Incense Flower

In what is surely one of Hanoi's most instagrammable spots, Quảng Phú Cầu is a small village at least an hour's drive from the typical tourist accommodations in the French Quarter. The name means, "Village of Incense," and has been keeping the traditional craft of making incense alive for over a 100 years. Nowadays though, it's basically a social media influencer's ideal destination.

The process of making incense sticks involves a number of preparatory steps to cut and smooth the bamboo into ideal sized sticks. The sticks are dyed and left out to dry in the sun, and eventually coated in a mix of scented powder. You can find sticks dyed in red, yellow, purple and green, although red seemed to be by far the most common color.

It's during this drying process that this quiet village comes alive and hits peak instagrammability. Over time, with more tourists visiting, the factories have started to lay out the incense is patterns that are more visually stunning, and have even built overhead platforms to make sure you can capture yourself surrounded by color from every angle.

In the end, survival requires adaptation. While it's unlikely incense will fall out of fashion in Vietnam anytime soon, it's easy to imagine a day where the factory makes more money charging to take photos than they make from selling the incense they manufacture.