400-Year Old Port Eyed To Be A Tourism Spot

400-Year Old Port Eyed To Be A Tourism Spot

Tra Nhieu was a 400-year old trading port in Quang Nam Province which was closed in order to create the amazing Hoi An City of today. But recently, plans are being made by the local government to turn the old establishment into a new community-based tourism site to attract visitors and even make them appreciate the simple yet interesting rural life.

 

Spanned across two kilometers along Thu Bon River, Tra Nhieu Village was a productive community during the 16th – 17th centuries. Fishing and sedge mat weaving were the primary occupations, with occasional rice farming and trading. The residents harvested around 3,000 tonnes of seafoods annually, while sedge farms were properly settled at a large 20 hectares of land. The trading port was regularly crowded selling junk and other lucrative products.

 

Sedge mat weaving earned little and required long, hard work, but the villagers didn’t have much of a choice simply because farming is seasonal and therefore couldn’t provide a stable income. A single mat takes three hours to make and sells for a mere VND50,000 (U.S.$2.40). If a weaver made 60 mats in a month, he will earn VND3 million. A 1,000 square meter farm will produce VND20 million (U.S.$950) every year.

 

But on the positive side, it has become a tradition in Tra Nhieu, sedge mats being given as a wedding gift in a belief that it will bring happiness to the newly-married couple and their future family. The wedding mat is double-sized and customarily placed on the couple’s bed on the night of their wedding by the elderly people in the village. It is made by the best weavers with various colors and ancient scripts. It is delicately dried, dyed, weaved and handmade. It is made of a sturdy material and work enough to last one to two years.

 

When Hoi An was slowly being established, perhaps especially that it was capable of handling larger sea vessels, the river flow at Thu Bon changed, along with the ultimate closure of the once famous trading port. Today, what remains of Tra Nhieu are several stone statues and a pagoda. There are only about 2,000 people living in the area. But in order to save what’s left and in fact revive the place, the local administration came up with a plan to transform Tra Nhieu into a community-based tourism site, along with Ban Thach Village and Duy Vinh Commune which are situated nearby.

 

Ban Thach Village is among the 68 traditional craft villages in Quang Nam Province. It also produces mats, but are machine-made instead of the customary handmade ones. They choose the former because they believe that unlike the latter, machine-made mats are easier and faster to make and sells even higher.

 

In comparison, a traditional mat takes three hours to complete and sells for VND50,000 (U.S.$2.40) each. Eight machine-produced mats will earn a worker VND112,000 (U.S.$5.30) a day. About 1,000 machine-made mats can be disposed of by noon. A weaver who makes 60 mats in one month will earn him/ her VND3 million. Eight mat-weaving machines operated by 16 employees can produce 1,800 mats every month.A 1,000 square meter farm will fetch an average of VND20 million (U.S.$950) every year. An employee in a machine-made mat factory has a more flexible and relaxed time than the traditional weaver because after work, he/ she still has enough time to do other chores like cleaning, cooking, taking care of the children, even farming.

 

The plan to restore and re-invent Tra Nhieu has already been set in motion in terms of training some of the villagers into tourism-related services like cooking, fishing, tour guiding and coracle paddling. The site also receives about 30 tourists everyday. But there is still so much to do to fully implement the project. The local government needs to invest heavily in specific structures and activities like cruise ports, reception centres, fishing teams, boat-renting, paddling coracles, cooking classes, biking and even a tantalizing cuisine. The mat-weaving sector has to be especially rekindled because it’s a local tradition that will definitely attract visitors. Portable mats need to be developed and produced in order to be more convenient for tourists to take home as souvenirs. A fishing team will also prove to be lucrative for the tourism sector of Tra Nhieu.    

 

But the current absence of coordination between the local authority and tourism agencies in Tra Nhieu make the project difficult to be fully realized. There is a serious need for a well thought-out plan as well as a genuine working relationship between the two offices in order for Tra Nhieu to get back into the map, bigger and better in terms of sharing to the world its historical and cultural richness.