Tet in Northern Vietnam: What to Expect, When to Travel, and How to Prepare

Each year, as winter softens its hold on the Hoàng Liên mountains and the first plum blossoms open along stone walls and village paths, Vietnam moves into its most meaningful season. Tết Nguyên Đán, the Lunar New Year, marks a time of renewal, homecoming, and intention.

In the northern highlands of Sapa, Ha Giang, and the wider border regions, Tet shapes the rhythm of daily life, travel, and community celebration. For visitors, understanding this period allows journeys to unfold with greater care, respect, and connection.

When Is Tet in 2026?

In 2026, Tet begins on Tuesday 17th February, marking the start of the Lunar New Year.

Although the official holiday lasts several days, preparations begin weeks in advance and the effects continue well beyond the celebration itself. Travel patterns, accommodation availability, and village life are influenced for up to three weeks around Tet.

What Is Tet and How Is It Celebrated?

Tet marks the beginning of the lunar calendar and a turning point in family, agricultural, and spiritual life. Across Vietnam, people return to their ancestral homes, clean and repair houses, and prepare food that carries memory, care, and meaning.

Altars are refreshed with kumquat trees, peach blossom branches, incense, and offerings. Kitchens fill with the slow scent of simmering broths and sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves. The first days of the new year are spent visiting relatives, offering good wishes, and resting after a year of work.

One of the most visible customs during Tet is the giving of lì xì, red envelopes containing small amounts of money. These are given primarily to children, but also to elders and unmarried adults, as a symbol of good fortune, health, and prosperity for the year ahead. The red envelope itself carries meaning, representing luck and protection, rather than the monetary value inside. For children, receiving lì xì is a moment of excitement and joy, often accompanied by blessings for growth, strength, and happiness.

In the mountains, Tet aligns with a pause between farming cycles. Fields rest, tools are set aside, and time is made for family gatherings, storytelling, and preparation for the celebrations that follow.

What Tet Means for Travel in Vietnam

Travelling during Tet requires thoughtful planning and realistic expectations.

In the days leading up to and following the New Year, transport networks become extremely busy as families return home. Buses, trains, and flights often sell out far in advance. Many small, family-run businesses close for several days so that owners and staff can spend time with their families.

For travellers, preparation makes a significant difference. Booking accommodation early, allowing extra time for journeys, and accepting a slower pace can turn disruption into an opportunity to witness daily life at a meaningful moment in the year.

The Ha Giang Loop After Tet

The Ha Giang Loop is one of northern Vietnam’s most iconic journeys, and Tet brings a sharp rise in visitor numbers.

From around two days after Tet, the Loop becomes extremely busy. Homestays and hotels fill quickly and often reach full capacity. Roads see heavy traffic from tour groups, motorbikes, and domestic travellers returning from holiday.

For approximately ten days after Tet, riding conditions can feel congested, and accommodation options are limited. Those planning to travel during this period should book well in advance. Travellers seeking quieter roads and a more spacious experience may prefer to arrive before Tet or wait until later in the season.

Sapa During and After Tet

Sapa follows a similar rhythm.

From the second day after Tet, the town and surrounding valleys experience a significant increase in visitors. Hotels fill, trekking routes become busier, and transport costs may rise.

This period of heightened activity usually lasts around ten days, after which the region gradually returns to a calmer pace. Travellers hoping for quieter trails and deeper village engagement may wish to plan their visit outside this window.

Village Festivals After Tet in Hmong and Dao Communities

After the main Tet celebrations each spring, villages around Sapa begin to host their own cultural festivals. These gatherings are deeply rooted in local tradition and follow village-specific calendars rather than national schedules.

Festivals typically begin early in the morning and continue through the day. Larger villages host especially lively celebrations, drawing neighbouring communities together. Events include a wide range of cultural activities and folk games that emphasise health, strength, and skill. Physical ability is highly valued, as agriculture remains central to daily life in the highlands.

Music, dancing, shared meals, and rice wine are all part of the day. Perhaps the most anticipated moment comes with the unveiling of newly handmade traditional clothing. Months of winter are spent preparing these garments, using indigo-dyed organic hemp and intricate silk embroidery. Each piece reflects patience, identity, and pride in craftsmanship passed down through generations.

Alongside these traditional garments, some young women choose modern fabrics and bolder styles, often affectionately referred to as the “glitter girls”. Their presence adds humour, creativity, and a living sense of fashion to the celebrations.

Hmong New Year festivals mark the end of the harvest and the beginning of a new year in the Hmong calendar. They are a time for honouring ancestors, strengthening community bonds, exchanging small gifts, and reflecting on the year that has passed while setting intentions for the one ahead.

For visitors, these festivals offer a rare opportunity to witness culture as it is lived, not staged. Respectful behaviour, local guidance, and patience are essential, as these gatherings remain first and foremost for the communities themselves.

Planning Your Journey Around Tet

Tet can be a rewarding time to travel in northern Vietnam when approached with awareness and care.

Accommodation should be booked early, particularly in Ha Giang and Sapa. Flexible itineraries allow room for transport delays and business closures. Travellers who align their journeys with local rhythms often find deeper connection than those moving too quickly.

At ETHOS, our experiences are shaped in close collaboration with Hmong and Dao partners, following the seasonal cycles of land and village life. Some travellers arrive before Tet to experience quiet mountain days. Others choose to come later, when village festivals bring colour, movement, and shared celebration back to the valleys.

