Trek Mai Chau Tribal Village

Day 1: Hanoi – Mai Chau (L,D)   

08h30: Depart from Hanoi (3.5 hours drive with break, photo stop; good road condition)
12h00: Arrive in Mai Chau. Welcome drink and cold/hot towel to be served, followed by an appetizing lunch. The fresh, tasty dishes on offer include local vegetable, ingredients and flavors such as green bean, black mushroom, fish and chicken cooked in Muong or Thai ethnic minority style.

15h30: Start your Mai Chau trek tour to discover the interesting surroundings and ethnic minority tribes with a relaxing walk to Thái villages of Pom Coong and Lac and explore Mo Luong cave on the other side of the hotel.

Note: This 2-hour valley cycling tour can be replaced by 4.5-hour cycling & rock climbing tour, which starts from 1PM.

19h00: Complement your experience by sampling delicacies from the local region during dinner time and enjoy the performance by local troupe of ethnic minority Muong and Thai people. It is so relaxing to watch the exotic dances featuring the flower, land-scape and daily agriculture cultivating activities and sweet dating songs in the fresh mountain air.

Day 2: Mai Chau – Hanoi (B,L)

08h00: Enjoy a tasty international breakfast buffet in Bo Luong Restaurant with views overlooking the lake, the paddy fields and the swimming pool.

09h00: Start the Valley biking tour around Mai Chau. The ride passes through many villages, across lush rice paddies and into the countryside to get to know the local hill tribe people and their culture better.

12h00: A savory lunch will be served.

13h30: Leave Mai Chau. You will arrive in Hanoi at around 17h00. Tour concluded.

Trek Mai Chau 3 Days

Trek Mai Chau 3 Days

The 3-day tour to Mai Chau trek includes two half day treks and a full day trek taking you through paddy fields, vegetable gardens and local Thai villages. The trekking tour is easy and can be appropriated for small group tours, family travel or active individual travelers.

Day 1:  Travel Hanoi – Mai Chau. Cycle around Mai Chau village.

7.30: Depart from Hanoi. The journey from Hanoi to Mai Chau takes about three hours and a half including some short breaks, photo stops. You will arrive in Mai Chau valley around noon, in time for lunch.

In the afternoon, enjoy a short bicycle ride to discover the interesting surroundings and ethnic minority tribes. You cycle for about two hours on flat roads, off-road biking trail.

In the evening, complement your experience by sampling delicacies from the local region during dinner time and enjoy the performance by local troupe of ethnic minority Muong and Thai people. It is so relaxing to watch the exotic dances featuring the flower, land-scape and daily agriculture cultivating activities and sweet dating songs in the fresh mountain air.

Overnight at local home (homestay).

Day 2: Mai Chau Trek.

After breakfast, start the walking tour to H’mong village to get a deeper immersion into the ethnic communities and to understand how they live from a real life perspective. Lunch will be provided in a local village.

Trek back to the village around mid afternoon. Dinner and overnight at homestay.

Day 3: Mai Chau Trek. Travel back to Hanoi.

After breakfast, enjoy another short trek which takes about 3 hours before making a stop for lunch. Then get on your vehicle again for the 4-hour drive back to Hanoi. Trip ends.

Mai Chau Viet Nam

Mai Chau Viet Nam

Most seasoned travelers in Vietnam already know the enchanting White Thai communities of Mai Chau Valley in Hoa Binh Province.

But in the same lush valley, a group of ethnic Mong communities have begun opening their doors to tourists in Pa Co Commune.

Boasting the same rigid mountains and rich rice fields as Lac and Pom Coong hamlets, where the White Thai have been welcoming home stays for years, Pa Co also offers a centuries’ old tea forest that’s still cultivated today.

About 73 kilometers southwest of Hanoi, Mai Chau trek is only reachable via one of Vietnam’s most scenic drives.

After exiting the city, the road hikes up into the green limestone mountains, revealing fresh rice paddies and fruit orchards below. In the summer, each orchard is a different color as the fruits begin to ripen.

Behind the crowded shops that flank certain parts of the road, crystal clear canals and patches of jungle shine in the distance. As you approach Mai Chau Valley, traditional stilt houses can be seen interjecting themselves between the modern homes. As the road descends into Mai Chau Town, the difference is clear: modern homes along the road, stilt houses in the valley’s rice paddies.

A little over a decade ago, Mong locals in the area still lived as nomads. But now, many have settled in Pa Co Hamlet to farm tea or enter the tea processing trade in nearby Tra Day Hamlet. Here, locals offer tourists the local specialty, Shan Tuyet tea, made from trees that have been growing in Mai Chau’s highest mountains for hundreds of years.

According to Pha, director of a local tea processing business, Pa Co Hamlet is famous for its tea trees, about which the Mong communities still tell a local legend. According to the story, the trees appeared on Pa Hang Mountain hundreds of years ago when yellow -beaked phoenixes scattered tea seeds throughout the area because they liked eating tea tree fruit. It is said that the trees in the northwestern mountains of Vietnam were their favorite. The tea trees grew incredibly fast and soon formed a forest thanks to both the superb tea-growing climate and the special seeds scattered by the phoenixes.

Pa Co’s tea forest still has more than 1,000 old trees. These days, tourists can visit Pa Co to walk through the forest and sample the Mong’s centuries’ old tea recipes.