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The An Phu mine near An Phu village in the Luc Yen mining district, Vietnam has been the source of attractive specimens of ruby corundum and large purple to red spinel crystals, as well as phlogopite, pyrite, dravite and green edenite crystals embedded in white marble matrix. However, the pegmatitic tourmaline and beryl that have also been labeled as coming from An Phu are actually from the nearby Minh Tien pegmatite.
INTRODUCTION
Goooood morning, Vietnam! This time it was not Robin Williams in the movie; it was the Voice of Vietnam. It was 5:00 a.m. and I was in the far north of Vietnam in the small town of Luc Yen. The village loudspeaker blasted the national anthem, followed by a robust dirge, and then by a thumping martial beat, akin to marching boots, which I am sure celebrated the merits of their socialist system. I smiled as the morning exercise followed: mot. liai, ba, b'on. etc. ("One, two, three, four"). This time I recognized the spoken numbers after yesterday's crash course in Vietnamese. The previous day I had guessed the routine from the sheer repetition of the words. Though, I doubted whether anyone in this sleepy village on a cool fog-shrouded morning was aggressively following the exercise routine.
I lingered in bed for a moment and then donned my clothes and a sweater and walked down the stairs of the small five-room familyowned hotel. The owners had not yet arisen, but within a few minutes the elderly woman in charge of the household entered from the family's living quarters, and I motioned to an insulated flask so that she would heat some water to make some instant coffee. She fired up a natural gas burner for the water and then proceeded to start a wood fire in the large fireplace in the back of the kitchen, the traditional way for her to heat up a breakfast of sticky rice and yellow peas, to be topped with roasted peanuts. I mixed some Nescafe with hot water and a sludge of sweetened condensed milk, trying to drop the acidity of the bitter liquid, and then contemplated how such an improbable trip had turned out so well.
HANOI TO LUC YEN
When I had arrived in...