Ban Pho is a village of Bac Ha district, Lao Cai province. It’s takes you about 15 minutes from Bac Ha town and 2 hours from Lao Cai station. This is the village of Black H’Mong and Flower H’Mong. It’s beautiful scenery on spring (February and March) as the plum flower bloom everywhere. Especially Ban Pho is very famous for its specialty “corn wine”.
Ban Pho village is the oldest area of Mong people. There are more than 500 households with 3,000 people.
To come to Ban Pho village, you go along the Hoang Lien Son mountainside, just almost 4 kilometers and then passed through a plum forest and a valley full of corn and rice before you come Ban Pho Village. H’Mong people had settled down in the village a very long time ago and they built their houses on high slopes and roofed them with Pomu wood.
People in Ban Pho live mainly on rice farming, fabric weaving and planting of medicinal plants. If you visit the village when people are cooking, you will be surprised when seeing many strings of pork, beef, etc are being hung on the kitchen ceiling. That is how Ban Pho people make their own bacon.
One of the traditional handicrafts in Ban Pho is fabric weaving with cotton and linen as main inputs. Local people living here wear clothes which are woven by themselves.
If you join Our Bac Ha Market Tour, after visit Bac Ha Market in the morning, in the aternoon, you will trek to Ban Pho village. Our guide will help you understand little more about their lifestyle and traditional customs. Especially, you can try homemade wine from corn.
Sipping a cup of corn wine and you will feel the torrid and very hot flavor and at the same time a sweet taste like the quintessence of the earth and firmament.
To people who once traveled to Sapa and visited Ban Pho village, the taste of Northwest wine is definitely unforgettable. As if it is the cup of wine symbolizing the hospitality of local people here.