Hanoi and the craft villages, three days
Two nights in Hanoi and three days spent between the Old Quarter and the villages that supply it: ceramics at Bat Trang, silk at Van Phuc, conical hats at Chuong. No bay, no long drives, and time at a wheel and a loom rather than behind a rope.
At a glance
- Duration
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Party size
- 2 to 8, private
- Starts
- Hanoi, Noi Bai airport or your hotel
- Ends
- Hanoi, Noi Bai airport
- Effort
- Easy — up to 6 km of flat walking on the city day
- From
- USD 690 per person
Who this is for
Three days in Hanoi is a common shape — a stopover, a weekend bolted onto business, the front end of a longer trip that has not been planned yet. The usual answer is a bay day trip: six hours in a vehicle to spend four on the water. This route takes the opposite view and stays close to the city, where the longest single drive is under an hour.
What fills the days instead are the villages that made Hanoi a trading town in the first place. Bat Trang has fired ceramics on the same riverbank for centuries and still ships most of the tableware sold in the Old Quarter. Van Phuc weaves silk. Chuong makes the conical hats that every market stall in northern Vietnam sells. None of them is a museum: they are working places with kilns lit, looms running, and palm leaf drying in the yard, and the trip is built so you spend time at a wheel or a loom rather than watching from behind a rope.
Honest framing: this is a slower, quieter trip than our bay routes, and it is the cheapest thing we sell in the north. Travellers who want limestone and water in the same three days should look at the three-day Lan Ha charter; those who can find a fourth day and want both city and bay should read the four-day Hanoi and Ha Long trip.
Day by day
Arrive, and the Old Quarter on foot
The meet is inside the arrivals hall at Noi Bai with a name board, and the transfer is 45 minutes and 25 km. Rooms are held from midday. If you land in the morning the day starts properly; if you land after six it becomes a dinner and an early night, and we move the first walk to Day 2 rather than march you round in the dark.
The walk itself is the Old Quarter as a trading map rather than a shopping street. Thirty-six streets still carry the name of the guild that worked them — tin, silk, bamboo, votive paper, herbal medicine — and about half of them still sell roughly what the name says. Your guide starts at Hoan Kiem lake and works north through the narrowest of the tube houses, ending at Long Bien bridge as the light goes. Dinner is your own, or add the street-food walk on the booking form.
Bat Trang in the morning, Van Phuc after lunch
Out at 08:30 for Bat Trang, about 14 km from the centre on the far bank of the Red River — half an hour when the bridges are behaving. The village is a grid of workshops and kilns, and the market at its centre is genuinely a wholesale market: this is where Hanoi restaurants buy their bowls. You throw a pot yourself, badly, on a wheel with someone who has done it for thirty years sitting next to you. Firing takes longer than a morning, so if you want your piece kilned and delivered to the hotel, take the workshop option and we arrange the shipping.
Lunch is in the village, then across the city to Van Phuc, about 10 km out on the south-west side. Silk here is woven on powered looms and hand looms side by side, and the useful part of the visit is being shown how to tell them apart — and how to tell Van Phuc silk from the polyester sold under its name two streets away. Your guide will do the burn test on a thread if a shop lets you, which most will, because the ones weaving the real thing are happy to prove it. Back at the hotel by six.
Chuong village and the conical hat, then home
The last village is the least visited of the three. Chuong lies roughly 30 km south of the centre and the drive takes about an hour each way; it makes conical hats, and it has done for long enough that the market days here still run on the lunar calendar. The work is done in courtyards: palm leaf bleached and flattened, bamboo hoops bent to sixteen rings, and the stitching that holds the two together, which is the part that takes years to do fast. A hat sells here for a small fraction of the Old Quarter price.
You sit down and stitch a few rows yourself, which is enough to understand why the good ones cost what they cost. Back in the city by early afternoon for a final lunch and any last errand — most parties spend it buying the ceramics they did not carry on Day 2. Noi Bai is 45 minutes and 25 km from the centre, and we time the departure to your flight rather than to a standard checkout hour.
What it costs
| Party size | Comfortable | Excellent | Exceptional |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 travellers | USD 900 | USD 1,150 | USD 1,310 |
| 3 – 4 | USD 790 | USD 1,010 | USD 1,150 |
| 5 – 6 | USD 730 | USD 940 | USD 1,060 |
| 7 – 8 | USD 690 | USD 890 | USD 1,000 |
This is the least expensive trip in our northern range, for a simple reason: there is no boat, no domestic flight and no hotel outside Hanoi. The three columns are the hotel and nothing else — Comfortable is a well-run small hotel in or beside the Old Quarter, Excellent is a larger room in a quieter street, Exceptional is a heritage-building hotel in the French Quarter. Guide, driver, vehicle, village fees and workshop time are the same in every column.
Because the fixed costs are low, party size moves the price less here than on our bay trips: the spread between two travellers and eight is about a quarter rather than a third. What does move it is the length of stay — a fourth night in the same hotel is one of the cheapest days you can buy from us, and several parties use it to add a day trip to Ninh Binh, which is 95 km and 1 hour 45 each way. The reasoning behind all of these numbers is on what a Vietnam trip costs.
