Traditional villages and Pagoda in the vicinnity of Hanoi
In Vietnam, the countryside is the most peaceful place evoking the peasants' simnerple lives, the image of bamboo trees, communal houses, and banyan trees, the ferries and traditional villages such as Bat Trang pottery village, Dong Ho folk painting village, Dong Ky carpentry village etc.... The people in the countryside are very skilful with many handicrafts contained the Vietnamese culture, the traditional usages and customs.
| - Length of the trip | : 1 days |
| - Trip Starts from | : Hanoi city |
| - Trip Ends in | : Hanoi city |
| - Required booking time | : 15 hours for individuals and 5 days for group in advance |
| - Rates per person | : 38$ - Nomal (Vietnamese lunch) |
| - Rates are valid from 1 Janualy 2008 |
Details of Tour:
PRG-1 (Half day) : BAT TRANG - Pick up at hotel and transfer to the riverside village of Bat Trang Village, where distinctive ceramics are made and used throughout the delta region for over 500 years. The vitality of this village is still blown up by the hundreds of pottery kilns on fire day and night. We stroll around various cottage industries and watch craftsmen forming, painting and glazing their products in traditional ways. The trip ends after arrival in Hanoi.
PRG-2 (6 hours) : VAN PHUC, a silk village is a great place to silk cloth being produced on the loom. There is a showroom where you can buy silk by the meter, much more exciting that buying it in the shops! Continue to visit TRAM pagoda & TRAM GIAN pagodas.
PRG-3 (6 hours) : BAT TRANG, DONG HO FOLK PAINTING & DONG KY VILLAGE
AM: Pick you up at office at 7.45. Transfer to visit Bat Trang pottery village. On the way to Bat Trang village, you have a chance to see the property of the villages located along the two banks of the Red River Dykes and the lifestyles of dwellers. Two hours visiting Bat Trang village, then have lunch at a Vietnamese traditional restaurant.
PM: The guide takes you to visit Dong Ho folk painting where you will be surprised by the folk paintings made by the skilful persons with natural materials and colors. After that visiting But Thap Pagoda, the cradle of Buddhism in Vietnam with the unique architecture makes you impressed by its charms and history. Visit DONG KY - carpentry village. Here they made furniture inlaid with mother of pearl and finished off with layer of clear lacquer. In laying the mother of pearlis highly labour intensive, see how it is delicately sawed info fine fish-bone sliver and paints takingly set into wood. Finish tour.
PRG-4 (6 hours) : This itinerary will take you to visit two famous pagoda in Ha Tay province: THAY (master pagoda) & TAY PHUONG pagoda.
Tour price:
Price | Group | Private |
1pax | 2-3pax | 4-6pax | over 7pax |
program 1 & 2 | 38$ | 82$ | 47$ | 27$ | 21$ |
program 3 & 4 | 43$ | 89$ | 52$ | 29$ | 23$ |
The trip includes
The car with air-condition
English speaking tour guide
All entrance, permission and visiting fees
The trip excludes
Meals specified in tour program
Visa to Vietnam
Departure airport tax
Meals which are not included in the program
Personal travel & medical insurance
International flights to and from Vietnam
All personal & daily expenses
All gratuities and tips to drivers and guides
Note: Surcharges for peak seasons, Christmas and New Year Holidays, lunar New Year Festival, extras for room, air tickets upgrades shall be applied
General information about Villages & Pagoda in HaTay:
The Traditional Village in Vietnam
Most travelers to Vietnam inevitably start with either Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) or Hanoi. Truthfully, it would make more sense to start with a tiny village in the Vietnamese hinterland and then work your way up to a big city. Most of Vietnam is small, agrarian communities, after all. Unfortunately, the nature of international travel, with its reliance on jumbo jets and airports, makes such a modest start to Vietnam impossible. You cannot avoid spending time in Saigon and Hanoi and getting out to the countryside requires a bit more effort. The effort is well worth it, however, and you should make sure you spend at least some of your trip in a traditional Vietnamese village. If Saigon is the heart of Vietnam, and Hanoi the brain, then the villages are the cells that make up the rest of the national body.
When you head out into the Vietnamese countryside take along The Traditional Village in Vietnam for background information. This book from The Gioi Publishers of Hanoi is a detailed study of various aspects of the Vietnamese village by those who know it best: Vietnamese scholars. The basic premise of the book is that without a working knowledge of the Vietnamese village one can never understand the nation as a whole.
