The most rewarding family travel must ensure both relaxation and exciting discoveries for the complete family. Right from adults, children to elderly, family friendly experiences include a vast range of cultural sightseeing, hands-on activities, or a bit of adventure (cycling, hiking, forest bathing) with a lot of relaxing time, at an easy pace.
Embracing customer insights and travel pain (if not well planned), Slow Travel Hue has merticulously crafted one-of-a-kind opportunities to help family travelers strengthen bonds and building lasting memories. Engraved into the distinctive art of slow living and natural diversity of Hue City, Central Vietnam, let family travels be an opportunity to re-connect, re-learn, and grow together with your loved ones.
What are ESSENTIAL to Slow Travel with Family?
Safety first
Being a large family group, or a couple with toddlers or the elderly, we need to ensure that everyone feels safe at every step.
Since we offer many leisurely cycling tours to the villages around Hue, satisfying different cycling capabilities is of utmost importance. Infants and kids under 6 years old should use the quality child seat (up to 22kg). Children from 6 to 10 years old may enjoy the kid bike. We can go slowly or shorten the cycling distance by transferring the family to the suitable starting point, or some may switch to a chauffeured rickshaw instead of bicycle. Our thoughtful guide and operation team explained the itinerary well in advance and let the customers choose what is best for their family. For newborns or toddlers, we can even provide a quality child back carrier for walking and trekking tours if the parents need a back-up.
If the excursion involves boating, a kid’s life vest is always a must-have. The stops, shelter, sanitary services must be considered for safe outing on hot or rainy days.
Thoughtfully crafted itinerary
Loyal to Slow core values, all our itineraries incorporate many engaging experiences and leisure time. The family can make interesting stops to share “fun, safe, learning” experiences with local farmers, craftsmen, and the host family. “TEMPO GIUSTO” we believe everyone has their “right timing” and our itinerary must be well balanced to cater different interests.
Kid friendly food
All Slow Travel Tours mostly include meals at a farmhouse, an ancient-house with a “farm-to-table”, home cooking experience. There are abundant alternatives for healthy, tasty kid food, gluten free. Interestingly, kids can take part in the cooking process, which makes the family bonding more memorable.
Family friendly guide
We understand the concern of some families that their kids cannot go fast (especially on a hiking or cycling tour). You don’t need to worry since Fast Travel is out of our mindset. All our guides are family friendly and are keen to befriend kids and the elderly. Individually, they are a caring father, mother, son, and daughter, thus they know how to make the best chemistry for the whole family. Patience, friendliness, storytelling, etc.… are the qualities our guides are cultivating, in line with our motto “Fulfilling in Connecting.”
The guides are well trained and familiar with Slow Travel handcrafted itineraries with many interactive activities. Explore more how customers praise tour guides.
Cosy and immersive accommodations
We know that when travelling with kids, a hotel resort with a swimming pool, connecting rooms are your preferences. But what about a garden-house staycation experience where your family will exclusively indulge with traditional living with a hospitable Hue resident family. Not only spending a night in the homestay, but your immersive packages also include an exploring cycling tour, home cooking, healthy breakfast with home-made delicacies, many sharing moments with warm-hearted people via a dedicated guide.
There was a touching testimony that on a bid-farewell moment, a French little girl asked to stop the car and rushed back to the family altar to burn one more incense stick to pray to the ancestor for blessing the host family’s well-being. Luxury resorts cannot do this! Comfort, convenience, and technology are omnipresent, but humanity, local in-depth interaction make travel meaningful and eye-opening (especially for kids).
How to enrich your Family Holiday in Hue?
In overall, Slow Travel responds very well to the needs of Family Travels. All our itineraries are very family friendly that cater different needs like rural immersion in Thanh Toan, Tam Giang Lagoon, arts and crafts in Thanh Tien village, foodie tour, herbal and wellness exploration, homestay and hiking and camping. Here are a few top picks.
A “working-but-enjoying” in Thanh Toan farming village
This full day rural immersion with a rice theme is the most wanted option for families in Hue. The ancient village, known for immense rice fields, duck farm, and Thanh Toan ancient tile roofed bridge are charming all year round. You should not rush to explore it superficially, but better spend a well-designed cycling tour, focusing on engaging experiences such as farming, fishing, cooking a farm-to-table lunch, making handicrafts (e.g., sticky rice cake or palm conical hat).
What special? There is no set-up stage or role play. This is a great example of inclusive and equitable tourism. You truly lend a helping hand to the farmers at their house, with seasonal, real time and daily work. There are no touristy restaurants, you will be exclusively welcomed by the local families.
Cycling Hue “Garden City” in Kim Long or Thuy Bieu Village
Depending on your family interest, you may choose a 5 hours, 6 hours or 8 hours tours to Kim Long or Thuy Bieu village with many luxuriant garden houses, orchards, and green shaded rural lanes. Enjoy cooking a healthy meal from garden-sourced ingredients, soaking your foot in a hot herbal basin, tasting homemade sesame or ginger candied. Along the way, you can stop at many interesting handicraft workshops (e.g., bronze casting, incense stick, votive objects, rice paper, etc) or hidden cultural relics (e.g., Tiger Arena, high ranking mandarin shrine) with untold stories.
This half day tour with home meal suits best for families preferring a fulfilling experience yet still saving the rest of the day to relax at the hotels or explore other classic highlights like the Imperial Citadel or royal tombs, Dong Ba market.
Evening foodie and cyclo tour
What is more fun and relaxing than an evening foodie exploration on a laid-back cyclo ride. You can show your kids why Fast-Food chains cannot expand in Vietnam as we have a heaven of Slow Food healthy choice. From delicate vegetarian dishes to mouthwatering lemongrass pork skewer and crispy pancake, and ending with desserts, enticing tropical beverages and coffee variations (egg, mung bean, coconut milk, almond liquid…), this is a three-hour feast of senses. There are many cultural layers behind the art of living, eating philosophy, Ying-Yang balance and Wu Xi that invite your families to unveil through every bite of happiness.
Bach Ma Nature Immersion
We have seen many families enjoy the holidays beyond the commodity of hotel rooms. They combine our Hue Garden-House Staycation package to immerse themselves in local culture and hospitality, then continue with a Hiking and Camping trip to Bach Ma Mountain, situated between Hue and Hoi An.
On a two-day trip, the families have many opportunities to connect to nature, swim in the fresh stream and travel off the crowd. Our minutiose logistic preparation and dedicated guide, support team help the whole family to rediscover the joy of nature immersion and make educational memories without long travel to mountainous regions.
As a final note, studies revealed that family time helps boost a kid’s self-esteem, improve social development, and foster relational bonds. In today’s fast-paced world, it is important yet very challenging to find time to regularly connect as a family. Your family holiday is precious, why not spice it up with immersive slow travels.
Therefore, our honest recommendation for creating a family holiday is to avoid one night stay. You should give the families at least two nights, or better three or four nights in Hue imperial city. For nature and authenticity lovers, Hue pairs very well with Phong Nha (160km north of Hue) and Hoi An to make a one-week family friendly slow travel in Central Vietnam.
Contact us at info@slowtravelhue for more assistance and consultation.
