200 Intrepid tours of Viet Nam

+ almost 2000 Intrepid travellers

= 12 Intrepid years.

The 3^rd Life of “Lemon Juice” Bruce

On October 22, 2009, I officially completed leading my 200^th Intrepid tour of Viet Nam. For the past 12 amazing years, this has meant leading almost 2000 foreign tourists from all around the world through Viet Nam, and sometimes Cambodia.

What an incredible journey!

It is hard to believe it has been 12 years. Some time ago, I casually commented to a friend “Where do the years go?”, and he replied “They don’t go anywhere, they just add up.” How true. The past 12 years for me have certainly added up to a fast-paced, wonderful and challenging “real life experience”.

Fortunately, I have had the privilege and opportunity to travel through exotic cultures, tumultuous history, and stunningly beautiful landscapes. Every day can still be a learning day, for me and my fellow travellers.

There is still so much popular misinformation and ignorance about Viet Nam and Cambodia crying out to be corrected. The whole world can benefit from learning these truths, and discovering the true magic of Indochina.

Along the way, I have made countless friends (and maybe occasional enemies!). I have many times been moved to tears when sharing both the joys and the pains of local people who so easily become local friends. I have been able to help in some small ways to sponsor children through school, relieve friends from crippling debt, assist local charities and people in genuine need, and once even helped keep an unfortunate local out of prison and in university instead.

One cannot be a passive bystander.

Such is life in my adopted home of Viet Nam.

My previous lives in Australia seem worlds away, as indeed they are. I have been lucky, I guess, to have been able to follow a somewhat unconventional lifestyle.

My first life was in Melbourne where, among other things, I was passionately involved in the peace movement against the war in Viet Nam, including resistance to military conscription.

Deciding to ‘drop out’ of teacher training college to work full time for peace, Viet Nam obviously made a life-changing impact on my youth. Today, the cause of peace remains critical for the survival and dignity of humanity, and for the health and sustainability of the planet.

The war profiteers and war criminals must be relentlessly exposed and put out of their evil business. The corporate mass media which acts as a propaganda tool for the military-industrial complex must be balanced with alternative media.This truth is driven home every day when you live and work in a land still suffering from the ongoing effects of past criminal wars.

For my second life, I ‘went bush’ to the beautiful Cassilis valley in far north east Victoria for an alternative rural lifestyle experience, where more lifetime friends were made. Viet Nam was and is my third life. My fourth life? I have no idea!

Throughout all my lives, I have had an eclectic range of jobs, I guess coincidentally following Uncle Ho’s idea of combining and respecting both mental and physical labour. Sometimes I have worked to live, but mostly I have lived to work, and always I did the things I wanted to do and felt needed to be done.

Fortuitously, this continues in my current life as an Intrepid tour leader, in a company committed to Responsible Travel and a better world. For me, there is no real line between work and personal life; it is my lifestyle, and what I do. What a special privilege!

Way back in 1996, I was a novice traveller on Intrepid’s 3-week Vietnam Adventure tour. This was meant to be just part of my first Asian holiday experience, before returning to Oz.

However, miraculously, from the moment I arrived in Hanoi I felt completely at home, as if I had been there in some previous life! Less than one year later, I was back in Viet Nam with a brand new job – this time working for Intrepid Travel as a tour leader.

So Viet Nam had dramatically changed my life for a second time!

Now, hopefully, there are many more tours ahead for me with Intrepid Indochina, and many more travellers to introduce to ‘my Viet Nam’. Hopefully, it will be a positive life-changing experience for them as well. How long? Who knows the future? As they say, time flies when you’re having fun. (Or, as a frog might say, time’s fun when you’re having flies!)

“Lemon Juice” Bruce

Intrepid Indochina

Tour Leader

Bruce McPhie

October 22, 2009