Wednesday, December 18, 2013

A Photo Diary

Martin Ratcliffe shared his beautiful photos with us, and now we’re sharing them with you for your delectation and travel inspiration. My feet are getting itchy just looking at them…

I’m on a boat…
Tasty treats, bun cha
There's no shortage of stunning scenery
...and the local culture is friendly and welcoming

Doing the weekly shop
Where's the seatbelt on this thing?
Take on the hectic streets
...but don't forget to relax and watch the world go by too
ACTIVETRAVEL ASIA would like to recommend Different Sapa - Different Trek tour.This trip gives you the best Sapa has to offer but not in the normal way. The traditional treks start in Sapa and finish back in Sapa. This special trek starts in Ben Den and finishes in Sapa. The trek is tougher but not less enjoyable since you trek through the hills and valleys of the Sapa region, discovering several different minorities along the way. You will experience overnight accommodation in the hospitable villages of Dzay, Tay and Dzao ethnic minorities. The apparent hardships are worth it though as we walk through some of the most spectacular scenery that Vietnam has to offer and experience unique villages culture.

Friday, December 13, 2013

Dao ethnic girls charm in traditional costumes

Dao ethnic girls in the northern province of Lao Cai reveal their true beauty through their attractive traditional costumes.

Their costumes can be seen in five different colours but red is often the dominant hue.A complete costume includes blouse, scarf, shin-guards, headscarf and jewellery.Dao women use batik to print patterns on their clothes.

Dao ethnic girls in Lao Cai’s Bac Ha
Lovely hats of Dao women in Bat Xat
Dao girls in Bao Thang
Bridal costume
Charming smiles of Dao girls in Sapa
ACTIVETRAVEL ASIA would like to recommend Sapa Trekking & Homestay tour.At an elevation of 1,600 meters, Sapa is a delightful former French hill station situated in the mountainous region of Vietnam's northwest, close to the Chinese border. The region is home to many ethnic minority groups, each wearing traditional and colorful attire. This trip includes a trek through the hills and valleys of the Sapa region, discovering several different minorities along the way. You will experience overnight accommodation in the hospitable villages of Giay and Tay ethnic minorities. The apparent hardships are worth it though as we walk through some of the most spectacular scenery that Vietnam has to offer and experience unique villages culture.
Highlights:
  • Awesome scenery
  • Rice terraces
  • Colorful minority groups 
  • Homestays in minority villages

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Breathtaking beauty of Northwestern mountainous villages

The Northwestern region of Vietnam boasts stunning natural scenery with its small villages scattered around the magnificent Hoang Lien Mountain range.

The villages, which may have existed for hundreds of years or just been built recently following the Government’s resettlement program, are becoming popular tourist sites in Vietnam.

Tu Le Village in Yen Bai Province
Y Ty Village in Lao Cai Province
A Lu- Bat Xat Village in Lao Cai Province
Ho Village in Sapa District, Lao Cai Province
Tuan Giao Village in Dien Bien Province
A newly-built village to resettle residents in Quynh Nhai District
A newly-built village to resettle residents around Muong Lay Hydroelectric Power Plant
Pha Long Village in the borderland Muong Khuong Distric
ACTIVETRAVEL ASIA would like to recommend Motorcycling Northwestern Trails tour.Discover Vietnam’s rugged and scenic northwest and its people first hand. By taking to the roads and riding from the capital Hanoi to the remote area of the northwest we can see life as it truly is for the Vietnamese. The perfect itinerary and the support crew ensure you get the most out of the trip in terms of comfort, enjoyment and adventure. Along the way we encounter dramatic landscapes and sweeping panoramas as the rural population goes about its business. Highlights include the terraced valleys of Sapa, challenging roads, stunning scenery and many different colorful minority groups.
Highlights: 




  • Stunning scenery
  • Challenging roads
  • Stunning Pha Din Pass and Tram Ton Pass
  • Terraced valley of Sapa
  • Colorful ethnic minorities

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Vietnam: A taste of village life in the north

By Anna Murphy
Travel Northern Vietnam
It was 3.30am when the cockerel first crowed, an alarm all the more bone-jangling because it was right underneath the hut on stilts in which we were sleeping. Every 10 minutes or so that darn cockadoodle-do split the silence, until around the time when one actually might want to be woken up, at which point it went quiet.

