Visiting Lao Cai in April is a time when the visitors have the opportunity to enjoy and experience with many specialties of this high mountain areas. Besides enjoy special dishes mentioned above, you also have more choices to buy gifts for loved ones.
Here are a few suggestions for you
The first to mention is the brocade, one of the products associated with traditional cultural life of the ethnics such as Mong, Dao, Tay, Giay, etc.
Visitors can buy at the stores, in the markets or in the streets by the ethnic sold in Sapa. With a variety of items such as bags, backrest pillow, brocade paintings, the ethnic costumes.
There are some tips to be able to buy genuine brocade. With the panels are stitched slightly rough, colors was harmoniously blended and slightly dark, which are products embroidered and stitched entirely by hand. Industrial brocade panels embroidered by machine have brilliant color, the equally stitch and less motifs style.
This season is also the time forest mushrooms flourish, after every the rain, the mushrooms springing up dense. Visiting to Y Ty, Nam Pung in Bat Xat, you will have the opportunity to buy black forest mushrooms are harvested in the jungle as a gift for the relatives.
Leaving Bat Xat to Bac Ha, you will be bought Ban Lien tea which is a kind of specialty of Lao Cai. Especially at the end of spring and early the summer, after a long winter, the first batch of spring tea will be delicious tea than other seasons of the year.
There are many other gifts that you can buy such as corn wine, rice wine, condense artichoke mixtures and Chinese tradictional medicine, etc.
Bac Ha market is one of the most attractive markets and must-see in Northern Part of Vietnam. You’ll never have a chance to catch this moment if your trip is not planned on Sunday because it is specially taken place every Sunday. Here you will have an opportunity to witness a living museum of cultural and community activities, where still remains plenty of ethnic culture with unique customs and regional traditions of Flower H’mong, Black Dzao, Nung, Phu La and Tay, ect.
Visiting Lao Cai in different seasons will have own specialty that can not find in elsewhere . With the specialties of the mountains are guaranteed quality, make sure that you will not feel disappointed.
Tran Thanh Tuan – TIPC Lao Cai