Visit To Bat Trang

Today we visited Bat Trang ( Pottery Village ) together with the Information Technology English Club. Bat Trang is an area on the outskirts of Hanoi, around a 1 and a half hour journey from Hanoi.

At Bat Trang, we got learn and got to see how to make pottery! Right from scratch, something the people of Bat Trang are very familiar with. It was quite a difficult experience I must say. Ended up that I let the owner help me to make a very beautiful cup, which I also told him to write the words "Hanoi 2008" in it~~ The first step was to mould the clay ino the shape that you want, burn it if you want it to be harden, and burn it again for up to 1 week if you want it to be glazed and made like a real pottery.


Apart from making pottery, a favorite among people who visit the place, we also went to the pottery market, the highlight of the place, where there were many craftsmanship pieces, mostly made of pottery, including teacups, accessories, paintings, and many other things. It was quite an eye opener experience seeing how many and how creative things could be made with pottery. The whole place was filled with things, mostly pottery, something that these people are very proud of. One of the interesting things I noticed about Vietnam through this was the naming of streets, which are related to what the village is about , be it in the past or the present, such that Bat Trang literally means pottery village in Vietnamese. Another example would be "Bach Khoa" which means many faculties in Vietnamese.

At Bat Trang Market

Giant Vases
Pot luck lunch at Bat Trang
Making Pottery
The wall design of a ceramics house


Cheers
Daniel Foo