Lac Village

Bản Lác is a living village, not a sight to be seen and left behind. Here 537 people live and work. The village is more than 700 years old, and the White Thái have kept their culture here through the generations. The Thái are one of Vietnam's ethnic groups, and they mainly live in the northwest. The village is part of Mai Hạ commune, in Phú Thọ province.

A few figures explain the village. Of its 125 households, 76 are registered to run tourism services. The Thái make up 98 percent of the people. So more than half the houses here take in guests as part of their work. Tourism is not something outside the village. It is part of the livelihood of the whole community.

The name White Thái is the name of an ethnic group, used to tell it apart from the Black Thái in some other regions. It is not a name given by color in the ordinary sense. It belongs to a branch of the Thái with its own speech, its own household ways and its own style of weaving.

Walking into the village, a visitor notices at once that life here moves at a different pace from the city. Stilt houses stand in a line along the village road. Brocade goods are laid out on the porches. The smell of cơm lam drifts out, and the smell of grilled chicken when mealtime comes. Cơm lam is sticky rice cooked in a tube of young bamboo over a fire. Farther on, the fields and the line of mountains open out.

Brocade weaving is another layer of this culture. The weaving of the Thái of Mai Châu is very old. The Chiềng Châu brocade weaving and service cooperative was founded in 2013. It has grown from scarves, cloth and traditional clothing to bags, footwear and souvenirs. The products still rest on natural cotton thread, worked by hand from spinning the thread to dyeing the color to weaving the cloth. A brocade scarf from here is the work of the village's own hands.

One thing makes Bản Lác special. It was once the first place in the northern mountains of Vietnam to develop community tourism. From very early on, the villagers opened the doors of their stilt houses to guests from afar, and then the whole region followed. Each guest brings income to the community, and each visit is a reminder to tread lightly and keep the space of the traditional stilt houses whole.

At the village table come grilled hill chicken and cơm lam. Then come thịt trâu lá lồm, a dish of buffalo meat, and chả cuốn lá bưởi, a roll wrapped in pomelo leaf. The drink is rượu cần. The meal runs at the pace of the village, unhurried, the way the village lives each day.

Bản Lác does not hold on to people with grandeur. It holds them with simplicity: the slow rhythm of the village, the color of brocade hung on the porches, and the clatter of the loom. And when one steps into the fields, a whole valley opens out in every direction.