The Hmong people are an ethnic group in several countries, in Vietnam, there are about 800,000 people, counting for nearly 1% of the total population of Vietnam.
They are also also known as the Miao, originated from southern China and started to settle in Vietnam during the 19th century when they built hamlets in the highland regions of Ha Giang and Lao Cai provinces. The Hmong in Vietnam consist of three main dialects: Flower, White and Black.
When you travel, you will normally see that the Hmong villages are located high, they tend to live at a high altitude and always away from other tribes.
Once you are at a Hmong village, you will find rice & corn cultivation are their main crops, cotton and hemp are also another part of their cultivation as they are known for being good weavers.
Other than that, they also doing handicrafts for tourism, such as cloth dyeing with indigo, silver jewellery… for earning their living.
They value silver jewelry as part of their culture the Hmong, as this symbolizes wealth and good life so you can easily see that children, men and women wear their silver necklaces and bracelets.
Once visiting their homes, you can see that every household has an altar, where they worship the spirits of the household, so if you stay homestay in the Hmong house, make sure you recognize this important place and do not face your feet or turn your back to the altar.
The Hmong is a great drinker, they drink lots of wine made from corn or rice from their harvesting, it’s very common that you are invited to drink at anytime of the day when you are visiting them, it’s better to accept it the first time then you can probably say no on their next offer.
It was a white that Footprint did use the Hmong men for being our porters on long trekking routes, but thing changes now as many of them get high education and becoming tour guides and tour leaders. In recent months, the Hmong village of Lao Chai, Sapa has the support from the CBT Vietnam project, funded by the PATA foundation and Capilano University, they were trained to do homestay, cooking, and tour guiding and more.
Footprint feels it’s a part of our responsibility to support the development of the minority groups in general and the Hmong in particular, we decided to make a new tour product for our clients just to learn about the Hmong culture and their life and for the Hmong to develop and to earn more from tourism.
Here is the link to the trip and we look forward to having you joined on our trip the Hmong’s Panorama.