Listening to the people who live here remains the foundation of meaningful travel, whatever the season.

Why We Built ETHOS in Sapa: For Community, Culture and Connection

1. Understanding the Context

When you travel into the highlands around Sapa, you enter a world of steep valleys, rice-terraced slopes, hillside farmers, and the daily rhythms of ethnic minority communities such as the Hmong and Dao. Yet alongside that beauty lie complex realities. Many of the communities here have long been marginalised socially, economically and culturally.

During his early work here, the company’s founding partner, Phil Hoolihan, describes meeting young Hmong girls who, barefoot and curious, appeared at a camp in the mountains asking to practise English. Their hunger for more than the limited opportunities they saw planted the seed of what ETHOS would eventually become.

In that moment, one realisation took hold: tourism need not be a one-way street. Instead of simply entering a landscape, we could enter a conversation. Instead of only visiting homes, we could build relationships. Instead of extracting experiences, we could help sustain livelihoods, heritage and hope.

2. What Led Us to Act

Phil, together with his partner Hoa Thanh Mai, recognised that many conventional tourist operations in the region follow predictable routes and visitor numbers, yet seldom invest in the people, language, culture or environment of the area.

In their reflections, they asked: could we create something different? A venture that is locally rooted, values-led, and community-first, not just profitable? As Phil writes: “We didn’t want to build another tour company or a feel-good charity. We wanted to create something rooted, regenerative and real.”

By 2012, the decision was made. They moved back to Sapa, started small, with only a few guides, two basic trek options, one laptop and a shared desk. That humble beginning marked the birth of ETHOS: Spirit of the Community.

3. Our Mission and Model

From the outset, our guiding principle has been that travel can uplift, connect and sustain. We believe that every journey should be more than a photograph. It should be relationship-building, culture-sharing, and landscape-respecting.

We operate with four interlinked priorities:

Fair employment and empowerment of guides: Our guides are local women and men from the villages, and they lead the experiences. Their intimate knowledge, language and heritage bring authenticity.

Support for local families, craftswomen and farmers: Whether it is staying overnight in a village homestay, sharing a home-cooked meal, or taking a textile workshop with a skilled artisan, the idea is to work with rather than on the community.

Reinvestment into community development: A portion of every booking supports education for ethnic minority youth, health and hygiene programmes, conservation work and our community centre in Sapa.

Slow, respectful, off-the-beaten-track travel: We do not offer large group tours or queue at the viewpoints. Instead, we walk through rice terraces, stay in farmhouses, join in batik or embroidery workshops, and ride quiet roads by motorbike. It is about time, immersion and connection.

4. How the People Tell the Story

To understand why ETHOS exists, it helps to hear from those whose lives are intertwined with its creation.

Phil Hoolihan recalls the camp by the ridgeline where Hmong girls sat listening, learning English and dreaming. That moment triggered the question: what if tourism could lift culture rather than erode it?

Hoa Thanh Mai grew up in an agricultural town near Hanoi, the daughter of a ceramics-factory worker and a mother involved in textile trading. She studied tourism because she believed travel could be a tool of connection, not merely business.

Ly Thi Cha, a Hmong youth leader and videographer with ETHOS, embodies the spirit of bridge-building: interpreter, guide, cultural storyteller. Her presence shows the model in practice: local leadership, local voice, local vision.

Through their journeys, you can see how ETHOS is not an addition to community life but an extension of it. The guides are voices, the homes are real, the musk of smoke from the hearth, the murmur of family conversations, the weight of a needle in the hand of a craftswoman.

5. Why It Matters

You might ask: why is this so important? Because, when done thoughtfully, community-based tourism can be transformational.

It shifts power: from a few tour operators deciding where to lead visitors, to communities co-creating what they show and how they show it.

It safeguards culture: traditional crafts, stories and landscapes become living and evolving, not museum pieces or commodified clichés.

It generates dignity: when local guides share their own lives, and when income goes directly to extended families, the ripple effect strengthens livelihoods.

It deepens travel: for you, the traveller, this is not about ticking boxes; it is about altering perspective, slowing down, listening and noticing. “The most memorable journeys are not always the most comfortable or convenient,” as our website puts it.

It anchors sustainability: by linking tourism to education, healthcare and the environment, travel becomes support rather than strain.

6. How You Can Walk With Us

If you decide to join our journey, here is what you will experience:

• Trekking through hidden ridges, paddies and hamlets with a local guide who has grown up here.

• Homestays in village homes: food cooked over the fire, slow evenings, stories shared in the morning mist.

• Textile or herb-foraging workshops led by craftswomen and keepers of herbal knowledge, not by outsiders.

• Motorbike loops that avoid tourist hotspots and instead meander through remote valleys, tea plantations and lesser-seen paths.

• A guiding ethos: come with curiosity, leave with muddy boots, full hearts, and friendships that linger.

7. In Summary

We built ETHOS in Sapa because the mountains here hold more than scenery. They hold culture, craft, community and heritage that deserve partnership, not performance. We chose to centre women guides, local artisans, storytellers and farmers. We chose small groups, slow rhythms and mindful travel. We chose to measure success not just in tours sold but in lives enriched, traditions honoured and landscapes respected.

If you travel with ETHOS, you are choosing more than a route through rice terraces. You are choosing a journey that shifts the focus of tourism from convenience to connection, of visitor from spectator to participant, of region from “destination to consume” to “community to share with”.

Welcome. We are glad you are here, and we look forward to walking the path together.