The Traditional Village in Vietnam is not a traveler's guidebook. Rather it is a collection of academic papers written by scholars from the University of Hanoi and elsewhere. Originally published in the quarterly journal Vietnamese Studies, these papers cover a diverse selection of topics, all related to village life. Subjects range from how to build a traditional village home--complete with architectural schematics--to the price of buying village titles before 1945. In Thuong Son, for example, you would have paid ten piastres to be a "literature official" and seventy piastres to be "honorable."
Opening this book is like lifting the lid off a treasure chest full of obscure but fascinating details. For example, we learn that if a woman married a man from outside her village, then tradition dictated that the groom donate a preset amount of bricks to pave the village lanes. Many villages once paved their thoroughfares exclusively through this community marriage tax. In at least one village, however, if a woman married a man from within the village then the groom had to give the village the fixings for a celebration: one piastre, a tray of sticky rice, a chicken, two bottles of alcohol, and 100 betel nuts. Did you know that "needling the rice sacks" is an old folk saying that means, roughly, to stir up trouble? Perhaps the greatest surprise in The Traditional Village in Vietnam is the occasional authentic Vietnamese insect squashed flat between the pages like a pressed flower.
Of particular interest is Huy Vu's paper on the Ha Nam area. Ha Nam is a remote region north of Haiphong that still retains much of its traditional village flavor. For those travelers who want to get off of the beaten track and explore isolated communities, Ha Nam might be the place to do it. Huy Vu's paper will provide the historical background you need before setting out on such an expedition. But you needn't go as far afield as Ha Nam. Village life begins just beyond the Saigon and Hanoi city limits. Pack The Traditional Village in Vietnam into your bag and jump aboard the nearest outbound bus. The villages of Vietnam await.
Ha Tay travel and tourism guides
Ha Tay is one of the biggest provinces of Vietnam with its area virtually surrounding Ha Noi. The capital town of Ha Tay Province is Ha Dong Town which from the 11th century has been famous for the fine silk. Visit Van Phuc Village in Ha Dong now you can still sample of the fine silk of this area. Besides Ha Tay offers many handicraft villages such as woodcarving, embroidery, conical hat making, birdcage-making, lacquerware-making...Ha Tay is also home to the best preserved old villages in Vietnam.
Ha Tay is also known for its many old pagodas which dated back from the 12-17th centuries of which the Perfume Pagoda is known as the most popular pilgrimage place for the Vietnamese Buddhists.
Some attractive place in HaTay:
The Perfume Pagoda: please refer to our Perfume Pagoda for more details.
Thay Pagoda was first built from the 12 century by Master Tu Van Hanh. The pagoda has nice setting with surrounding mountains and lakes. There are 03 main buildings: the back one is for worshipping the monks having practised here; the middle one is for Buddhism and the front one is for ceremonies. There're also 02 buildings flanking the area which are used for the local Buddhists to have tea. In the front there are 02 buildings of which the architecture represents 2 eyes of a dragon. In the middle of the front lake there's stage for performing waterpuppet. This is the oldest left in Vietnam.
Tay Phuong Pagoda was built from the 17th century representing the Buddhist Philosophy. Visiting the pagoda, you'll have to climb steps to the top of the hill where the main pagodas are located. Tay Phuong Pagoda is famous for the set of 18 Arhart Statues.
Tram Gian Pagoda is built amid trees and supposedly it had 100 rooms when it was built in the 17th century. Visiting the pagoda you'll get relaxed amid the trees and tranquil settings.
Duyen Thai Lacquerware Village specializes in making lacquerwares such as lacquered furniture, lacquer paintings, lacquer housewares... Visiting the village you'll learn a lot about the proccess of making lacquerwares, you can also purchase lacquer gifts for your beloved ones.
Products od trade village in Ha Tay province in the exportation of vietnamese handicraft and art products.
Ha Tay is a province which is well known for its hundred of trades. Handicraft and art products of trade villages in the province have comparative advantage in exporting to foreign markets. The advantages of trade villages in Ha Tay province have manifested all comparative advantages of trade villages in Vietnam, including: Firstly, abundant and skilful workers; Secondly, the products have unique and traditional cultural features such as Van Phuc silk, Chuong conical hats, Vac handy fans, Chuyen My shell inlaid products, Phu Vinh bamboo products, Chang Son wooden products and Son Dong wooden statues amongst others. Thirdly, some concentrated production sites have been established and local raw materials exploited, thereby producing low-cost items like guot material at Phu Tuc commune, processed agricultural products at Minh Khai, Cat Que and Duong Lieu communes and shell inlaid products at Chuyen My commune. Fourthly, some products of the trade villages in Ha Tay province have successfully penetrated major markets such as Japan, the EU and the United States.
