Bat Trang Ceramic Village: Find Your Perfect Souvenir In North Vietnam

Visit Bat Trang, take a half day trip out of Hanoi

Bat Trang is a village known for its ceramics. The village is on the outskirt of Hanoi where it is surrounded by rice fields and vegetable fields with cows walking along the sides of the streets. It is only 10 km south of Hanoi, but the feeling changes dramatically when you travel out of the busy streets of Hanoi.

As soon as you enter the village, you see store after store of ceramics. You may think everything is the same, but the price and the quality of the ceramics differs by each store and artisan, thus you may like to take your time to look for what is within your budget. The village itself is small enough for you to walk around in 30 minutes if you do not stop and get your shopping on. If you like ceramics and home décor, you can easily spend a half day here at the village trying to locate the best souvenir from Northern Vietnam.

The signature Bat Trang designs

When you visit the stores, you start realizing there are certain designs you frequently see, such as lotuses and dragonflies. As well as these traditional designs, there are also more modern designs, such as with letters from alphabets and characters that seem to be influenced greatly by the increase of international travelers visiting the village.

The truth is, when you shop, you will be surprised by how each store differs, which indicates most likely who they target for their customers. At some stores, which have poor lighting and dust on ceramics, you can find very cheap ceramics. At other stores, which clearly target tourists, as soon as you step inside, you can tell the difference.

There are signs in various languages and the lighting showcases the ceramics well. In addition, store staff can be pretty aggressive when approaching you to sell you ceramics, to most likely get a commission from their sales. They can get little too aggressive so if that is the case, do not feel afraid to tell them to give you some space so that you can concentrate on shopping.

Immerse yourself in the art of ceramics

For those who are interested in ceramics as well as arts and crafts, you will have a great time visiting this ceramic village. From a small coffee cup to a large vase bigger than 1 m (3.28 feet) tall, you can find a lot of ceramics in Bat Trang.

Unlike marble and limestone sculptures found at the Marble Mountains in Da Nang, there are a lot of ceramics that can actually be used in your daily life that you can spend hours locating the ones you want to take home. The day we visited, it was a heavily raining, thus we could not walk around the village much, but for those who want to explore a small village lifestyle of Vietnam, this town is also an interesting experience out of Hanoi, which is totally different from a busy Vietnam city.

Eco-friendly, cute hemp bags to take your ceramics home

When you come from places where ample plastic bags are provided at any purchase you make at stores, you feel pretty good about getting a shopping bag with your purchase in Bat Trang. At any store you make a purchase, they wrap your ceramics in newspaper and then put them in hemp bags.These hemp bags add special flavor to your souvenir hunting in Bat Trang. You could easily use them for your eco-bags back in your home country or use it to give a gift from Bat Trang to your loved ones.