GIA FE34 (GIA Laboratory Bangkok Field Expedition 34): Mar. 17th - Mar. 27th, 2012: Vietnam

After the GIA Laboratory Bangkok FE02, FE08 and FE16 field expeditions to Vietnam respectively in January and May 2009 and then in April - May 2010, the author returned to Vietnam in March 2012 in order to continue working on several interesting project about rubies, spinels and pearls.

This time the main objective was to try to deal with some unfinished business about blue spinels.

As regular visitors of fieldgemology.org may know in May 2009 (GIA Laboratory Bangkok FE08) the author was traveling in Vietnam with several friends including one of his regular travel buddies: Jean Baptiste Senoble. For the author, besides training and evaluating young gemologists for field activities, the focus was to collect ruby reference specimens for the GIA reference collection. But as it had been the case with Tsavorite in 2009, Jean Baptiste was able to highjack the author's initial plans and interest him to a gemstone that was fascinating him: Blue spinels.
JB was in love with blue spinels since the day he saw in Bangkok a beautiful faceted gem reportedly from Vietnam that had been found by a Bangkok based gem merchant who really motivated people there to mine blue spinels: While the author was looking around for rubies, Jean Baptiste was asking for blue spinels. After few days he was able to find from a Yen The merchant two tiny highly saturated rough blue spinels. The color of the little stones was amazing: No tone, no gray were visible, they were stunning bright little "Jedi" spinels, far away from the "Dark Side": Their deep bright blue color was even matching without shame the window cleaning liquid used by our hotel staff... Not sure if the color was coming from cobalt or something else had then fun calling them "Windex" blue spinels.

The author was hooked.

Back at the GIA Laboratory Bangkok, the author had a new surprise as after studying the two stones: Indeed, GIA gemologist Sudarat Saeseaw found out that if one stone was natural, the other one was a tumbled synthetic! The author was amazed as once again it was a classic example of the "Dick's Law", presented by Richard W. Hughes in his masterpiece "Ruby & Sapphire" on page 113 ( and on his website at "Buying at the source" where you can see a photo of these two little stones and where this funny story was first published.)

Since then, the author was wondering about the origin of the bright blue natural stone. It is quite a classic. If most people when they see a nice gem are wondering about its price, for the author each time the same question is jumping to his mind:

"Where is it from?"

When we got the stone in Yen The, the answer was very classic: "An Phu"... Well, that was not helping very much as there are tens of deposits in the mountains around An Phu village and to visit and study all of them could take months of hard work due to the difficulty of the jungle covered karst mountains.

Few days after finding these lovely "windex" spinels, after a one day long expedition in the tricky mountains near An Phu, we could confirm that the source of most of the nice sky blue spinels found in the market in the Luc Yen district was a small mining site called "Bai Son", from the name of a very poisonous tree found there... But the saturation of the Bai Son spinels was much lower than what could be seen in the "Windex" like little gems...

We decided then to continue our quest and keep things a little bit quiet despite pressures from here or there to publish what we had so far. Yes it would be nice to write about these nice stones but we had yet no idea about where they were really coming from: Too many questions, not enough facts: A classic "unfinished business".

"Blue spinel rough from the Luc Yen district"
Details one two small pices of "Double Bai Son" rough spinels (meaning that the gem saturation is double compared to what is usually found in Bai Son area) seen in Yen The, Vietnam in March 2012.
Photo: V. Pardieu / GIA Laboratory Bangkok, 2012

In December 2009, Philippe Ressigeac, a young gemologist recently graduated from GIA Thailand asked the author for advice for his career. We knew each other well for about a year and I had a good idea about his projects, motivation and capacities. I was then thinking that Philippe could be a potential great traveling companion for future expeditions. I had to test him and give him an opportunity to do some good useful work. After few minutes I told him that he would have a lot to learn going to North Vietnam: Blue spinels were far to be the author's research priorities at the GIA Laboratory but were still a small unfinished business that was regularly bothering me. I was believing that he could do some useful gem hunting job there in North Vietnam as very few was known of these beautiful gem rich mountains. Philippe could be then very useful to the author as a scout to prepare the coming FE16 expedition to Vietnam scheduled in April 2010. That could be a great experience for him also to get few months of first hand experience about how things are going on in such gem producing area. Furthermore the French gemological Association was willing to visit Vietnam with 2 groups of 25 people in May 2010. I told Philippe that I could put him in contact with them and that I could arrange things for him to be they guide as my work at GIA was not enabling me to have the time to work on this gemological tourism project. Philippe was enthusiastic and within few days, Lou Pierre Bryl, a friend of Philippe and a veteran of the author's expeditions, decided to join Philippe in that quest.

The GIA Laboratory Bangkok FE16 expedition was composed of a great bunch of young gemologists and geologists with a passion for both gems and traveling. As usual Vietnam was for the author a great training ground to see if these young gemologists would be Ok as travel assistants for longer and tougher expeditions to Africa or Central Asia.

Our main objectives were of course rubies, but we had of course a keen interest also for blue spinels. If we could get several interesting deep blue spinel on marble matrix, we were not able to confirm the location of any primary deposit as visiting the places where the gems had been reportedly mined from we could not find any primary deposit. The difficulty in such humid jungle covered mountains is that any mining site is within few weeks or months covered by moss and vegetation.

