In the heart of the bamboo forest lies the beautiful home of our new 'residents'. Here, we have gentle friends who love rolling through the green grass, drinking from fresh streams, and bathing in sunlight. Visit our friendly animals and get snippets of their daily lives!

Avana Retreat’s Bamboo Forest is home to many native animals. Each animal has distinctive features, traits, and needs, yet all live in harmony in the natural sanctuary. By day, we let them out in the open air and let them interact with each other. Seeing chickens, goats, piggies, and peacocks roaming freely and peacefully, it feels like a diverse neighborhood! From being timid and untamed, these animals are more sociable with human interaction. They are more familiar with the mountain climate and more open to living with each other.

We have a phenomenal animal ‘whisperer’ Hạnh - who always shows up at the earliest, and leaves at the latest! He has his ways of connecting with them: he feeds them, communicates with them, learns their names, and shows them how to be around humans. Whenever it’s lunchtime, you can see a line of followers sticking to his back like a tail! With many mouths to feed, he is consistently occupied. However, you can tell that he loves his job by looking at how he treats wildlings! 

Bamboo Forest is one of our most promising projects to contribute to the vision of sustainability. Making use of the abundant land, we wish to encourage biodiversity, a healthy ecosystem, and positive conservation practices! By having hands-on experience with animals, we can help our guests learn about animal welfare, and be more aware of the environment and wildlife around us!

The Bamboo Forest is open from 9:00 - 11:00 and 14:30 - 16:30 daily.

With the idea to honor the architectural highlights of the natives, 36 bungalows and villas of Avana Retreat are constructed with the guidance of craftsmen from three minority groups of Mai Chau. Every corner, every inch, is imbued with the cultures and identities of the natives.

Dry in spring, cool in summer, warm in autumn, and wind-proof in winter, the villa responds to the environment of the Northwest mountain wonderfully, thanks to a unique building method: totally hand-crafted earthwork. With architecture modernities these days, it’s hard to believe a raw, natural material like earth is still useful. In fact, this ancient method is one of the most sustainable building methods. 

The craftsman said that thatched roofs are the best, they are abundant, light, and effective. By layering up palm leaves, it prevents heat leaks in the winter and keeps the space chill around the summer. Looking from afar, it’s like camouflage that blends seamlessly into nature.

A traditional craft of the Thai ethnic groups, using the outer layer of the rattan tree, the craftsmen skillfully entwine the solid timbers into patterns. You can see it on the ceiling, you can see it on the chandelier, the sedge carpet, or the buffalo muzzle decor, all contribute to a space that is truly in tune with nature.

Take a day to explore Avana Retreat and you will see a stilt house hiding on a low hill. It might surprise you that usually there would be a bungalow constructed here, so why does a stilt house of the natives placed right here? Well, it's not just a traditional house, it is a renovated museum full of stories and past memories. 

Built in 1970, this stilt house was moved to its current location as the construction started. Back in the days when Avana Retreat was no more than concrete and frames, the founders would get together in the stilt house after a day of hard work and talk about the process, share their hopes, and just bond over the tough times. The stilt house witnessed all and came through the hardships with us, it was our special place.

Then, the house was converted into a museum when the project was finished. Opening from 9:00 to 17:00, you can come and observe the collections of jewelry, traditional clothing, farming tools, literature, musical instruments, and many other interesting objects of the three ethnic groups that reside close to Avana: Thai, Muong, and H'mong. There are new ones, there are old ones, and there are ones that are still useful to this day. A guide is always there to walk you through the details. Every artifact has its own story, and it's always nice to understand the culture from the natives. 

A Thai old lady sitting peacefully, looming over her weave is a familiar sight in the space underneath the stilt house. It is also the place for Avana's craft workshops such as Batik art or Bamboo weaving craft, all you need is to register and get a hands-on lesson with the artisans themselves. In winter evenings, we would gather around, light up some firewood and roast corn and sweet potatoes. Eating the yummy treats, having a sip of warm tea, and warming up the atmosphere with cozy moments around the fire really bring back the good old days.

When everything we absorb these days is filled with plastic junkies and chemicals, we would want to go for a choice that focuses on the greens and benefits to the environment like organic products. Making our products more natural, ethical, and healthier is a great start in the commitment to sustainability, and we have plenty on the list: 

• Organic juice and fruit:

A hearty plate of yummy fruits and juice is Avana’s first gift of welcoming you here. Charge your daily glucose and vitamin boost while feeling the crunch and sweetness of fresh tropical fruits.

• Organic herb garden: 

To keep the greens truly green, our herb gardens are pesticide-free. From seeding to harvesting, every process is carefully nurtured by our local farmer. The freshest food comes straight out of the soil, and in our cooking class, you can visit the garden and pick up fresh herbs for your menu. 

