At around 5am - 6am, visitors only need to spend about 50,000 VND for the electric car to arrive at Nghi Thuy fishing wharf. At this time, boats have just docked after a trip at sea. Shrimp, crab, fish, crab, squid... are full in the hold, fresh and still snapping. On the wharf, women, mothers, sisters are waiting with baskets, plastic crates, rattan baskets, and sedge bags. Seafood after the fishing trip is quickly transferred to shore, the sound of bargaining, the sound of competing to buy and sell, bustling the whole area. The flickering flashlights, the dull yellow high-voltage electricity and the brilliant dawn as the sun gradually appears create a picturesque scene. It would be interesting if visitors could once welcome the sunrise at the fishing wharf, experience the working rhythm of coastal fishermen to gain more positive energy from the crisp laughter, the sparkling eyes of joy from the fishermen returning after a trip at sea.
Coming to the fishing port, visitors can easily choose for themselves gifts from the sea such as: fresh shrimp, fish, crab, squid... sold right on the shore at prices much cheaper than buying at seafood stores. The most enjoyable thing is being able to choose by yourself, "bargain", "weigh and measure"...
Ms. Nguyen Thanh Ha, a tourist from Hanoi, said: “Almost every summer I go to Cua Lo to swim and relax, but this is the first time I have come to this fishing port. It was also a coincidence that an electric car driver introduced me to this place. Waking up at 4:30 a.m., it took about 5 minutes to take the electric car to get here, seeing with my own eyes the boats docking, the fishermen bringing seafood ashore, witnessing the busy, urgent work of the coastal fishermen; choosing fresh seafood myself… it was really interesting. Next time, when I travel to Cua Lo, this fishing port will definitely be my destination every morning at dawn.”
From the fishing port, follow the small, winding concrete roads to Binh Minh seafood processing village, to experience and witness the hands of the households working in the profession: processing fish sauce, shrimp paste, shrimp paste, shrimp, grilled mackerel... Arriving at the entrance of the village, you can smell the strong aroma of the sea, the small level 4 houses, located humbly in the corner of the garden, give space to jars, tanks, and ceramic pots... to ferment fish sauce, shrimp paste, and shrimp paste. Large trays are used to cover the fermenting tanks with a variety of brilliant colors under the summer sun.
Women wearing conical hats and holding sticks skillfully stir the fish sauce; young men are carrying jars and pots out to the cement yard to catch the drops of fish sauce dripping from the marinade; mothers are pouring fish sauce into bottles, sealing it in jars and quickly labeling it.
Visiting Ms. Bui Thi Hang’s family – a family that makes shrimp paste while she was stirring the fish sauce to the right level of ripeness. Ms. Hang said: “This is a family business, and I am the fourth generation to do this. Since I was a child, I have followed my grandmother and mother to the fishing port to buy batches of sea shrimp to salt and make fish sauce. My childhood was associated with jars, pots, and tanks for fermenting fish sauce; hanging around batches of sea shrimp, batches of roasted rice powder, galangal, and ginger to make fish sauce.
To make a delicious batch of fish sauce, it goes through many elaborate and meticulous steps from choosing the ingredients to the salting method, the seasoning method, the spices, and even the jars and pots used to marinate the fish sauce are very elaborate. First of all, the step of choosing the ingredients, which must be sea shrimp from Cua Lo and Cua Hoi areas, which have a lot of meat and thin shells. The salt used to marinate the fish sauce is pure salt, stored for at least a year to remove all impurities. The marinating tank is made of earthenware that has been thoroughly cleaned and rinsed. The time for the fish sauce to mature is about 9 - 14 months. Binh Minh village shrimp paste has a natural bright red color, strong aroma, and tastes sweet from shrimp, salty from salt, fragrant from rice bran, and slightly spicy from chili, lemongrass, garlic, galangal, etc. Previously, shrimp paste was only made to serve the needs of families and sold retail in traditional markets. But gradually, the shrimp paste products of Cua Lo people became famous, favored by consumers nationwide, and appeared in many meals and menus of many restaurants.