Vietnamese village life is not without its challenges for the unsuspecting tourist. (Home-brewed rice wine the colour of pond water, anyone? More on that later.) But they are nothing alongside its many delights. We were in rural Ha Giang, a mountainous northern region of Vietnam, close to the border with China. Ha Giang is a six-hour drive from Hanoi, and a world away, a place where currently very few tourists visit.
Driving ever upwards into the mountains, we passed through a narrow gorge between two giant cliffs, the aptly named Heaven's Gate. Beyond was a landscape of toothsome crags and wild forest and jungle, offset with the gentle, shimmering emerald of paddy fields. The mountains of Vietnam's north, along with those of its interior, are where the majority of the country's 53 minority groups live (the 13.8 per cent of the population who are not ethnic Viet), many of them upholding a way of life that has remained largely unchanged for centuries.

Travel Northern Vietnam
Our first night in the region was spent at a pretty French-owned guesthouse in the village of Panhou, its rice paddy surrounds reinvented as an exotically planted water garden. No middle-of-the-night cockerel crows here; just some fairly low-key frogs. In the morning we went to the nearby market in the district of Thong Nguen, where we saw women from two different tribes meeting to shop and, more importantly, to gossip.
The Red Dao women wore a navy hemp outfit with a red trim. Their heads were haloed with a big coil of red trim, and on their chests was a large pewter necklace that looked more like the breastplate on a suit of armour. The Black Dao wore a black hemp outfit trimmed in white, and on their head was a black kerchief decorated with white cords.

Whichever their tribe, the men wore modern clothes. Our guide Quang told us that women, especially unmarried ones, had less sartorial freedom because their reputation as a "good girl" would be at risk if they chose to abandon the traditional dress. The youngest had abandoned one practice however – the chewing of betel leaves. The older women were all betel chewers, their blackened teeth considered by them and their peers to be beautiful.

Travel Northern Vietnam
Such is the comparative rarity of tourists in Ha Giang that we were as much an object of fascination to them as they were to us, a fact that lessened that uncomfortable feeling of voyeurism that you can sometimes suffer when you travel off the beaten track.

There was very little food to be bought – dried fish and pork was pretty much all that was left by the time we got there. Instead there were numerous stalls selling the yarns and the braiding that decorated the Dao costumes. When we walked out of the market up into the surrounding hillsides we quickly saw how self-sufficient the Dao were; why there was very little they needed to buy.

Every house was the Good Life personified: aside from the rice paddies themselves there were immaculate vegetable and herb gardens (the Vietnamese diet includes copious herbs and salad leaves at every meal, often added to a meat-based noodle broth called pho or bun). Most of the dwellings were traditional wooden affairs, the Red Dao houses built on the ground, the Black Dao houses on stilts. Outside several homes, a woman was winnowing rice using a large flat-bottomed basket, tossing the rice up high into the air to separate it from the dry husks.

Unfortunately, we had lunch at the home of someone who was going up in the world, which meant we ate our delicious picnic not in a picturesque traditional house but in a breeze-block carbuncle, breeze blocks being such a status symbol as to be like the Rolex watch of the Dao world.

Travel Northern Vietnam
We sat with the son of the family and a son-in-law, the former a city worker back to visit for the weekend, the latter still a country boy. They were both in their late twenties, yet the difference between the two was remarkable, the former confident and chatty, asking us lots of questions and telling us about himself with the help of Quang, and the latter not uttering a word, barely able to bring himself even to look at us. This was a typical distinction between city and country folk, Quang told us.

The next day we drove a couple of hours to the Phong Thien commune, home to the Black and White Tay and, as we were later to find out, that excruciating cockerel. The Tay villagers no longer wear their traditional costumes – they are nearer to the city, and its influences – yet it is still an ancient-seeming place. It was raining on our first morning and we saw one woman using a large leaf as an impromptu umbrella. In the paddy fields the women – and, yes, it is the women who work there – wore not only their traditional woven conical hats but a kind of backplate, also made of woven bamboo, to protect their body from the rain as they bent over.

