700-YEAR INCENSE MAKING VILLAGE IN HUE

Besides the royal court and tombs, colorful incense making villages are also a tourist attraction.

About 7 km from the center of Hue city, Thuy Xuan incense village impresses many tourists by the eye-catching decorations. The display area is on the two sides of Huyen Tran Cong Chua Street.

The people of Thuy Xuan village have been making incense for 700 years. This place has become a tourist site for nearly 10 years, located in a group of places to visit, with Vong Canh hill, Tu Duc mausoleum, and Dong Khanh mausoleum.

Currently, local households still make handmade incense to serve tourism. Visitors will have the opportunity to witness the process of creating traditional incense sticks and be instructed to make the product themselves. This experience is especially appealing to international visitors. However, to meet business needs, households still make incense by automatic machines.

The process of making incense starts from mixing flour with many sophisticated ingredients, such as Northern herbs with cinnamon, cardamom, bud, clove, star anise, peel of forest pomelo, dried pomelo flowers, gum trees, to be mixed with water. The core of the incense stick is made from small pieces of the bamboo gut and is exposed to sunlight for many days to make the stick dry, easy to stick to the powder. The core is then stained half.

In the display area, to attract tourists, the seller dyed more colorful and spread the bouquet of incense to look like flowers. Thuy Xuan incense village in Hue does not charge an entrance fee. Tourists are free to take pictures, and then, they can buy incense or souvenirs at the household.