Auberge de Meo Vac

Check-in happens inside a hundred-year-old Hmong house on the edge of Meo Vac town. Built originally for a wealthy Hmong landowner, the house borrows its layout from fortified farmhouses of southern China, with pine timber framing, adobe walls 80cm thick, and a hand-laid stone courtyard. It reopened in 2013 after a year of restoration, kept close to its original form rather than rebuilt from scratch. The main house holds four double rooms and one twin, spread across two floors, each floor sharing a common space and a ground-floor fireplace. Bathrooms sit outside the main structure, in keeping with the house's original design, with two toilets and four showers behind it. A side building, rebuilt on its old foundations, holds a dormitory sleeping up to eight above a reception, kitchen, and bar. Meals draw on seasonal produce from the local market, served with corn spirit and, on request, a Hmong music and dance performance. The market itself is a ten-minute walk away. Local guides lead treks into the surrounding karst plateau, a geopark near Vietnam's northern border with China, taking in the Nho Que river valley and the cliffs above the Ma Pi Leng pass. Full-day routes cover five to six hours on foot, with a picnic lunch and a stop at the old To Du reservoir.