Excursion to Ecopark and the pottery village of Bat Trang with Ta Duy Bau and the Club La Route des Découvertes

The Ecopark – Bat Trang Pottery Village tour is ideal for young people of the 21st century who appreciate today and at the same time seek the beauty of the past. Two opposing but coexisting worlds: Ecopark, the largest green urban area in northern Vietnam and recognized by the IPA for its landscape design, and Bat Trang, one of the oldest and largest ceramic craft villages in the country. This is what the students of the La Route des Découvertes club experienced on their opening Petit Tour of 2021.

At midday on March 18th the club left. The students were accompanied by Mr. Ta Duy Bau, director of Horizon Vietnam Travel and former student of the French Faculty, who supports the faculty in many activities. Despite the initial drizzle, the sun was shining when we arrived in Bat Trang.

Less than an hour’s drive from Hanoi, Bat Trang is hidden beneath green bamboo groves. The village has existed for over 500 years (around 14th-15th centuries, at the time of the Le Dynasty) and is known for its diverse ceramics. Before we started, Mr. Bau reminded everyone to look after their personal valuables and gave the “future tour guides” an exciting task: to lead a Francophone tour group through Bat Trang for a day. Each student showed their own style, but everyone had prepared carefully – an indispensable quality for professional tour guides.

There were individual activities during the visit: some made pottery themselves, others explored the market stalls. After an hour we continued to Ecopark. On the way, the group stopped briefly at a popular attraction among young people – an elaborate ceramic estate in the middle of Bat Trang.

The group reached Ecopark at 3:30 p.m. Everyone was overwhelmed by the wide green spaces, which were more reminiscent of a jungle than a modern city complex. From the beginning, the district was planned in a natural and sustainable manner. Mr. Bau, himself a former “Ecoparker,” shared an astonishing number: 125 trees per inhabitant.

The trip came to an end all too quickly. The members of the club had experienced two very different landscape and cultural areas – Bat Trang and Ecopark – and thanked Mr. Bau warmly. With every trip her love for the special features of the Vietnamese regions grows.