. Amazingly, there were perhaps two hundred people packed into a small area not more than 50 by 50 yards. Some were digging and rooting through the remains of what once had been a cornfield, while onlookers gawked over their shoulders. When a shout arose from the pit, so many people rushed over to see what was happening that they nearly forced the front row of onlookers over the edge. It was one of many false alarms. I scurried over and pushed myself through the crowd for a look. Half a dozen able-bodied young men were working a soft decomposed pegmatite. Some were slashing at it with machetes, while others were using farm tools and hoes. I saw only a couple of hammers and chisels.

A young girl prospecting for gems in Khai Trung, Vietnam.

It appeared that the main pegmatite which was the primary source of the tourmaline drifted downward in a northwesterly direction from the top of the pass towards the southeast. There was a bit of limestone karst over the surface, followed by a few feet of loose soil and then a chalky five-foot wide pegmatite that had been worked down three to four feet.

Specimens from this primary deposit resembled the hand-sized ones I had already seen at the Luc Yen market. Those samples had a weathered microcline matrix, on the outside of which were flattened, interrupted, pink tourmaline crystals that were up to three inches long. Pegmatite areas contained substantial amounts of lepidolite, a pinkish-purple mica. I also noticed microcline feldspar, sometimes with a few bits of granite, along with a few small quartz crystals or some calcite. While miners were working uphill toward the northwest, all around them people were digging in the loose granular soil, often with their bare hands, looking for alluvial remnants swept from the primary deposit.

Among those prospecting was a young girl who looked like she was five or six years old, but was probably older, digging with both her dirt-encrusted hands. When I asked her if I could take a photograph, she shyly agreed. A short while later she disappeared and came back with a piece of feldspar containing some shattered tourmaline crystals and presented them to me.

To Buy Or Not To Buy

As I wandered around the torn-up cornfield, miners would thrust chunks of tourmaline in my face. Wanting to be polite to my hosts, I let them have first looks and dibs, indicating which pieces might be worthwhile to buy. Although bidding was conducted in Vietnamese, I understood the prices being asked. They were the same as would have been quoted in the Luc Yen market. That’s why my friends declined them. Contrary to expectations, being at the site of early production did not present an ideal time to bargain. There were far too many eager, overly-excited buyers willing to outbid the next competitor. I hoped for a chance to buy rough for more reasonable prices at the gem market the next day where circumstances would be saner.

Gem mining in Vietnam is for women as well as men.

But even if I was unable to buy anything tomorrow, I was grateful for this stroke of luck. For over 25 years, I had been visiting mines around the world but had never seen anything quite like this. As a former mountain climber and skier, I had known the great thrill of the first ascent of a peak or a first descent of a steep slope. Now I knew an entirely new but equal thrill of being the first foreigner to visit a remote gem mine.

We headed back towards Luc Yen on a lovely evening with a full moon just starting to rise. When we stopped for a beer at a restaurant whose owner was a gem dealer, my friends looked at some of the tourmaline he had collected while I entertained his two daughters and their friend, showing them digital shots of the mine.

When someone gets lucky, everyone wants to know how lucky.

Once back in Luc Yen, we returned to the hotel and cleaned up before returning to Mr. Chien’s house for a final farewell dinner. The next morning I wandered down to the market in search of some of the new material. I found a nearly four carat faceted tourmaline with the characteristic pink color from the Khai Trung mine, but I passed on it because of micro fractures around the girdle. Far more satisfactory was a nicely crystallized 1.5 inch specimen that I purchased from the prettiest dealer in the market. However, my negotiations for a second crystal failed, as did those on a bi-color tourmaline cabochon whose half-pink and half-yellow sections made me suspect that it was possibly from the Minh Tien mine or from some of the alluvial deposits in the rice fields dotting the landscape between that small town and An Phu, both of which were southeast of Luc Yen.

All in all, I was encouraged that there were enough new tourmaline deposits in the area to sustain the local market in Luc Yen. Six month previously, on my third trip to the Sun Gate mine, I had noticed that the miners were working within fifty feet of the top of the ridge and it looked like the lifetime of this very productive mine which had started in the mid 1990's was ending.

Duy and I said our final goodbyes to our local friends and then began the five hour drive back to Hanoi, after which I caught a late evening flight back to Bangkok for a two day stay, before flying to Sri Lanka and then Pakistan. Duy and I discussed the trip on the return journey. I vowed to him and myself to return to Luc Yen within five months, and I hoped that another fine adventure lay in store in what was now one of my favorite gem destinations.

A young girl asks Blauwett to inspect her finds.

The gem searcher’s road goes on forever but the occasional lucky day makes the endless travel worthwhile.

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