Trip to a Typical Vietnamese Village in Northern Vietnam

General

For anyone wanting an authentic yet pampering trip in Northern Vietnam: it is highly recommended to visit for a day or two a trip to the village "Yen Duc" Yen Duc located about an hour's drive west of Halong Bay and about 2:20 hours east of Hanoi.

In Yen Duc Village there is a small and well-kept rural boutique hotel called Viet House featuring 4 spacious, air-conditioned double rooms with toilets, a bathtub, and a small refrigerator. The place has a cute garden and a covered area with tables overlooking rice fields where all meals provided on-site are eaten in a typical Vietnamese style.

The place provides bicycles for every guest with which guests move around the village accompanied by a personal guide for the entire stay at the place who escorts the guests on all tours in the village, takes care of all their needs, and answers every question.
A magical place where you will see up close and through personal learning the daily life in the village where Vietnamese farmers live (not people of various tribes) without the need for long trips north.

Short video about the Viet House hotel:

Guided Tours in Yen Duc Village

Making Straw Brooms:

From the hotel you go out on a bicycle ride through the rice fields to visit a family that makes its living from straw brooms whose source is rice bushes. The landlady, over 70, demonstrates how to make the broom and the tourists try making it themselves too. Each broom she makes in about ten minutes and sells it for about half a dollar. While making it, the landlady also tells a little about her fascinating life story and her family. She and her husband were soldiers in Vietnam during the war and thus met and married later. The guide translates her words to the tourists.

Visit to an Ancient Private House:

You visit an ancient local house that survived the wars and receive explanations from the elderly landlady about the history of the place, her family lineage, and you see her family tree and various pictures of her family. The woman's words are of course translated into English by the guide. The visit also includes a traditional tea ceremony.

Demonstration of the Rice Production Process:

At another site in the village, guests are demonstrated the process of processing and producing rice from the sheaves collected from the field. The place has a type of mill that grinds the rice seeds with the husk, thereby causing the husk to be peeled from the rice grains. Afterwards, the husk is separated from the rice grains using a manual sieve. At every stage, the tourists can experience the process themselves.

Fishing in a Fish Pond:

A mud pool where fish are raised and guests experience fishing in a special local method. For this purpose, guests are provided with waterproof pants-boots with which they enter the pool whose depth is about seventy centimeters and its bottom is muddy. Each fisherman also receives a straw basket trap used for catching the fish. You have to quickly dip the basket into the water down to the bottom hoping a fish will be caught in it. The water is completely murky from the mud so the fish cannot be seen at all. You have to try again and again until you feel vibrations inside the basket/trap and this is a sign that a fish has been caught. The fish is pulled out with a glove from an opening at the top of the trap. The caught fish are used for dinner at the hotel.

Making Rice Cookies:

As part of dinner, you experience making cookies from rice dough, sugar, and white beans. Small balls are made from the rice and cooked in boiling water. Then they are dipped in water with sugar and ginger.

Local Market in the Village:

A bicycle ride to the local market in the village which opens every day early in the morning until 11 in the morning. The place sells everything under the sun: vegetables, fruits, meat, fish, clothes, toys, etc. Among the products sold you can also see live frogs... The Vietnamese, as you will discover throughout the trip, eat everything... You will be the only tourists in the market. Everyone else is local. This is not a market where you haggle like the touristic markets but a place where you will learn firsthand about the lives of the locals.

Water Puppet Theater

After a local lunch at the hotel, you see a water puppet theater show in the village which is a common traditional show in Vietnam. In the show accompanied by music, you see puppets on the water surface of animals, people, dragons, etc. operated by people behind a screen. The show usually describes village life and various events in the residents' lives.