In addition to shrimp paste, currently, Binh Minh seafood processing village of Nghi Thuy ward has 3 products that have achieved 3 OCOP stars including: pure anchovy fish sauce, shrimp paste, products are packaged in beautiful glass jars, with labels, QR codes to trace the origin and are considered typical products serving tourists.
Coming to Nghi Thuy is to find the ancient features of a coastal fishing village, the lower reaches of the Cam River with a rich and cultural sediment that has existed for thousands of years. That is the roof of the temple of the coastal village, the national historical and cultural relic of Mai Bang Temple. It is an ancient temple with hundreds of years of age, the value of the temple is preserved by artifacts, sophisticated, miraculous and mysterious carvings. This is the place to worship Chieu Trung Dai Vuong Le Khoi, Che Thang Phu Nhan Nguyen Thi Bich Chau, Thuy Tinh Phu Nhan and 6 founders of the village. Mai Bang Temple has both historical value and unique architecture, preserving many rare antiques, especially playing an important role in the spiritual life of the people in the Cua Lo river area. In particular, every year Mai Bang Temple holds two major festivals on February 12 (lunar calendar) and May 3 (lunar calendar) with a fishing ceremony and many unique festival activities, attracting nostalgic tourists to come and "unearth" the secrets hidden somewhere in the heart of the relic.
Not far away is the Yen Luong temple relic with the “Phuc Luc Ngoat” festival taking place in the middle of the sixth lunar month. This is the main festival, the largest and most typical traditional festival in the coastal area of Nghe An, with many cultural activities expressing beliefs and unique cultural identity. It is the spiritual support of fishermen in the region to pray for each trip to the sea to be calm, the boat full of fish and shrimp… attracting a large number of people in the region and visitors from all over to attend.
With its own unique features, Nghi Thuy fishing village is an interesting and attractive destination, especially for those who want to live slowly and enjoy experiences. There, the children of the coastal village still maintain their own simple and salty features, the winding alleys surrounding the craft village have a strong taste of the ocean. There, there are temples that still retain their ancient, mossy appearance like hundreds of years ago with unique festivals of coastal fishermen, there are 6 large family churches, 6 ancient village wells, 2 markets and fishing ports; technical infrastructure, basic transportation is convenient connecting with other tourist areas of Cua Lo town. With such potential, Nghi Thuy has not really become a destination for tourists when coming to Cua Lo.
Worried and troubled when Nghi Thuy converges many factors but has not yet fully exploited its potential, at the end of 2021, the Standing Committee of the Cua Lo City Party Committee issued a Project to build a tourist destination in Nghi Thuy ward. The project aims at specific goals: Gradually forming and developing urban areas to meet the needs of diversifying types of tourism and services. Building orientations for the development of business types on the basis of sustainable economic infrastructure development and enhancing the value of products and services. Creating more unique, characteristic, and attractive tourism products to attract tourists; creating jobs and increasing income for local workers. Forming walking streets, strolling, visiting craft villages, enjoying fishing village culture, cuisine, buying souvenirs and other services. Connecting with the planning projects of the commercial center, the North Lan Chau Island Resort, Song Ngu Son... creates an attractive tourist destination, extending the stay of visitors when coming to Cua Lo.
“Party’s will, people’s will”, as soon as the project was issued, the Party Committee, government and people of Nghi Thuy ward started to build an implementation plan to realize the dream of turning Nghi Thuy into a destination for tourists from all over to visit, experience and explore the cultural features of coastal people. With high determination, the entire political system started to organize the clearance of traffic safety corridors, urban beautification, propaganda and mobilization of people on Binh Minh, Pham Huy, Nguyen Xi, Cao Huy Tuan streets... to install lighting, decorative electricity, standard and hygienic trash cans, trim trees, paint fences. At the same time, they cleaned up the environment of residential areas, public areas, and beach areas, and organized the planting of sea daisies to create landscape highlights.