Even aside from the rain, this was a watery place, with numerous little rills and jerry-built aqueducts made of rubber piping and bamboo, all designed to bring water down into the villages from many miles up in the mountains. We saw one local woman with the ubiquitous twin baskets, one on each end of a carrying pole, transporting her ducklings between home and paddy field, where she took them daily to gobble up insects and snails.

Our walk around the local villages was full of such unforgettable sights. Lunch was similarly memorable. Our hostess was a 75-year-old tribeswoman, little more than 5ft tall, a mother of 10 and a brewer of rice wine. Hers was a specially doctored variety of the local spirit, the noxious-looking bottle steeped with ginseng and assorted other anonymous roots and leaves, all of them believed by the tribespeople to give their elderly extra pep.

Well pep she certainly had, in abundance. We had to down a heady shot as a sign that we were grateful to enjoy her hospitality. As I reeled, my boyfriend jokingly held up five fingers, implying he was game to drink five measures. She quickly held up all 10 fingers. "Ten!" she exclaimed in the local dialect excitedly.
"Ten! Ten!" Quang told us that the old women can often drink their visitors under the table, hardened as they are by their traditional role as party starters at village gatherings. Several shots later, Quang had to lie down, and his excellent commentary went quiet for a while.

Back at the house that night we were given a local footbath, stewing our feet in a herbal brew that looked remarkably similar to what we had been drinking that lunchtime. Then there was a delicious supper of rice-paper spring rolls, sweet and sour pork, carp with tomato and garlic, deep-fried tofu and perfectly nutty white rice.

Lying down on our floor mattresses, in a corner cordoned off from the rest of the open-plan floor space by sheets hung on two lines, we were buzzing with delight at all that we had seen. Our stay in the mountains had been worth those 3.30am wake-up calls, we told each other. It was 10pm. Five and a half hours later… well, our thoughts were a little different. But as we drove back to Hanoi the next day, we knew we would never forget our Vietnamese mountain interlude.


ACTIVETRAVEL ASIA would like to recommend Motorcycling adventure in Northern Vietnam tour.The mountainous area of Northern Vietnam has long been famous for its beautiful scenery and great diversity of ethnic minorities. With our adventure motorcycling trip you will make a big loop to experience all the bests that area can offer. Starting in Hanoi you will explore Northwest before jumping into Northeast, back to Hanoi after a day relaxing in Ba Be Lake. The perfect itinerary and the support crew ensure you get the most out of the trip in terms of comfort, enjoyment and adventure. Along the way we encounter dramatic landscapes and sweeping panoramas as the rural population goes about its business. Highlights include the terraced valleys of Sapa, beautiful Ban Gioc Waterfall and many different colorful minority groups. 









Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Travel Vietnam on Motorbike

A motorcycle tour (ACTIVETRAVEL ASIA)  is one of the best ways to see Vietnam and understand the local people. Many travelers talk of it as being the adventure of a lifetime and I agree… After all, I live the adventure.
Travel Vietnam on Motorbike
There are thousands of local and hundreds of offices offering similar motorcycle trips and services in Vietnam, Many of them very good. Most of them travel the same routes and visit the same places….. all worth seeing. Why travel with us? We will also take you to many of the same places, but you will find our services different than the rest.

I am a resident foreigner that understands what you want in an off the beaten track adventure. Some might argue that as a foreigner, I cannot offer a good tour…. They are mistaken. It is because I am a foreigner that understands the language, culture, and geography of Vietnam, or maybe more importantly, I understand what a foreigner wants that makes our tours exceptional. Perhaps that is why so many easy riders wish to join my team.  At the current time, I am still leading tours and training new team leaders.

Travel Vietnam on Motorbike

All of our team leaders have a better understanding of how a foreigner thinks in order to give them the best holiday possible. We do not just randomly assign easy riders to you. We will assess your group and destination and assign the riders whose personality and experience fits with where you want to go and how you like to spend your time. If not otherwise booked, I may be leading your group. Because of Laws and Liabilities in Vietnam, we do not travel with guests wishing to drive their own motorcycle. Each individual will have their personal guide and driver. I can understand the desire, but it is just not safe. You must also be aware that you will be driving illegally and be non insured. Besides, how can you enjoy the countryside when watching for pot holes and crazy drivers, not to mention livestock, stinging insects, and incredibly aggressive commercial vehicles? Leave that concern to us. So again….. Why travel with us? Following is what makes us unique

Travel Vietnam on Motorbike
Our tours are heavy into interaction with the locals and not just drive, stop, and take photo.All of our riders have larger, comfortable motorcycles and are able to handle large travel packs.We offer the security of you being able to research and trust the people you are booking with. All leaders are accountable, reliable and will give you a full day’s value. At the end of the day we will stay with you dining or socializing or offer you to join us for local evening entertainment with local friends until you are finished with us.