After these 2010 expeditions, Jean Baptiste Senoble published "Beauty and rarity, a quest for Vietnamese blue spinels" an interesting article about hunting for blue spinels for "InColor", the ICA' magazine.

It was nevertheless still an unfinished business as the source for these little "jedi" / "windex" bright blue spinels were still unconfirmed.

In July 2011, in Poil, a small village in the French countryside, as each summer, a very informal but very interesting gemological gathering is taking place. During that event the author met Boris Chauvire, a young French geologist/gemologist willing to have some field experience. The author felling about the 22 years old young man was good and we decided that we could try to do something together.

As usual, the process was simple: I told Boris: "Well, if you want to travel with me: First take a plane ticket and join me in Bangkok next winter. Then, lets go for few weekend type expeditions to neighboring gem mining areas. If everything is fine, meaning that you dont give me too much headhakes and if you can show me that you can be a useful asset for such expeditions, then I might consider taking you as travel assistant on some longer ones for one or two weeks. Then again we will see if we can make plans for the future. The fact is that I don't feel good traveling on long serious expeditions to Africa or Central Asia with people that I don't know and/or that I've not trained". Finally before to go on any long/serious expeditions, it is better to know if we can feel good traveling together.

Boris then said: "Coming to Bangkok? Hum, I would love to, but that's not easy as I'm working on a master degree in Geology at Nantes University. But may be we could discuss the issue with my supervisor: Dr. Benjamin Rondeau?"

The good thing was that Dr. Rondeau was not far away. We discussed the issue and within few weeks we built what was looking like a good solution: Boris will come in Bangkok from January to April 2012 in order to do some field work in relation with his master degree... on the geology of the Vietnamese blue spinels!

Boris came in Bangkok on January 22nd 2012. The author introduced him to Philippe Ressigeac who was also for few weeks in Thailand. The feeling was good between them and two weeks later Boris and Philippe were on their way for Northern Vietnam with two Swiss friends of the author: Stephane Jacquat and Marc Noveraz.

"Marc Noveraz, Boris Chauvire and Philippe Ressigeac looking for gems at the Yen The morning gem market".
Photo: Stephane Jacquat, Feb. 2012

Thanks to Philippe knowledge of the region, to Stephane experience as a mountaineer, and to Marc experience as a gem buyer, Boris was able to become rapidly familiar with the country, the area around Yen The and gem trading in such place. During that first expedition they found that gem mining was very low in the Luc Yen district. It was to be expected as the "Tet", the celebration of the Vietnamese new year, was still keeping the local busy and it was still very cold and humid in the mountains Furthermore the local farmers/miners were too busy with agriculture and rice cultivation to get any interest in gemstone mining. The expedition was nevertheless far to be a waste of time as Philippe introduced Boris to some key local people and helped him to prepare the coming "harvest" expedition that was planned later with the author. That expedition was scheduled in March 2012, as late as possible in accordance with Boris time frame for his master degree that had to be completed by June 2012.

The GIA Laboratory Bangkok FE34 "harvest" expedition took place from March 17th to March 27th 2012. Boris Chauvire returned then to Vietnam with the author and an old university friend of the author: Maika Berrouet joining the expedition as a photographer to document it.

Things turned very well as the weather was very fine during our whole expedition. It was not raining. This is an important point in the jungle covered karstic mountains dominating Yen The and An Phu as the tough terrain in these mountains is very dangerous when the rocks are wet and muddy.

We were also lucky as the first day while meeting some Yen The merchants the author visited regularly during the past years, we could find some very interesting deep blue spinel parcels matching the "windex" window liquid... Nice! We spent few hours selecting interesting little pieces in these nice parcels.

"Selecting bright blue spinels in Yen The"
Boris Chauvire and Maika Berrouet selecting highly saturated blue spinels from some parcels seen in Yen The, Luc Yen district, Northern Vietnam.
Photo: V. Pardieu / GIA Laboratory Bangkok, 2012

Then thanks to the support of our Yen The friend: Mr. Shuan the next day we were heading to the mountains and the deposit that where these spinesl had been reportedly mined from. During the three days we spent scouting the mountains around Yen The we could visit several interesting spinel and ruby deposits, collect some interesting additional samples for the GIA reference collection and, thanks to Mr. Shuan work with the local miners between Boris two visits to Yen The, we had finally the pleasure to find in the mountains some marbles hosting deep blue spinels!

"A mystery getting solved..."
Boris Chauvire happy to have finally found some saturated blue spinels in their host rocks in the mountains of the Luc Yen district thanks to the help of some local Vietnamese miners.
Photo: V. Pardieu / GIA Laboratory Bangkok, 2012

Still the author and Boris will have to check at the GIA laboratory and in Nantes University if these spinels are indeed matching the lovely small natural "windex" stone the author and JB Senoble were able to get in May 2009. But obviously after 7 expeditions either lead by the author or by Philippe Ressigeac, an "unfinished business" was looking to be on the way to find a conclusion.