Mr. Vo Van Tuat - Chairman of Nghi Thuy Ward excitedly said: After just over 4 months, the whole ward has dredged more than 200m of ditches, built 500m of new roads and ditches in the model residential area where the tourist destination is built, renovated, repaired and upgraded the fish wharf market. Mobilized 1.6 billion VND of internal resources contributed by the people and kind-hearted organizations and individuals to build the upper hall, prepare documents to request a major renovation of Mai Bang temple; planned to expand the premises of the National Historical Relic of Nguyen Trong Dat family temple, Yen Luong temple and prepare documents to relocate and resettle 4 households in the temple premises. Implemented the Le Thi Bach Cat ditch and road project with an investment of nearly 5 billion VND. Organized a conference to collect opinions from traders and proceeded to prepare documents to design and build a new, more spacious and beautiful Hom market to be worthy of a coastal tourist city.
In addition, to increase the "brand" value of tourism products, the ward also mobilizes seafood processing villages to invest in facilities to improve the quality of seafood processing, pay attention to food hygiene and safety, improve packaging and labels to build OCOP products such as fish sauce, sour shrimp paste, salty shrimp paste, shrimp, grilled mackerel, fish cakes, and squid cakes.
At Binh Minh block - where most of the households in Nghi Thuy fishing village have long been engaged in seafood processing, Mr. Hoang Thanh Hong - Party cell secretary of the block said: The block has 105 households, 1791 people, fishermen in the fishing village today not only go to sea following the traditional profession of their ancestors but also actively and flexibly change and develop many new professions to form a craft village that not only serves local people but also serves tourists. Currently, in the block, there are 5 offshore fishing fleets, with a capacity of 800 - 100CV, 22 households in seafood processing, 1 seafood processing cooperative of 25 households. Recently, a cooperative group "Trading and processing seafood" with 10 members was launched. The complex is a place for women to exchange skills, methods, and processing methods to ensure requirements on quality and food hygiene and safety, build more OCOP quality products to contribute to enhancing the brand of craft villages, bringing prestigious products of Nghi Thuy ward closer to tourists and friends near and far.
However, the Party Secretary of the block also expressed concern about the fact that the area is narrow, the population is large, and there is no land, so it is difficult to gather households engaged in seafood processing into a concentrated production, processing, and product sales complex that has space for customers to experience and is convenient for management and supervision. On the other hand, the tourist season is also concentrated only for a few months of the year, after the tourist season, the consumption of products is more difficult, and some households switch to other jobs.
Regarding this issue, Mr. Vo Van Tuat - Chairman of Nghi Thuy Ward People's Committee said: In addition to the difficulties of limited land and a large population of 9,000 people and 2,045 households, the limitation is that a part of the people still do business in a fragmented manner, focusing on selling products, and do not have many skills in tourism. In addition, the application of science and technology to improve product quality, or the use of social platforms to introduce products and promote tourism is still limited. Ms. Nguyen Thi Duc, who has 20 years of experience in seafood processing in Binh Minh block, said: “In recent years, we have paid more attention to product design, quality, environmental hygiene and food safety, and product introduction and promotion, especially through social networks. For example, my family has dozens of products with full packaging and labels. However, the "attraction" of tourists to visit and shop still mainly depends on the team of electric car drivers in the area.”
To overcome limitations and promote the strengths of the marine economy and tourism potential, the leader of Nghi Thuy ward said: In addition to completing infrastructure, landscape structure, bringing stalls and free stalls in the entire area to the streets to facilitate management and promote the formation of modern commercial areas, building production clusters, introducing products to spread throughout the streets..., the ward will focus on training to improve communication culture, behavioral skills for individuals and households doing tourism, ensuring environmental sanitation, tourism security, creating peace of mind for tourists when visiting and experiencing. In addition, there is a strategy to connect and promote the links of destinations in the ward in a systematic way so that each resident is not only a seller, introducing typical products of the fishing village but also an "ambassador", a tour guide promoting to tourists about the landscape, life, culture, and beliefs of the homeland "A strip of land from Lan Chau to Cape Rong on the East coast of my hometown stands at the forefront of the waves and winds. Hon Mat and Hon Ngu, with waves crashing in all four seasons, are the fortresses guarding the sea of my hometown… Nghi Thuy! I will love you all my life…”.
