Chợ gốm làng cổ Bát Tràng

The experience

The pottery market at the centre of Bát Tràng, a village on the Red River in Gia Lâm that has been firing ceramics for something over seven hundred years and once traded between Thăng Long and Phố Hiến. The market is a warren of stalls and workshops selling everything from tea sets to garden jars, with the kilns and drying yards of a working village around it. Beyond the stalls stand the 200-year-old wooden Vạn Vân house, hung with ceramic pieces going back to the 15th century, and the six-storey Bát Tràng Pottery Museum, built as a cluster of giant potter's wheels. The market keeps daily hours of 8am to 5pm.

A living craft village fourteen kilometres from the Old Quarter where the kilns are still lit and the prices are still negotiable.

What a membership adds.

Everything above is free: the name, the photo, the rating, the exact spot. What members get is the part you can't Google: the sourced insider tip for this place (what to order, when to go, what to skip), every day of your trips unlocked in full with the insider tip on every researched stop, and the concierge at full strength, answering with your own insider tips, no daily meter.