Included and not included
What the price includes
- Two nights in Hanoi in the class you choose, same hotel both nights
- Private air-conditioned vehicle and driver for all three days
- A private English-speaking guide on Days 1, 2 and 3
- All meals shown day by day: 2 breakfasts, 2 lunches
- Village entry where it applies, and the clay, silk thread and palm leaf you work with
- Time at a wheel at Bat Trang and at the stitching frames at Chuong
- Airport meet inside the arrivals hall with a name board, and drinking water throughout
- A 24-hour number answered by a person in Vietnam
What it does not include
- International flights — quoted separately at cost if you ask
- Vietnam e-visa, USD 25 single entry, applied for at evisa.gov.vn
- Travel insurance, which we require you to hold and will ask to see
- The pottery workshop with kiln firing and shipping, if you take that option
- Dinners on all three evenings, and drinks with any meal
- Anything you buy in the villages, and tips for guide and driver
Vietnam issues e-visas to every nationality, valid up to 90 days, USD 25 for single entry and USD 50 for multiple, processed in about three working days at evisa.gov.vn and usable at 83 crossings. Citizens of the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Nordic countries, Japan and Korea among others enter free for 45 days, which covers this trip with room to spare. US, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand passports are not exempt and do need the e-visa. Detail on visas and entry.
Pictures from this route
Who this trip is not for
Say no to this one if any of the following is true.
- Anyone whose main reason for coming north is the bay. There is no limestone and no boat on this route. Take the four-day Hanoi and Ha Long trip or the three-day Lan Ha charter.
- Travellers who dislike shopping environments. Two of the three villages sell to visitors as well as to the trade, and at Van Phuc in particular there are streets of shops between you and the looms. Your guide steers around them, but they exist.
- People expecting the villages to be picturesque. Bat Trang is an industrial suburb with kilns, dust and lorries. It is interesting because it works, not because it is pretty, and photographs of it look like what it is.
- Anyone who wants a craft course rather than a visit. You get an hour at a wheel and a few rows of stitching, not a qualification. Parties wanting several days of instruction should tell us and we will build something different.
- Families needing a slow pace with children under five. Day 2 is two villages on opposite sides of the city and involves about an hour and a quarter in the car, spread across the day.
What you actually make, and what you only watch
Bat Trang — you throw a pot
An hour at a wheel with clay you centre yourself, roughly 14 km from the centre. Firing takes days, so the piece is either left behind or, with the workshop option, fired and shipped to your hotel.
Van Phuc — you watch, mostly
Weaving silk is not a one-hour skill. What you get instead is a loom explained thread by thread, about 10 km from the centre, and the ability to tell real silk from the imitation sold beside it.
Chuong — you stitch
Sixteen bamboo rings and a layer of palm leaf. You will sew a few rows, slowly, next to someone doing it ten times faster, which is the whole lesson.
Three days in Hanoi and not sure what to do with them?
Send your dates and party size and we will come back with the hotel we would use and what the trip costs, usually within one working day.
Questions travellers ask most
Are the craft villages real workshops or set up for visitors?
Both, and the mix differs by village. Bat Trang is a working ceramics town first and a visitor destination second; the market at its centre supplies restaurants and shops across Hanoi. Chuong is barely set up for visitors at all — the courtyards you sit in are people’s houses.
Van Phuc is the most commercialised of the three. There are still hand looms running and families weaving, but there are also streets of shops selling imported fabric under the village name. That is why the visit is built around being shown how to tell the difference rather than around a shopping hour.
Can we buy things, and can they be shipped home?
Yes to both, and prices in the villages are a fraction of Old Quarter prices for the same goods. Your guide will not take you to a shop that pays a commission, and will tell you what a fair price looks like before you start rather than after.
Ceramics are the awkward case: heavy, breakable, and often more than hand luggage allows. Bat Trang has established shippers and we will arrange packing and freight, quoted to you before anything is sent.
Could we add Ha Long Bay to these three days?
Not properly. The pier is 170 km from Hanoi and takes 2 hours 30 to 3 hours each way, and the return to Noi Bai is 190 km and 3 hours 30. Bolting a bay day onto a three-day city trip means six hours in a vehicle for four on the water.
If the bay matters, add a day and take the four-day Hanoi and Ha Long trip, which is built around a night aboard rather than a day trip. We would rather move you to a different itinerary than sell you a bad day.
What is the weather like, and does it matter here?
Less than on our bay trips, which is one of the reasons this route exists. Northern Vietnam is dry and cool from November to April and hot and humid from May to September, and the villages work through both — kilns, looms and stitching frames are all under cover.
December to February can be grey and around 15 degrees, which is unpleasant on a boat and perfectly fine in a workshop. See when to go for the month-by-month detail.
Read next
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Dates, party size and the places you care about are enough to start. You get a draft route and an indicative price, not a brochure.