We had been told that this was one museum that shouldn't be missed - and now that we've been there, we'll be spreading the same word. We had lunch at the onsite restaurant, which is a training restaurant for underprivileged youth, before spending a couple of hours wandering from minority village to minority village - well pretty much!
The grounds of the museum is surrounded with expertly built mini-villages - the museum actually employed villagers to come in and recreate their individual traditional style houses. 
So, basically we got to save time travelling around Vietnam, by experiencing the differences between different areas and their inhabitants.
Inside the museum we spent another couple of hours checking out the exhibits, including one about a man who had spent time living in a mountain village and had then returned 40 years later to make a comparison and another on conical hat making (the unofficial symbol of Vietnam). Adam's favourite exhibition was the photographic display about a small village transforming into a larger town and the changes that brought about for the local people.Back in town we went shopping for some artwork, but walked away empty handed after we became frustrated with our inability to barter in another language, despite some hard work in trying!
After dinner, we headed back to our hotel all set to leave their for our 9pm train - however when we arrived we were told by the hotel that our train didn't leave until 11pm, so we spent the next 2 hours waiting ....
At the station we waited with a couple of travelling Aussies, before boarding the train and settling in for the night on our first train in Vietnam. Although below the Chinese standards we're used to, at least we got beds where we managed to get some sleep dreaming about our up and coming mountainous destination that's one step closer to home!
Adlibing it into the minority villages.
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