According to Voice of Vietnam, within a two hours’ drive of Hanoi are 1350 craft villages, where families have passed down local artisanal skills for hundreds of years.
The most famous among them are:
Bát Tràng Pottery
Vạn Phúc Silk
Đông Hồ Woodcut Painting
Làng Vân Rice Wine
Non Nước Stone Carving
Ngũ Xã Bronze Casting
Phú Vinh Rattan and Bamboo Weaving
Đào Xá Traditional Musical Instruments
Quất Động Embroidery
Định Công Jewelry
Chuông Conical Hat
Chàng Sơn Carpentry & Fan
As a lover of material culture, I very much wanted to visit at least a few. Based on my current shopping interests, I ended up choosing Đồng Kỵ wood carving, Hạ Thái lacquer, Chuyên Mỹ mother of pearl inlay, Quất Động embroidery, and Bát Tràng pottery.
I paid a local tour guide $100 to drive me around to all five villages in one day. I do think it’s possible to do it on your own and have the same experience if you are comfortable on a motorbike; my tour guide had clearly not prepared anything special and we were more or less successfully walking in on craftspeople at work during the week. That said, if you plan on Grab taxi-ing it (like I would have otherwise done), even a sort of incompetent tour guide is more efficient, less stressful, costs the same, and you have someone to translate if you want to buy something.
Speaking of shopping, I didn’t do any. I was fully prepared to spend hundreds on something special, but didn’t see anything. The villagers were mostly working to fill large, expensive, local, custom orders; what they had on offer at retail didn’t appeal. I’ve always noticed that Hanoi souvenir shops and galleries have heaps of the few same uninspiring wares. There seems to be no effort whatsoever to understand what tourists would buy. I wondered if the craft villages were really where these unremarkable things are made, and that seems to be the case.
Once upon a time I owned a designer vintage shop, and recently I’ve been bitten by the retail bug again. The world has changed so much since I was in the game 15 years ago! Now, businesses can survive solely on social media. I’ve been toying with the idea of selling triple bottom line products I source as I travel.
I believe there is potential in these villages to transform heritage savoir faire into modern luxury product, if I could find a local partner to handle communication and logistics. However, it would have to be built from absolute scratch; there is currently zero supply chain infrastructure in place. I also have zero capital, so it would be a slow and painful bootstrapping venture. Le sigh! I’ll get there eventually.
