Vietnam travel destination 24: Mai Chau - American Top 10 tourism list

Mai Chau, a small town in the northern province of Hoa Binh was named by the US Business Insider as among the top ten incredible places for cultural tours. 

The magazine described Mai Chau as a wonderful destination if visitors are interested in a deeper experience of Vietnam with a warm and welcoming population and unspoiled natural beauty. 
The Business Insider suggested the best way to immerse yourself in the region is through a homestay with local families. 
It said visitors can spend two days cycling across mountain trails and through rice fields, visit local villages, and watch a cultural performance by Thai villagers. 
Other destinations recommended by the Business Insider include Santiago in Chile, Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Marrakech in Morocco, Shanghai in China, Trani in Italy, Budapest in Hungary, Lisbon in Portugal, Bordeaux in France, and Old Delhi in India.
Mai Chau was also named one of the top ten "fresh" Asian destinations by hotel booking site Agoda.com

 Why Not Go

Two words sum up the Mai Chau experience – “village homestay”. Unless you can afford to stay in the plush Mai Chau Lodge, there is really no point in coming to Mai Chau if the idea of a village homestay doesn’t appeal. You are sleeping on a mat in a bamboo stilt house, in a large communal room probably shared with the host family and/ or other travellers. There are no restaurants or bars unless you walk back to Mai Chau town itself – you eat and drink with your homestay hosts.

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On the other side of the coin, Mai Chau may not appeal to the more hardcore traveller looking for a really authentic homestay experience. The stilt houses have been modernised to meet the needs of foreign visitors, with electricity, running water and sit-down toilets. The villages get their fair share of tour groups, especially Lac, and the majority of houses are geared for tourism in some way, either offering homestays or selling textiles.

Why Go

Mai Chau is the perfect respite from the craziness of Hanoi. It’s a serene, relaxing rural idyll, and the vivid green paddy fields will match your picture postcard fantasies of the Vietnamese countryside. It’s a good way to meet one of the ethnic minority groups in a setting that’s neither too touristy nor too inaccessibly off-the-beaten-track. And a bamboo stilt house really is a pretty memorable place to spend the night.

Best Time to Visit

For hot (but not too hot), sunny weather, October-November and February-May are the best times to go. In December, January and sometimes February too, the weather can get pretty chilly. However, the stilt houses have no shortage of fluffy blankets to keep you warm at night; staying cool in the summer, however, is more of an issue. The stilt houses usually have fans but even then so they can get uncomfortably hot between June and September. In addition, these months are the rainiest, which makes outdoor exploring more problematic.

There is a market on Sundays which brings together different minority groups from the surrounding area, but given the higher numbers of weekend tourists (see ‘Stay away from’) this is not necessarily a reason to time your visit for a Sunday.

Where to Stay

The stilt house homestays all offer essentially the same thing for the same price (currently 50,000 dong excluding meals), so there is little point in recommending one over the other here. If you plan to stay in a stilt house, the best thing to do is walk around the villages (they’re very close, Lac starts where Pom Coong ends) and see which location you like best. Also check if there are other people staying – the rooms are communal so if you want more privacy you should go for one that has no other guests, and hope no-one else turns up!

Where & What to Eat

In short: in your homestay or hotel. There isn’t really any other choice, unless you head into Mai Chau itself, where there is the usual range of small rice and pho places. Homestays usually serve breakfast and dinner as standard but these are not included in the price of your stay. Breakfast is usually western (bread, jam, fruit etc) unless you request otherwise, and dinner is a spread of various home-cooked dishes.

Nightlife

“Nightlife” is not a term usually associated with Mai Chau. Evening entertainment is likely to consist of a few beers in your homestay before retiring early to avoid keeping your hosts up. If you get really friendly with your hosts, you may even be invited to drink exotic rice wines containing goat testicles or other unexpected animal parts. Tour groups are usually treated (or subjected, depending on your point of view) to a traditional dance display in the evening.

Stay Away From

It’s best to avoid visiting on a weekend if you can, as Mai Chau can get crowded with Hanoi weekenders, detracting somewhat from the sense of rural escapism.

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It’s easy to arrange a tour package through one of the travel agents in Hanoi’s Old Quarter, but as always, it’s more rewarding to do it independently.

It’s not difficult to get to Mai Chau by local bus from Hanoi. I could go into detail over bus schedules here but that would make things needlessly confusing. Just turn up at My Dinh bus station at any time in the morning and you shouldn’t have to wait long for one of the regular buses to Hoa Binh. You can then catch one of the regular buses on to Mai Chau from the same bus station without much waiting time. There is a direct bus as well, but the times of departure from Hanoi (6am and 2pm) are not particularly convenient. Given that it’s not much trouble to change in Hoa Binh, it’s not worth going out of your way to get the direct bus.

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