• Organic eggs: 

Avana Retreat is home to nearly 300 birdies, where they lay fresh, healthy eggs. No cages or stress, they are just a flock of happy chickens, roaming freely on the hill, scratching the ground for worms, and bathing in the sun. Have a little scavenger hunt for organic eggs and have yourself a sunnyside up for breakfast!

• Organic spa oils & shower essentials: 

Ranging from essential oils to soap, shampoo, and candles, put your body in whole natural care with organic extracts from herbs, flowers, and fruits. Let the products deepen your connection with heaven and earth through fragrant, true-to-nature scents that linger for hours.

Organic products aren’t just a costly trend we can skip, to Avana Retreat, it is a statement, a revolution, and a significant change for the better. 

​​Brocade motifs are regarded as the spirit of mountain culture. Every ethnic group has unique textiles and colorways, and you will be mesmerized by the Thai’s creative patterns of nature, family, and culture. 

Thai brocades are known for rich, lively hues, so their colorways don’t match the word ‘boring’. White for rice, green for trees, blue for the sky, and endless shades of flowers, under the skillful hands of Thai women, they loom each thread into a big pattern, reflecting their vivid life of nature and labor. 

In Thai ethnic culture, brocade weaving and women are inseparable.  Starting from 8 to 9 years old, little girls learn the basics of brocade weaving from their moms and grandmothers. "Girls know how to weave, boys know how to fish", that's what they say. After a girl has acquired all these abilities and can create her own goods, she is regarded as an adult. Brocade weaving is the symbol of a woman’s virtues. Her aesthetic appears in every color she entwines, her meticulousness shows in every thread she spins, and her passion shines through every pattern she weaves. 

We believe that culture is a form of art, of which the only artist to perform it is people who connect deeply to it. No pens or notebooks, just you and the artisan, cherishing authentic culture. Hear the tales being woven through the loom and learn a thing or two from their patterns mix matching from a Thai woman sitting at the loom weaving brocade patterns under the Stilt House.

Costumes say a lot about a person, and looking at the traditional clothes of the H’mongs you will see their culture in it. The H’mong, they proudly wear traditional costumes that exalt the beauty of Batik Art - a long-standing traditional custom. In the midst of modern times with fast fashion and quick costumes, true artistry like batik art is truly precious.

Every H’mong batik artist is familiar with the aroma of heated wax. They are masters in creating elaborate designs with wax and a tjanting tool, a wooden instrument with a small metal receptacle at the end for holding hot, melted wax, and the nib through which the wax flows. Batik is a type of resist dyeing, so every detail they draw on the hand-loomed hemp is not fixable. The more skilled the artisan is, the better dexterity is shown on every line, every curve. 

As the H’mong do not have a written form, textiles have become their way of expression. Living in the midst of nature, their motifs are heavily influenced by the surroundings and labor life: plant seeds, snail shells, ferns, rice flowers,...Alike the ancient Vietnamese, the H’mong thought that the sky was round and the ground was square, thus you'll see these basic forms employed in many of the foundation designs inside each little square of cloth.

Last but not least, Batik art isn’t completed without the indigo shade. At late summer, the H’mongs will go to the fields to cut indigo leaves and dye the fabric, with young girls often following their mothers to the fields from early morning. After the batik drawing has dried and the wax has been removed, the material is again dipped multiple times to create the signature dark blue. The batik process is complete, with powerful white motifs set against hues of blue indigo.

Independent from modern fabrics, with dexterity from years of refining the craft, they inlaid their costumes with exquisite golden motifs. It is Batik Art, the pride of the H’mong.

Up in the mountains, where life is still at its own pace, the ethnic groups' lives are much braided with nature and all its rawness in a familiar material: rattan

One of their oldest skills, weaving with bamboo and rattan, is still widely practiced in their villages. Made of solid timbers from bamboo, may come out stiff and boring, yet under the skillful hand of the artisans, rattan strands are intertwined in the most complex patterns. Plain, twill, basket, satin, every knot is highlighted by the earthy undertone of bamboo strips.

Besides the beautiful patterns that are pleasing to the eye, rattan is a material that has a lot to offer. Durable, abundant, and easy to amend, the Hmongs have a variety of handicrafts to assist their daily lives: sedge baskets, kitchenwares, boxes, even religious artifacts, and many more. 

Much as modern days have replaced natural items with more efficiency, there is not any match as authentic, close-to-nature, and intricate as rattan weaving. Captivated by the rustic, unique beauty of rattan weaving, Avana Retreat's decoration can not miss out on the touch of rattan. You can see it on the decor by the nightstand, you can spot it on the basket, you can notice the walls weaved in wave patterns, and you can feel the heat subsides by the rattan ceiling in the summertime. All of our rattan products are made of Hmong artisans, who still keep the craft alive and going. To engage rattan weaving in our concept is to treasure an art, and to continue a story of a prolonged culture that is almost replaced and forgotten. 

