“A place where the blaring horns of nearby Hanoi are exchanged for the sounds of livestock quietly rummaging through crops,” observes Nomadasaurus. The rural township of Mai Chau offers a “simpler style of life” that is “surrounded by a tranquil setting … where the freshness in the air tingles your senses of taste and smell as you cruise through the highlands by bicycle.” About three hours' drive west of Hanoi, Mai Chau is a “snaking line of blue walls and red roofs sunk deeply into a valley” where limestone hills “rise to numerous dome-like peaks around the valley, and a perpetual haze hangs like a cataract over the town and its surrounding rice terraces,” says Traveller.
It’s a place to “see the stars in the smog-free sky,” writes Our Big Fat Travel Adventure. Or watch a festival on the village field where groups of teenagers dance “frantically around blazing bonfires to the same booming dance music Vietnamese people seem to love while others had watermelon-eating competitions or had equally loud karaoke sessions.”