Travel Vietnam on Motorbike
Unlike many who claim to go on untraveled roads…. We actually do and often you will be one of the very few who have been some locations.We only use good and clean accommodation. We do not use local places that are better financially for the riders than the customer. A good night’s sleep makes the next day so much better.

Tours are custom built for every group and we assign riders most knowledgeable for your destination. Whether is it photo shoots, research into ethnic minorities, war history, or the ecology.I personally follow up all tours to assure quality. Our exemplary reputation is very important to us and we wish to keep it that way.
Our package prices are very competitive and often work out less because what you see is what you get! There are no hidden expenses, no surprises and no schemes to get at your dollar. We provide everything. All you need pay for is daily dinner, and your drinks, (even that can be included if you wish) and have a worry and stress free holiday.



ACTIVETRAVEL ASIA would like recommend Motorcycling Northwestern Trails tour.Discover Vietnam’s rugged and scenic northwest and its people first hand. By taking to the roads and riding from the capital Hanoi to the remote area of the northwest we can see life as it truly is for the Vietnamese. The perfect itinerary and the support crew ensure you get the most out of the trip in terms of comfort, enjoyment and adventure. Along the way we encounter dramatic landscapes and sweeping panoramas as the rural population goes about its business. Highlights include the terraced valleys of Sapa, challenging roads, stunning scenery and many different colorful minority groups.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Motorbike travelling in mountainous areas in Vietnam

When coming to Vietnam, beside big cities’ well-known tourism destinations, many foreign travellers love spending their time chasing the wind on the road of the wildly mountainous areas by motorbike. We tell you How and Why!

Motorbike Vietnam
Reasons for choosing motorbike
Motorbike is considered the best means of transportation for travelling mountainous areas due to its convenience and initiative. With a motorbike, one is free to go wherever he loves, despite all kinds of road’s condition. He can stop whenever he feels like to take photographs or relaxing, instead of depending on the driver or tour guide. Motorbike helps integrating people with nature and fresh air, and one will never be afraid of motion sickness. If choosing a car, people are likely to waste hours sleeping in passenger’s seat with air condition, not to mention the car sick caused by consecutive slopes and mountain passes. Riding on the motorbike means living on every single kilometer of your itinerary! Moreover, one can ride a motorbike in any kind of terrains, and it is much easier to repair in case of breaking down.

Motorbike Vietnam
Which kind of motorbike and when?
100 cc-or-more semi-automatic motorbikes are all suitable for roads in Northern Vietnam’s mountainous area. The main criteria for choosing motorbike are strong engine, gasoline-saving and flexible packing space.
Weather is one of the most essential issues regarding planning for motorbike trip. The best time for exploring those mighty areas is from late September to the beginning of December or after Tet Nguyen Dan, when there is almost no rain and the temperature is cool. The spring’s rain and summer’s heat in high region somehow are hazardous for health as well as damaging to the road’s quality.

Motorbike Vietnam
Be well-prepared!
There are indispensable things that one has to bring whenever travelling to remote areas such as specialized clothes and shoes, personal stuff, map, contact information and medical bags. However, a motorbike trip requires more than that. One will have to be well-prepared with a protective helmet and a motorcycle repair tool kit, and of course, certain skills of mending engine. An extra spark-plug and motorbike’s key are always in need. Remember to maintain the whole motorbike before setting off, change the oil and check its tyres, brakes, mirrors, horn and light. Fill up your motorbike with gasoline and know the location of gasoline station!

Motorbike Vietnam
On the way
If possible, travelling in groups of two or three motorbikes with one experienced leader is advisable. All members of the group are required to have detailed itinerary to get rid the risk of getting lost. People should not ride parallel to each other and talk while controlling the motorbike, thus, stop the bike if feeling a need for a conversation.

