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Travel

The Must visit Craft Villages in Vietnam

Vietnam is one of the most popular and favorite destinations in South East Asia. It is not only because of the beautiful landscape but also the longstanding traditional craft villages. These villages have been well preserved from generations to generations and existed for centuries. Their products have been well known in both domestic and international markets.
Vietnamese customs, traditions, and cultures, all can be seen through these products. So, if you have a chance to visit Vietnam, don’t forget to add one of the below traditional craft villages in Vietnam to your list. Most of the businesses were small scale and family based. Let’s exploce The Must visit Craft Villages in Vietnam below.

The Must visit Craft Villages in Vietnam

Phu Lang Pottery Village

60 kilometers east from Hanoi, a drive to Phu Lang is a journey back through time to a small, beautiful village lying along Cau River. The Elderly in the village said that pottery making has been at Phu Lang since the 13th century. Cooking pots, tiles, jars, burial caskets are main products covered with a light brown glaze that distinguishes Phu Lang from other pottery villages such as Bat Trang and Tho Ha. Although Bat Trang pottery is the most well known in the whole Red River Delta, Phu Lang is less touristy and has its own prominent features that make your journey much more enjoyable: You’ll see traditional kilns that are heated with wood. These kilns’ dimension is relatively large that you can easily get inside to see its detail when there’s no fire in.
There are small but charming houses that are built with local clay bricks, surrounded by piles of pottery of all kinds, and blend harmoniously to the surrounding peaceful countryside. You’ll easy to notice dizzying piles of wooden blocks and caskets everywhere in the village. Many family workshops, some of which have been in this work for several generations: Don’t get me wrong. These workshops (as well as workshops in other villages in my post) aren’t shops where activities are set up for demonstration and selling products. Local people here do their job every day with or without tourists. You can talk to artisans who are trying their best to revive the fame for Phu Lang Pottery.

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Thu Sy Bamboo Fish Trap Village

60 kilometers from Hanoi, Thu Sy is remaining an authentic northern village with brown red tiled roofs houses, bringing up an image of a peaceful countryside. Đó or knitting bamboo fish traps in Thu Sy have been in work for more than two hundred years. An old woman said: “I have learned to make fish traps since I was 5,” then she smiled: “I might have known how to do it since my mother was carrying me in her womb.”
If you once see a Đó, you’ll recognize that knitting requires a lot of skill and meticulousness. Craftsmen have to use their hands and chins to split raw bamboo into nan or smooth, thin stitches of different sizes before kitting them to create a fish trap. A similar scorching technique used with Xuan Lai bamboo furniture is applied after. Fish traps will be arranged into kilns without fire, just smoke. This procedure is to make the traps shiny and give them a beautiful golden brown color.

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Chuong Conical Hat Making Village (Hanoi)

Conical hat, along with “ao dai”, is considered as the iconic symbol of Vietnamese women’s costumes. Have you ever wondered how Vietnamese conical hats are made. Let’s head to Chuong conical hat making village located on the west of Hanoi. Many generations in the village have worked quietly to keep and uphold this long standing custom of making traditional conical hats.
Obviously, you can easily buy a conical hat in other places, however, the products of Chuong village are still the best. Made from palm leaves from Quang Binh province, silk thread from Trieu Khuc village, and bamboo from Hoa Binh province, these hats are stunning and robust. You can use the conical hat to shelter from the rain and sun, as well as give it to your friends as a souvenir.

The Must visit Craft Villages in Vietnam

Quang Phu Cau Incense Village

If you have been to a pagoda in Vietnam, you might notice the image of people respectfully holding incense sticks in their hands in front of a Buddha statue. In Vietnamese belief, whorls of incense smoke are the way that the living can communicate and send messages of love and mercy remembrance to the dead in the other world. 40 kilometers on the outskirts of Hanoi, there’s a village famed for a colorful craft for more than a century: It’s Quang Phu Cau Incense Village. Began as a part time job for villagers besides their farming activity, making incense is now the main income of nearly 10,000 households and consumes more than 20 tons of bamboo a day.
The production includes many steps, from chopping up bamboo, dyeing the incense roots to red, drying naturally under the sun to adding incense paste into the sticks. This paste is a mixture made from an unknown ratio of glue, incense, and bamboo sawdust that exudes a nice scent when burning. In the past, incense making was made manually, but now, mechanization is replacing some processes to increase productivity. It’s not difficult to have beautiful shots when you’re here. Space on the sides of roads and courtyards are mostly taken to dry the incense after dyeing. Bunches of incense sticks are spread out to the round shape like hundred bunches of red flowers, giving the village a picturesque look.

The Must visit Craft Villages in Vietnam