Local Vietnam has started a program of traditional craft workshops at Ha Giang Aya Lodge, held inside working Hmong and Dao family homes in the villages around Sung Trai. Travelers can join six different crafts, from flax weaving to corn wine brewing, and the families who teach them are paid directly for hosting. The program runs alongside the lodge’s existing day tours and treks.
Six crafts, taught by the people who still use them
The workshops cover crafts that are still part of daily life on the Dong Van Karst Plateau, not versions rebuilt for visitors:
- Flax and hand weaving. Harvest flax with Hmong women, spin the fibers, and work the loom that turns them into cloth.
- Beeswax batik and indigo dyeing. Draw patterns in hot beeswax, then dip the fabric in indigo vats. Slow, quiet work, and the most recognizable textile art of the northern mountains.
- Red Dao embroidery and herbal dyeing. Learn the “backward” embroidery technique and dye threads with forest herbs.
- Corn wine brewing. Help prepare corn wine over a wood fire using men la, the traditional leaf yeast, and taste the result with the family.
- Incense from forest bark. Blend fragrant barks by hand into incense sticks, the same ones used at household altars.
- Cooking at the hearth. Prepare a meal in a Hmong or Dao kitchen and eat it where it was cooked.
Whatever you make during the day goes home with you.
Not a demonstration village
The main difference with most craft experiences in Vietnam is where they happen. These workshops take place in active family homes, and what is available shifts with the farming calendar rather than with the booking calendar. Corn wine is brewed when the maize harvest is in. Flax is worked in season and not outside it.
“Most craft experiences in Vietnam are built for the visitor,” said Marnick Schoonderwoerd, co-owner of Local Vietnam, who runs the lodge with his wife, Nhung Phung. “A room is set up, someone performs the craft, everyone photographs it and leaves. That is not what happens here. If the season is wrong, the workshop does not run. It sounds like a commercial weakness, but it is the only version that is real.”
Where the money goes
The Ha Giang Loop has become one of the most visited motorbike routes in Southeast Asia over the past decade, but most of the money it generates is collected by operators based in Hanoi or Ha Giang City. Very little of it reaches the villages the route actually passes through.
Host families in the workshop program are paid directly for each visit. It is a small correction rather than a solution, but it puts income in the households doing the work.
“When a craft earns nothing, it becomes a hobby for old people and then it disappears,” said Duong Phung, co-director of Local Vietnam and manager at Ha Giang Aya Lodge. “When it earns money, daughters learn it from their mothers. That is the whole idea. We are not preserving anything. The families are. We are making it worth their time.”
A plateau where the culture is part of the protected status
Sung Trai sits on the Dong Van Karst Plateau, which holds UNESCO Global Geopark status. That designation covers the people living there as well as the geology, and names sustainable tourism and education as ways to support local livelihoods.
The plateau is home to 17 ethnic groups, some of which have lived there for 500 to 800 years. Hmong communities make up more than 60 percent of the population, the largest Hmong population in Vietnam. Several of the crafts listed above are under real pressure, mostly because younger people leave for wage work in the lowlands.
What a workshop day looks like
The culture day tour is based in Lung Phin and runs year round, with the specific activities depending on the season.
- Departure from the lodge at 8:00, arriving in the Hmong village around 8:30
- Move on to the Dao village late morning, with lunch at noon
- Back at the lodge in the late afternoon
- Included: local English speaking guide, transport, lunch, drinking water, taxes, and the items you make
- Not included: personal expenses and travel insurance
Guided treks into Sung Trai and the neighboring valleys run separately, from April to June and September to November.
Joining a workshop
The workshops are open to guests staying at the lodge and to travelers passing through on the loop. Because availability depends on the season and on which families are free, dates are confirmed per booking rather than published as a fixed schedule. You can check current availability and book a stay or a workshop day at Ha Giang Aya Lodge.
