Police in northern Lao Cai province have been searching for a Scottish botanist who was reported to be missing since early November in the province’s resort town Sa Pa. The missing of 40-year-old Jamie Taggart was reported on November 3 to police by the owner of Ngoc Anh Guesthouse, where the botanist arrived on October 30. The foreign man than later took a motorbike taxi to make a plant-hunting trip in the Hoang Lien Son mountain range that day, leaving his luggage and passport in his room. Jamie was last seen heading off into the mountainous to look for rare plants. After receiving the information, local police and other concerned agencies have conducted a search for the missing foreigner but in vain, Major General Hoang Ngoc Thanh, director of the Lao Cai police, said on Thursday.

The provincial Department of Foreign Affairs said that on December 11 it received a note from the British Embassy in Hanoi requesting the local authorities to continue the search for Jamie. Yesterday, December 13, the Sa Pa District People’s Committee contacted Ms. Bui Thi Nga, Deputy Consul of the British Embassy in Hanoi, to discuss a plan to boost the search for the missing.

Accordingly, the search for Jamie is being expanded to Sa Pa’s neighboring localities, including Tam Duong and Tan Uyen District in Lai Chau Province. Police have also released Jamie's photos to Sa Pa and other localities nearby to facilitate the search. According to BBC, Jamie's father Jim Taggart, 82, said that he found out his son was missing when he failed to appear on a scheduled flight home to Scotland on 29 November. "I don't think he got lost,” the father said, adding that his son was on his own but had been in Sa Pa two years previously and knew his way around. “Either something happened on his first day on the hills or there is some explanation we can only guess at," the father was quoted by BBC as saying.