Beside the above-mentioned comparative advantages, handicraft and art products of Ha Tay province also face competitive challenges since Vietnam has joined the WTO. For example, less creative features can be found in handicraft and art products. Most products are custom-made items. A majority of producers must export via agents and are unable to channel their goods through foreign distribution networks of imported goods. Trade promotion remains limited at both State and business levels. Manufacturers are not yet fully aware of the value of a trademark. In addition, with regard to export competition, the products of trade villages in Ha Tay province do not have a stable supply of raw materials.
Facing this reality, in order to maintain its comparative advantages of low-cost and abundant labour force, domestic raw materials and attractive traditional cultural features for the sustainable development of exports, trade villages in Ha Tay province need specific solutions to accommodate the requirements of the markets.
More a Dao Xa craft village in Ha Tay Vietnam
Dao Xa craft village in Ha Tay, according to the land-administration map, Dong Lo Commune of Ung Hoa District, Ha Tay Province constitutes a final stretch bordering on Ha Nam Province, where the locals still preserve their craft of producing musical instruments, first and foremost the traditional pieces.
Along the commune path strewn with golden rice-straw of the late harvest days, we called at the home of Dao Ngoc Soan, one of the most veteran artisans specialized in turning out traditional instruments of Dao Xa Village in Dong Lo Commune. Lying before my eyes, on the grey brick floor, were the cores of the monochords, the Dan tam (three-stringed lute) and the moon-shaped lutes that looked somewhat raw, crude and plain. The cores of the monochords were made of crimson-red longan wood and the sound-boards of the Dan tam covered with raw dried python-skin.
I stood there, quietly watching the clever fingers of the artisan, a slender gentle old man, with a skinny face, possibly on the wrong side of seventy, who was making every effort to press a thin board into a moon-shape mould. After his last endeavour with his two hands, the board was perfectly fitted in, with a sharp and brief "pluff" sound. Through his talk, I came to know it was the technique of pressing the boards into the moulds to make the sound-boxes of the Dan nguyet - moon-shaped lutes, also popularly known as Dan kim in the Mekong Delta region of South Vietnam. In the words of Dao Ngoc Soan, the commune's manufacturing of musical instruments has a long history. In the old days, when such musical genres as classical dramas, traditional operettas, reformed theatre, Quan ho (love duet singing), A dao (Vietnamese geisha-type singing)…were still in vogue, this occupation was quite developed and prospered.
Then in the subsidization period, the State ran a large shop, called musical-instrument manufacturing workshop of Vietnam, inviting the artisans from this commune to come and practise their craft as well as train the younger generations in the techniques of the occupation. One of the then craftsmen, Tuyen, still remains in Hanoi , practising his trade there. For the time being, in the commune as a whole, only eight households are known to preserve the craft, including Soan, Phac and Tu who are practising the trade on a larger scale. Their products are usually gathered once every couple of months and taken to Hanoi, where they are to be distributed nationwide.
From time to time, some customers come to the village to place an order on a special instrument, for his own use or as a gift, usually being an artist, or an overseas Vietnamese national who has got some nostalgia of the homeland and wishes to have an image of the national music and culture. The commune's products vary, ranging from the monochord and the 36-stringed zither, the four-stringed zither and the moon-shaped lute to the traditional two-stringed fiddle and four-chorded mandolin.
Manufacturing traditional instruments is really hard work. To produce a satisfactorily good piece, it takes quite a few stages, along with the artisan's perseverance and talent, the efficient choice of wood, cutting and shaping it, drying it, fitting it into moulds, polishing it, inlaying shell...all this is done by hand in the traditional techniques handed down by their great grandfathers. Talking to us, Dao Ngoc Soan said the income from this occupation was negligible, particularly for the time being. Only those who nurture an ardent love for the trade may pursue this path.
Turning to the young trainees working assiduously on their pieces, he seemed to feel a greater joy. He took a traditional 16-stringed zither off the wall, and having adjusted the strings once again, he played a little piece of music, his scraggy fingers sliding gently on the frets and the sounds flying elusively high in the air, seemingly to express the very maker's innermost feelings. I know well I was witnessing the joy of an old artisan who could find zealous young successors to inherit the occupation handed down by the great grandfathers and preserve the traditional values of the Vietnamese national music.
