Photographed by Cục Sắt.
We took a two-hour drive into the countryside today to visit the Hoa Binh Hydroelectric dam.
The dam was started in 1979 and finished in 1994 (I think) at the cost of, apparently, one hundred eighty “workers and expatriates [Soviet workers]“.
I was disappointed, as when I heard “dam tour”, I thought that would include seeing the power generation/internals. I was looking forward to seeing nasty 1970s Soviet Power Engineering. Alas, this is still an ostensibly communist country and they still enjoy their petty secrecies, so I only got to see the damn wall and sluice gates. Apparently there are eight 240mW turbines at the facility.
Also, these photos are not mine. This time of year the air is terribly hazy. It was also 2pm, perhaps the worst time of the day to take a photo. Lastly, the sluices are closed. So the gate was dry as a bone. Instead I am including this link to a photos from a more ferocious time of the year. For my own photos, I settled for some moody shots that I might work into a photo fiction some day.
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