Experience the Best Hands-On Village Homestay in Vietnam

One of the best experiences on our trip to Southeast Asia was a village homestay in Vietnam with Indochina Junk. This ended up being a highlight of our Vietnam experience as it offered wonderful insight into the culture and local life of many in this country. One of our goals of travel is to find educational and transformative activities that give hands-on opportunities for learning and this fit the bill perfectly.

A visit to Yen Duc village can be added on to your overnight Halong Bay cruise or possibly as a stand alone option. We did it as part of our Halong Bay trip and it worked out well as it’s located between Halong Bay and Hanoi. If you have time, we would highly recommend making a visit to Yen Duc village with Indochina Junk as it really was a great way to experience this fascinating country and to experience life in a local village.

Read more

Learn Guatemalan Backstrap Weaving on Lake Atitlan

One of the top things on our to do list in Guatemala was to learn traditional Guatemalan backstrap weaving. My 8 year old son loves to weave. Having used a cardboard loom for years and a few varieties of floor looms on our recent trip to Wisconsin, he was excited to learn how to use beautiful Guatemalan fabric in a traditional way.

Conducting my diligent research I found many places that offered weaving demonstrations all over the country, however not a ton of classes, even less for children. There were two options that looked promising, however one was in Xela, a town not on our itinerary and a private lesson in Antigua that was geared more towards longer term classes and was very expensive. However, a visit to San Juan la Laguna on Lake Atitlan provided just the opportunities we were searching for in order to try our hand at weaving in Guatemala.

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Read more