Under the Stilt House Museum, you can join the rattan weaving workshop. Sit next to our artisan, listen to his story of mastering the craft, admỉre the expertise in every knot, and experience weaving it yourself! 

To preserve the beauty of Mai Chau land for many more years, we should start with the people. Hospitality is all about making guests feel at home, and probably the best way to know about the land other than the native themselves. Therefore, we create job opportunities for the natives and welcome them to the Avana family.

After 2 years of operation, 90% of Avana staff are local. Most of them are people from the small villages around Avana, with education not beyond university, or even high school. But that does not stop them from continuing to learn and grow at Avana Retreat. Hospitality training, sustainable development basics, and even English lessons, they will receive any skillsets needed to become successful. Once they are officially Avana staff, we continue to offer great welfare, health insurance, professional working conditions, promotion prospects, and additional job training for constant improvement.

Offering people great jobs, and helping their life improve are always beyond our pride and joy, but the best thing is that we give them a chance to contribute to their homeland.  Together, we honor the beauty of the land and make every experience here even more worthwhile and authentic! 

We are all living on a blue pale dot called Earth, and it is the only home we have. And it is our duty to keep it garbage-free. In teamwork with the region’s Youth Union, Trash Collecting Day has been a monthly routine for us. 

Each month, the volunteer team will move to a different area. In the early morning, Avana Retreat staff will gather with the Youth Union. With gloves, masks, and a bag, we got to business right away. Bushes, riverbanks, streams, along the way, no place is left out of our sight. Although the work is simple, never a minute is boring because everyone is full of chatter and laughter. 

Nobody was paying attention to the clock, but when we did, it was already lunch time. Some people just joined for the first time, some people were on their fourth session, and some people invited friends to join. After each month, the manpower has gotten bigger and bigger, and we are all happy to be involved: Happy to meet new people, happy to clean the land together, and happy to mark a meaningful activity on the monthly calendar. As for Avana staff, we are happy to contribute to the resort's sustainability principle: preserving the original beauty of nature.

There are countless ways to make an impact on the environment, and the easiest, simplest action is to put your litter in the right place.

When Avana's founder used to go explore the land and scout deep in the forest, we passed through many streams. Looking at the clear water, we thought that it is too pure that we could almost drink it. So an idea was initiated: a self-supplied water system that is as fresh as the natural streams.

True water-drinking enthusiasts will know that not every water tastes the same, and yes, Avana’s water is different from any water in the urban. It’s neither the bottled water you usually drink nor the bland tap water, it’s a strangely pleasant refreshing flavor of nature’s clarity. Water is not something you would pay attention to, but to us, any efforts to preserve nature is worthwhile:

• Complimentary water is provided during every activity of the Retreat.
• Water is filled in glass bottles for guests for reusable purposes. 
• An on-site purifying system helps cuts down CO2 emissions during outsourced water transportation and also cuts down on plastic usage 

By building the system, we are always proud to provide a clean, pure source of water, made of nature’s freshest and a part of the care plan for the environment. 

A clean sip of water will refresh you, and a clean source of water will relieve nature.

Food sourcing had been a puzzling quiz to solve during Avana's first days. Costly expenses, long delivery hours, fresh food decaying, etc., more and more problems just occurred when it comes to transporting ingredients from the urban to Avana Retreat in the mountain. We were too focused on the limitations, but then a fact came ringing that there is a treasure we have been ignoring: the local food source. Planted and nurtured by the natives, you can feel the authenticity in every ingredient.

On Friday morning, chef Tuan will head to Bao La market - a local market just 10 minutes away from the retreat. He said that whoever comes first gets the freshest ingredients, and he proves it right. Tumbling fish, vegetables that look like they just got straight out of the soil, chicken, and ducks clucking here and there,  bags of beans next to each other, everything just looks inviting to cook! 

Food tastes best when it is cooked wholeheartedly. There is no better way to honor the local cuisine than to have it right on your menu, using the ingredients that grow on this land: 

• Fish, pork, chicken, and goat, all meat are locally produced.  You can taste the juicy, tender texture of creatures that grow up in nature.
• Have a taste of local herbs and plants that is only found in the mountain. In the highlands, common veggies like potatoes and corn have a more earthy taste. 
• Handmade desserts are served after every main course. Comes in many shapes and sizes, these cakes are delicacies of Northwestern Vietnam.

We love our local source, we love the fresh ingredients, we love the mountain taste in every bite, and we love to support the local community. To buy food locally is to give natives the chance to make a living, and to honor their cuisine authentically, and rightfully.

Convenient, fast, and cheap, plastic is like a dream material for life in the mountain of ethnic groups. But the plastic utopia doesn’t last long when people are more and more dependent on single-use plastic products.

