Take a small boat on Cấm Sơn Lake with a local boatman

Around Chũ town, many growers and community cooperatives host guests with meals and a bed in or beside their orchards, and some offer camping under the trees in the blossom season. Stays are arranged through cooperatives or travel companies, so book ahead for lychee season and ask what is included, such as picking…

Quan họ, the call-and-response folk duet of the Kinh Bắc region, is still sung in Việt Yên villages such as Thổ Hà, Hữu Nghi and Nội Ninh, where clubs keep older styles alive. Singers wear tứ thân dresses and palm-leaf hats and may offer betel as a welcome. At Thổ Hà a boat ride on the Cầu River can come with singing…

Every spring, in the second lunar month, Bổ Đà Pagoda holds its annual festival honoring its founding patriarch. Rituals share the grounds with quan họ singing, ca trù, calligraphy, folk games and Đồng Ngư water puppetry. Confirm the exact days with the ward before you go and dress modestly. Go early in the day for…

Mì Chũ is a dried rice noodle from Thủ Dương village in Nam Dương commune, Lục Ngạn, made from hill-grown rice with no preservatives. Sheets are sun-dried twice, so work stops in bad weather and a dry spell is the best time to find stock. Buy straight from producer households and ask when the batch was made. At home…

The old kapok tree at the Bà Cô shrine in Lãng Sơn, on a riverside dike, turns bright red each year around March, in the third lunar month. Outside that window it is only a tall tree, so check that it is in bloom first. In bloom week the dike fills with photographers, so go early on a weekday, keep clear of the road…

Đồng Cao is a grassy highland above 1,000 m in the Sơn Động hills, often called a small Sa Pa for its sunrise sea of clouds. Autumn is the season, from September into December, and the clouds sit below the peaks only around dawn. Reach the foot by evening and camp on the meadow, or leave in the small hours, then allow…

Thổ Hà is an old craft village in Việt Yên whose communal house dates from 1692 and is a national relic. The gate has a big pond on one side and an old banyan on the other, and the lanes pass houses with walls built from broken pottery. Rice-paper screens dry along the alleys, so you can see bánh đa nem being made. Go…

Bổ Đà Pagoda, a special national relic on Phượng Hoàng mountain near Việt Yên, keeps a Lâm Tế stupa garden described as the largest in Vietnam. Its Buddhist scripture woodblocks, carved in persimmon wood from 1740, are a national treasure. Cover shoulders and knees, speak softly and ask before photographing inside the…