Earlier this month, Local Vietnam officially launched Ha Giang Aya Lodge by Local Vietnam, a small mountain lodge located in Sung Trai village on the Dong Van Karst Plateau in northern Vietnam. Shortly after the opening, the lodge was featured in a long-form editorial article by Travellive+, one of Vietnam’s most established travel and lifestyle magazines.
About Travellive
Founded in the early 2000s, Travellive is a well-known Vietnamese travel and lifestyle publication, best known for its editorial approach to travel, architecture, and cultural stories. Rather than focusing on booking platforms or mass tourism, the magazine is widely respected in Vietnam for its in-depth features on destinations, design, and locally rooted projects. While it may be less familiar to international readers, Travellive is considered a reputable voice within Vietnam’s travel, architecture, and creative industries.
An editorial feature, not a promotional article
The Travellive article, titled “Căn nhà trên đá giữa những đỉnh núi du ca” (roughly translated as A House on Stone Among Wandering Mountain Ranges), presents Ha Giang Aya Lodge not as a conventional resort, but as a quiet architectural and cultural project embedded in village life.
The piece focuses strongly on the lodge’s architectural philosophy and its relationship with the local Mong community, highlighting how contemporary design was intentionally restrained to respect existing landscapes, materials, and traditions.
Architect Tung Le, who led the design and construction process, describes the lodge as a form of “living experiment,” rather than a commercial hospitality project:
“A house, like a human life, always flows between two banks: old and new, memory and hope, hardship and gentleness. In this house, everything merges through the breath of stone, wind, and the hands shaped by the harshness of the mountains.”
Architecture shaped by land, people, and memory
Travellive’s article pays particular attention to the lodge’s use of local materials such as stone, earth, and traditional yin-yang roof tiles, as well as architectural elements drawn from Mong houses, including thick stone walls, small windows, and open communal spaces centered around the fire.
Rather than presenting these features as design statements, the article frames them as part of a long continuity of life on the Dong Van Karst Plateau, where architecture has historically been shaped by scarcity, climate, and migration.
“Ha Giang Aya Lodge appears as a new note in the landscape, but one written entirely with old materials.”
Rooms at the lodge are named after local family names from Sung Trai village, a detail the article describes not as a branding choice, but as a form of recognition for the community members whose knowledge and labor contributed directly to the project.
A shared philosophy with Local Vietnam
For Local Vietnam, the Travellive feature reflects a broader philosophy that underpins both the lodge and the company’s wider travel approach: creating experiences that remain closely connected to local culture, everyday life, and real communities, rather than staged tourism products.
Ha Giang Aya Lodge was developed alongside local residents, employs staff from surrounding villages, and sits next to a weekly ethnic market that remains part of daily village life. As Travellive notes, hospitality here is not defined by formal service training, but by shared meals, conversations by the fire, and guided walks along paths that locals use every day.
Independent recognition
The Travellive article was written independently and reflects the magazine’s own editorial perspective. For Local Vietnam, the feature is a meaningful acknowledgment from a respected Vietnamese publication that values architecture, cultural continuity, and place-based storytelling.
You can read the full original article on Travellive here.