Unfamiliar with garbage sorting, and most garbage disposal areas are concentrated in the city, waste management is not really a matter to concern about in remote mountainous and rural areas, but consequences are clearer day by day: Plastic bottles scattered by the river and cascade banks, sights of plastic bags carelessly thrown on the bushes, and garbage piling up by the beaten village road. For it to be an imprinted mindset of ethnic groups, to damage and pollute the intact, beautiful nature here, those are the sights we don’t want to witness.

Therefore, Avana wants to bring them a new mindset, a new lifestyle where plastic is not necessary at all:

• No single-use plastic in the resort
• Eco-friendly materials: corn starch waste bags, bamboo and paper packaging, cups and bags, etc.
• Reusable bottles and cups: Our water purifying system allows us to use glass bottles for refill

There is no need for a grand campaign; they can start with small actions, but consistency is key. Continue to practice, continue to remember the things they could do, and continue to share with others.  90% of Avana staff are locals, coming from the surrounding villages, so they will continue to spread that lifestyle to their families, neighbors, and villages because that's how they do it: share and spread good things to the village.

From a single action, they can change to being a habit, and it will become a lifestyle - a plastic-free lifestyle.

Restore the forest, relive the land

Back in the day, the land where Avana lies was just a vacant, empty hill with little care, little notice, and barely any footsteps reaching. And yet, the potential it conceals is hard to overlook. The moment we decided that Avana will bloom here, we just know that it was up to us to relive the hill back to life. 

From a desolate hill, it is now a verdant land thriving in the life of lush evergreens. There were hardships, and there were disappointments, but these challenges only push us further to have the achievements today: 

More than 10,000 trees have set their roots here, with 10++ hectares were restored

Trees are not the fastest growers, so it's not every day that you see the changes, but it is definitely worthwhile to witness the impact in the long run. Coating on Mai Chau a green look is not simply planting a seed and letting it grow, it is a long-lasting effect that nurtures the land inside out. It’s the fresh air we breathe in, it’s the woods that kept the rains from flooding in, and it’s the abundant resource that invites the animals here, to create a new life in this beautiful land and make it their home.   

Every year after the Tet festival, Avana’s staff will gather at the retreat, planting new trees to keep the traditions going. But we are not doing this alone, with the help of local government, we are all in this together, and join hands to build a better, greener future. 

Avana’s journey still has a long way to go, but we believe that, once you set your heart and mind to something, good causes will happen and come back to you. As a saying goes: “To plant trees is to give body and life to one’s dream of a better world”

Visiting Mai Chau, apart from the pristine forests and natural cascades, you will be impressed by the poetic terraced fields, cultivated by the indigenous people here - the Hmong ethnic group.

With agriculture experience accumulated from thousands of generations, the Hmong people are unique field engineers. They are like the artisans of farming, they sculpt majestic terraced fields into nature, they master the crops, and they are out in the fields regardless of sun and rain. For them, it is not only a job but also a long-standing tradition, a cultural charm that has continued from time to time. 

You can catch that idyllic farming scene right inside Avana Retreat. Giving land to them to cultivate, cultivate and let them enjoy the fruits of the harvest, which are just simple and rustic joys that Avana wishes to cherish.

Terraced rice fields during the ripe season are a sight not to be missed. Admire the golden hue that dyed the whole land, sense the earthy, ripen scent that lingers in the air, and watch locals joyfully harvesting their fruits with stilt houses scattered between the fields, the experience just arouses a sense of tranquility that is beyond words.

There is a Vietnamese idiom: “Where there is a good land, the birds will come and settle”, and rightly so, fertile lands are where life thrives. At Avana, life here is always abundant and fresh all year round, and it is thanks to the animals residing here, all contribute to a rich and diverse ecosystem.

There are hard-working chickens laying eggs at the hill chicken farm.

There are ducks sunbathing under the trees, and rambling by the lake without a worry in the world.

There are schools of Koi fish swimming under the translucent stream.

There are vibrant butterflies and bees that collect nectar every day.

There are shy snails hiding in the wet, fertile ground.

After every winter, we often see flocks of birds migrating to the land, choosing the trees that Avana planted to nest, making it their home for many more springs.

With many animals living in harmony here, we are proud to be their forever home. Therefore, it is also our responsibility to protect their land with all of our might:

The primeval forest, where there are abundant streams and waterfalls all year round, the birthplace of many herbs and flowers, is preserved as it is.

We do not construct to destroy nature, we construct to respect it, as the curves of nature are beautiful. Wooden bridges leading to the spa are designed in winding shapes to avoid cutting trees.

The light is also at low power so as not to affect the life of plants and creatures

Avana is blessed with nature's best gifts, and that we never cease to cherish. Preserving the land’s ecosystem is also securing a sustainable, ever-lasting future.