Pay attention to the bend and ones driving contrariwise and do not drive into other lane. Sometimes, there may be animals like buffaloes, cows, dogs or even pigs crossing the road, so one should decrease the speed and avoid making them panic. At night or in rain weather, when the vision is limited, travellers had better pause the journey for resting and safety reasons.

Motorbike Vietnam
Other things to remember
  •  Do not ride when you feel tired or sleepy.
  •  Do not ride after drinking alcohol.
  •  Avoid riding too fast or stop without noticing.
  •  Observe carefully and pay attention to road signs.
  • Bring your identity paper and driving license because there will be police checking along the road ( however, they will not be very strict to foreigners)
  •  Be extremely careful when crossing the stream; be sure about the depth of the water to have the best arrangement.
  •  Respect the ethnic minority people and their distinctive culture.
  •  Protect the environment and always remember: Safe is of primary important.
ACTIVETRAVEL ASIA would like to recommend Motorcycling adventure in Northern Vietnam tour.The mountainous area of Northern Vietnam has long been famous for its beautiful scenery and great diversity of ethnic minorities. With our adventure motorcycling trip you will make a big loop to experience all the bests that area can offer. Starting in Hanoi you will explore Northwest before jumping into Northeast, back to Hanoi after a day relaxing in Ba Be Lake. The perfect itinerary and the support crew ensure you get the most out of the trip in terms of comfort, enjoyment and adventure. Along the way we encounter dramatic landscapes and sweeping panoramas as the rural population goes about its business. Highlights include the terraced valleys of Sapa, beautiful Ban Gioc Waterfall and many different colorful minority groups. 

Friday, November 15, 2013

Travel in Vietnam’s Countryside

Leave Hanoi when you hunger for a countryside dip of the Real Vietnam Countryside! Although Hanoi is a great place to stay, it is still a big city with everything you need. After a while you are just curious what is out there. Because we’ve got loads of time, we’re staying in Hanoi for a while (we will travel through Vietnam in a few weeks together with family who’s coming over) but making short trips to areas not far from here. So, the last few days we’ve stayed in a little village called Mai Chau. Maybe you already read some of my posts about the local market in Mai Chau where we’ve seen a lot of interesting and shocking things as well.

 Vietnam Countryside
This time I want to tell you about what I’ve seen on the way to Mai Chau and about the people there. Starting at the beginning of our stay, the drive up to Mai Chau. Picked up by a big van in Hanoi, we left the busy city for a bit less chaotic atmosphere. After 2,5 hours, the driver stopped at a local plant/animals/food market on top of a mountain along the road. Have a look…
 Vietnam Countryside

The village is not that special. A lot of concrete buildings, shops and big trucks on the main road. Behind these concrete building are hundreds of rice fields and locals working on the field. Did you know that the women maintain the fields? This is from a long long time ago when the women worked on the fields and the men did nothing. Nowadays the men have some business to attend but the women still work on the field. This is a pretty hard job, working in the sun all day, bent over or squat. That’s why they wear these typical Vietnamese hats, to protect them from the sun.

Vietnam Countryside
In these rice fields you can find rice plants and lots of water of course, but did you know that there are also snails, snakes, crabs, frogs and eels living in these waters? Some men go frog or fish hunting during the night as these animals are a good income and apparently delicious.. Oh by the way the frogs make a awful loud sound during the night.

While we were there, we stayed at Mai Chau Nature Place which has bungalows and a homestay in the village. I would recommend the bungalows or a dorm, as these are situated a bit more out of the village and more in the rice fields. They serve you breakfast, lunch and dinner if you want to. All vietnamese food! You can rent bikes here and they have a dance show with traditional Thai dance almost every night.
Vietnam Countryside
Are you interested in the crafts they do in Mai Chau? The women make their own bags, cloths, bracelets and much more by sewing, embroidery and weaving every day. I’ve written a post on the Dutch DIY Blog de TweakFabriek in Dutch, but the pictures will explain the whole story. Have a look for my posts on this amazing blog where you can find really great DIY and inspiration posts.

