Cultural encounters

The hike takes you through some of the most picturesque rice terraces in all of Vietnam and down dirt trails dotted with bamboo huts used by local farmers as a temporary lodge during the planting and harvest seasons.

Leave Topas Riverside Lodge and walk down Nam Cang’s streets, where you’re likely to see Red Dao women sitting sewing outdoors and children leaving for school. The H’mong people are known for building their villages at the top of mountains, and you will notice the road start its incline. As the climb gets steeper, scenes of rolling farmland bursting with rice, corn, and wheat will start to emerge. Stop at a Blue H’mong home and learn about how farming, hunting, dying hemp, and batik design are intertwined with people’s daily lives.

Continue on to Nam Nhiu village, where you will quickly recognize the attributes of the Red Dao people you met in Nam Cang – the beautifully embroidered outfits, red handkerchiefs, and shaved eyebrows. You’ll notice how the houses have changed from mountain huts to large wooden dwellings as you sit down for lunch with a local family.

End the trek passing cornfields and more rice terraces as you return to Nam Cang Village and back home to Topas Riverside Lodge to relax.