For centuries villages around Hanoi have specialized in single-commodity production, each family sharing their knowledge only within their village, therefore restricting the product’s production to the one community.

Just outside of the Hanoi area visit a lacquer (or alternatively paper), silk and woodcarving village

• 09.00 departure. Journey south of Hanoi to Duyen Thai Lacquer Village. Here you can see the work in progress, from stage o­ne where they cut the wood to the last stages of applying layers of lacquer to the product. * An option to this is to visit Dong Ho traditional paper village, here they make ‘giay do’ paper and paint it with traditional designs. All of paper is made by hand, and some, still in the traditional way with all natural products.
• Van Phuc silk village is a great place to see silk cloth being produced o­n the loom. The families here have been producing fabrics for centuries. There is a showroom where you can buy silk by the meter, much more exciting that buying it in the shops!
  
• Return to Hanoi for a Vietnamese lunch.
• Following lunch journey to Dong Ky wood Village. Here they make furniture inlaid with mother of pearl and finished off with a layer of clear lacquer. Inlaying the mother of pearl is highly labour intensive, see how it is delicately sawed into fine fish-bone slivers and painstakingly set into wood.

BenThanh Tourist