Ethisches Kulturtrekking und Homestay Nummer eins von ETHOS

I did the Bamboo Escape two days and one night homestay experience with a friend and it was an amazing experience. Our guide May Linh spoke perfect English and knew so much about the local culture, the forest and the plants. She also adjusted perfectly the itinerary to our needs and capacity! The homestay was as nice as the hike. Would 100% recommend this company!

I am wrapping up a 3 week trip to Vietnam. This was at the beginning of my trip, and it was most certainly a highlight, and a MUST DO AGAIN if I ever return to the area. Hoa was amazing to work with from the beginning. Communication was quick and thorough. She took the time to answer my questions to help me be best prepared for the adventure. When we arrived at the center, Cha was a wonderful hostess and gave us a lot of information about the experience and the history of the Red Dao and Black Hmong. She is a treasure, and is excellent at her job! I was fortunate enough to have Lo May as a trekking guide. Wow, she is an amazingly strong woman, who led us bravely through the trek. We had an incredible lunch at her home. I enjoyed helping her chop some of the food. She was very kind and we laughed a lot. Our overnight was with May Sieu. Her home is in a lovely setting, and the room was comfortable. The meal was delicious. The bamboo shoots with perilla leaves is one of the best dishes I have had on this whole trip! The next day, we had lunch with May Sinh. Her home is also in a beautiful setting, and we had another amazing meal. So much food! A word of caution for vegetarians - you will probably have to set that aside. Almost every dish had meat in it, and the vegetable dishes were cooked with animal fat. It was sad to see our trip come to an end, but I made memories that will stay with me forever.

I had two wonderful days, with Ker (Black Hmong) and May Lai (Red Dao), who both introduced me to their traditional embroidery techniques and cultural traditions. Each style is so complex and rich in meaning. Both such expert, patient teachers and I loved every minute of each day, from sitting for hours attempting new stitches and chatting, amazing home cooked family meals with fresh picked produce, a Red Dao hot herbal bath in a traditional wooden tub (bliss), learning how to prepare flax, and indigo dyeing. Highly recommend learning both if you have the time!

We just finished two day trekking with our amazing guide A and we can’t stop looking at the pictures. The views were beautiful, but the absolute highlight for us was meeting A and the local families. A is incredible. So chatty, always smiling and full of information about Hmong culture and nature. I feel so thankful for the families that welcomed us in their homes, let us play with their children and showed us their daily lives. We had a great night sleep in a local village and woke up to the sound of chickens, children playing and people going to work on the fields ❤️ A special shout-out to the entire Ethos team for the important work you are doing. Ethical tourism is a buzz word nowadays, but you are the true definition of this. Thank you for going the extra mile and educating people. You are really making the world a better place. Although this entire adventure felt like a once-in-a-lifetime experience, I hope we can come back one day and re-do the entire thing. I can’t recommend this enough.

Having traveled Vietnam from south to north over a period of three months, we can comfortably say that if we were—for some reason—forced to choose only one experience to do again, the trek with Ethos would definitely be the one. Moreover, of all our experiences in Vietnam, which were overwhelmingly good, this is probably the one we will look back to most fondly and with greatest appreciation in a few years or even later in the future. This is, firstly, because we felt that the trek with Ethos was the least touristy-feeling experience we went through during our trip in Vietnam. Secondly, and just as important, we felt grateful and fortunate to be welcomed so warmly into people's homes, share generous and delicious home cooked meals with hard working farmers, learn a bit about their way of living, help a bit with cooking. The hospitality of people from the Dao community in Sapa is something we will not easily forget. Thirdly, and also just as important, our guide, May Linh, who also belongs to the Dao community near Sapa, was simply superb. She took such good care of us, and there was not a moment where we felt unsafe. May Linh also taught us a lot about the flora and fauna, and she kept picking sweet and sour yellow berries for us to eat; she navigated through the mountains and rice paddies, finding paths for us to walk where we never saw a clear way to pass; she taught us some embroidery skills, and although some of us clearly have no talent for it she never gave up on us; she and the families we stayed with prepared wonderful herbal baths for us every evening, which really helped with our sore muscles; and May Linh made communicating with the locals quite straightforward and convenient. We will always remember May Linh's terrific sense of humor and general kindness. A few more general comments about administration and the overall organization of the experience by Hoa and her team. The Ethos team are not only individuals who are passionate about creating sustainable and ethically conscious tourism, but they are also highly committed to their clients' experience and safety. The trek was planned and tailored to our specific needs and limitations, and due to rain, further changes were made to make our overall experience more enjoyable. Hoa called us every evening to make sure we were fine and happy, this is something other tour outfitters do not do, and we greatly appreciated this gesture, as it also allowed us to make necessary tweaks regarding the course of the trek for the following day. Another point worth mentioning is that this experience requires getting out of one's comfort zone. If you are looking for the comfort and luxury offered by many of the hotels in Sapa, this is not the trek for you. Nonetheless, we would not trade this fantastically unique experience for the type of comfort that is often sought out by many Western travelers, us included. Understanding that there is a trade-off involved in such an experience is crucial for one's enjoyment of it. We began by writing that—if we were made to choose—the trek with Ethos would be our number one pick for Vietnam, and particularly Sapa. We also wish to conclude by stating that while we are glad that this was one of our last experiences in this great country—because it allowed us to connect the dots regarding our extended trip in Vietnam—we are, at the same time, so pleased with this experience, and feel very fortunate to have gone through it, that in retrospect, we kind of wish it was one of the first experiences in this country.

We really enjoyed the hike. Wonderfully beautiful views. And Tra led us safely through all the bamboo forests and rice breeds with a lot of patience.

Ethos is a fantastic, genuine organisation, helping tourists have authentic experiences that put money directly into the community. Our guide, Maysieu, was wonderful and very knowledgeable about all aspects of local life, and had us at her house for lunch. She organised for us to join her at her friend's house for a special celebration, which we were very grateful to be part of. We highly recommend Ethos to anyone looking to embrace sustainable tourism.

Pam was an excellent guide who was knowledgeable, kind, and led us through amazing scenery. While trekking through amazing scenery, we learned lots about the Hamong culture, farming and life in Vietnam.

This activity is a wonderful opportunity to learn more about the Hmong and the Dai and have an realy authentic and enriching experience with lovely guides.

We had two fantastic experiences with Ethos. 1. Wonderful food tour with Do at the night market. Do was the perfect guide, bubbly personality and very knowledgeable in terms of Vietnam’s culture, history, politics, and food. We feasted on squid, grasshoppers, crickets, chicken hearts, rice paddy frog legs and ant egg omelette, to name a few. We very much enjoyed her company as a guide. She was so easy to talk to and put us at ease from the start. This was one of the greatest highlights of our trip. 2. A 2-day trek with local Guide May in the mountains, jungle and rice fields. We stayed overnight at a village homestay which was a real cultural eye-opener into real people’s lives, meeting with Mammai, Foo and MyLyn who made us feel very welcome. We helped our local Guide May to collect wild herbs to put into our herbal bath at the homestay. Our homestay family cooked up the herbs and heated hot water for our barrel baths over an open fire. We’ve fed piglets and chickens and Guide May and her husband very kindly fixed the zipper on my rucksack. We helped prepare the bamboo for food, sucked on sugar cane and drank ‘Happy Water’. We loved our experiences with Ethos Spirit. Such a grounded, community driven, ethical company who offer a culturally sensitive range of experiences. All the staff were fantastic, and we appreciated the knowledge from Phil’s pre-trek briefing to Hoa’s calm and communicative manner. We can’t recommend this company enough and wouldn’t hesitate at all to engage their services again.