The Northern Mountain Markets: Bac Ha, Dong Van and Meo Vac
Sunday markets in the far north are trading posts first and spectacles second. How to visit them without turning them into a photo opportunity. The weekly markets of the northern mountains are the oldest surviving institution in the region. They are where a Hmong family from a village four hours' walk away sells a pig, buys thread, has a tooth pulled, drinks corn wine with a cousin and arranges a marriage. Tourism has arrived at several of them, but the market is still doing its job, and that is exactly what makes it worth attending. Bac Ha, Sunday Bac Ha in Lao Cai province is the largest and best known, about two and a half hours by road from Sapa. It is Flower Hmong country, and the name is literal — the women's clothing is a dense assembly of embroidered panels in magenta, orange and green, and a hundred of them in a single square is a genuinely startling sight. The market divides into sections that repay walking through in order: textiles and thread first, then the food and prepared-dish area where you eat thang co , a horse or buffalo offal stew that is the regional speciality and an acquired taste, then the corn wine, then livestock at the top of the hill — buffalo, pigs and dogs traded by men who have walked them in. Go before eight. By eleven the tour buses from Sapa arrive and the textile section reorients itself towards them. Dong Van, Sunday Dong Van, on the karst plateau in Ha Giang province, holds its market in and around a French colonial stone market hall in…
- Published
- 2026-06-12
- Author
- Betel Editorial