In area around Mai Chau they build their houses a bit different than the ones in Hanoi nowadays. In former times the people who lived there, had a lot of trouble with the rain fall and floods. That’s one of the reasons why they build their houses on stilts. The other reason is because at that time there was still a wild tiger living in this area. The schema of the houses is very simple. There is only one big room on one side of the house and a kitchen on the other side. That’s why they builded two stairs to enter the house. One staircase was for the men, to receive guests and the other staircase was for the women to go to the kitchen.

Vietnam Countryside
The main big room was usually used as a living room and bedroom. The Thai people slept on the floor with a blanket. The whole family lives together and eventually the children have to take care of their parents. When one of the kids get married, the last one that does, has to take care of their parents. They will live together in one house and if they want “a few nights of privacy” as our tour guide explained, they have to sleep in the kitchen.

These houses are build from wooden stilts, beams and bamboo flooring. I’ve to admit, it felt pretty stable
and safe but you have to be comfortable with vermin. Insects and other little animals are every where. By the way, do you see the concrete on the right side of the rice field? That’s how they regulated the water for the fields. It’s amazing to see their irrigation.

It’s also a lot of work to maintain the rice fields. As you can see there is a lot of weed growing on the sides and also between the rice plants. They have to remove this every day as otherwise the weed will use the water instead of the rice plants.

This is the kitchen floor of a typical Mai Chau house. Bamboo flooring, which is very strong but maybe not so hygienic. As I told you, there is a lot of vermin walking around the house. This is a good example of the methods they use to keep these little animals away from food. This bowl with water keeps ants from climbing up the pantry for food.

Source:designclaud

ACTIVETRAVEL ASIA would like to recommend Trekking Mai Chau tour.Mai Chau is a mountainous area of outstanding natural beauty, inhabited by a Thai and H’mong ethnic minority groups. This trip offers a great combination of cultural expedition and trekking. We trek for three days through the spectacular scenery, visit remote and stay overnight in local homes where we have the chance to get to know these hospitable villages. From the mountainous region of Mai Chau, we travel back to the nation's capital, Hanoi.
Highlights: 

  • Awesome scenery
  • Homestays in villages of ethnic minorities
  • Beautiful trails
  • All meals included














Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Beauty of the special houses of Ha Nhi ethnic minority people

Houses made from soil, which are cool in summer and warm in winter, share this special architectural feature of Ha Nhi ethnic minority people in Y Ty Commune.

Houses of Ha Nhi ethnic minority
Houses of Ha Nhi ethnic minority
Every year, after each crop, Ha Nhi people often build new houses to replace those that are old and deteriorated. After selecting suitable soil samples, they put them  into moulds and then use a pestle to squeeze the soil in as tightly as possible, which helps to create a firm wall. The wall is between 40-50 cm thick and 4-5 metres high. The average area of the houses is from 60-80 square metres.

Houses of Ha Nhi ethnic minority
Houses of Ha Nhi ethnic minority
After that, they install the parts for the roof. Previously, they used to go to the forest to collect Alang grass for roofing, therefore, when a family began building the roof for the new house their neighbours traveled  to the forest with them to help gather the grass. The grass layers are then weaved into a roof which is up to 50cm thick.

Houses of Ha Nhi ethnic minority
Houses of Ha Nhi ethnic minority
Bat Xat District has been focusing on tourism development, with tours to places such as Muong Hum and Y Ty, thus, more tourists have come to Y Ty and have had a chance to see these special houses.  However, recently, many local households have replaced the grass rooves with corrugated iron roofing sheets, so that currently, fewer than ten houses with grass rooves are left in Y Ty Commune.
Source:dtinews 

ACTIVETRAVEL ASIA would like to recommend Motorcycling adventure in Northern Vietnam tour.The mountainous area of Northern Vietnam has long been famous for its beautiful scenery and great diversity of ethnic minorities. With our adventure motorcycling trip you will make a big loop to experience all the bests that area can offer. Starting in Hanoi you will explore Northwest before jumping into Northeast, back to Hanoi after a day relaxing in Ba Be Lake. The perfect itinerary and the support crew ensure you get the most out of the trip in terms of comfort, enjoyment and adventure. Along the way we encounter dramatic landscapes and sweeping panoramas as the rural population goes about its business. Highlights include the terraced valleys of Sapa, beautiful Ban Gioc Waterfall and many different colorful minority groups.