4 Excellent Attractions Outside Hanoi

[Nguyen Duy Duc]

There are a number of tourist attractions around Vietnam's capital to domestic and international tourists, especially backpackers who use motorbike to explore their own pace. If you have never been to these below places, pack your luggage and prepare a plan for interesting experiences of sightseeing around Hanoi. 

                                                      

Bat Trang Pottery Village

Some 20 kilometers outside Hanoi on the left side of Red River, you can drive motorcycle or take a bus to get here. For generations, Bat Trang is a place where they make ceramic products famous for styles and high quality all around the country. You can go around the village to visit many ceramic workshops, unique walls of drying coal or idyllic ancient houses. If you come here, you can walk to the riverside nearby, there is a unique means helping you discover Bat Trang village, which is buffalo-drawn carriage. In the small pottery mills, you can manually create the favorite ceramic products or draw on the cup, the ceramic souvenirs to give to your friends and relatives. The price of the ceramic product is approximately 10.000 to 30.000 VND (maybe the price is higher now).

                                 

The Ancient Village of Duong Lam

Forty km from Hanoi's Old Quarter, a very ideal destination for both expats or backpackers staying in Hanoi who want a break from the hustle and bustle. The village still remains unchanged with tangible and intangible objects on the lifestyle of the ancients. Tourists who visit the village can have chance to enjoy the simple and traditional but delicious meals at a yard of the ancient house, hearing the stories and visiting the moss-covered walls. The most interesting thing is renting a bike from Hanoi and riding around the village. This is also the ideal place to capture a lot of extremely beautiful photos.

                                          

Ha Dong Silk Village (Van Phuc silk village)

In the suburbs 10 kilometers from city center, on the bank of the Nhue River, this well known silk weaving village of the past is still going strong with a variety of unique Vietnamese patterns. Van Phuc used to be chosen to sew the court dress of Nguyen Dynasty. rulers Nowadays a lot of tourism companies have developed tours around Hanoi to visit here.  Some of its ancient features can still be seen, like the image of the old village well with lotus flowers, next to the tree, along with the market in front of the communal house. The village is also famous for its silk weaving tradition, and though modern mechanized looms are now the order of the day, quite a few of its houses still have the ancient looms were kept.

                                  

Thay Pagoda

This Buddhist temple at the foot of Sai Son Mountain in the Quoc Oai District, Hanoi is about 20 km southwest from Hanoi, along the Lang-Hoa Lac Highway (Sai Son is also called Thay Mountain, hence the name of the pagoda, but also popularly had even a third name, Buddhist Mountain). It was built during the Ly Dynasty and was the seat of on of Buddhism's great Zen masters, Tu Dao Hanh.  The ancient temple complex with its curved roofs - including the Ha, Trung, and Thuong pagodas - was spaciously built in a unique architectural style according to three typeface of Chinese writing. Surrounding the complex is open countryside, with a clear lake ringed by with colorful flowers, communal house over water for puppetry shows, and two small bridges to Tam Phu temple and the mountain. This is a place where Buddhists still worship and the monks teach Buddhism, while Trung temple is a temple of Three Jewels. Thuong temple is the largest, with three statues representing three lives of Tu Dao Hanh. In the center is the magnificent, gorgeously decorated stupa,