A Coconut Boat Ride at Thanh Dong Village, Vietnam

One of the things on our must do list during our Vietnam visit was riding in a round boat among the coconut forest! The next day after our arrival at Hoi An Ancient City, we looked for the information and hired a taxi taking us to the round boat ride. However, half way before reaching our destination, the taxi driver informed us that the boat ride was no longer available at that location.

Instead of following the map directions on our GPS, the driver started taking us to another location. J. noticed the driver's change of routing without our consent so he stopped him and insisted that he take us to the location according to our original instructions.

We heard that there were a lot of scammers around in Vietnam and needed to be careful. We were right! The boat ride business was still there at the same location; we found it but the place was not as busy as we had imagined. Though the weather was a bit cloudy and we were the only people by the river, we decided to go ahead with our planned activity. Since each round boat could only sit two passengers, we hired two boats plus a boatman for each taking us down the river.

These round boats were special local creations. The boatmen seemed to enjoy their work, especially ours. While rowing our boat down the river, he was playing some happy music on his CD, singing happily and joking around with us and the other boatman most of the way.

The water was calm and the river was quiet with only a handful of boats going down leisurely on the water, very different from the busy crowded scene in Hoi An where it was bursting at the seams with tourists. We passed by cocount trees, vegetations, a few nice houses with docks along the river as well as a couple of restaurants where diners sitting on the patio were waving at us and delighted at seeing us being so happy on our boats where we started dancing to the happy muisc played onboard. Half way of our ride, our boatman stopped rowing.

Taking a fresh reef and with a small knife in his hand, he skillfully started cutting and folding the reef. After performing a few simple cuts, bends and folds, in a few minutes' time, he made two grass rings from Mother Nature, and gifted them, one for each of us!

Before the end of our boatride, we each had a cute green ring on our fingers handmade from a freshly harvested reef along the river. How cute was that!

After the boat ride, we took a walk in the organic garden right beisde the restaurant and enjoyed a delicious local lunch made from the freshly picked vegetables from the farm.

What a wonderful and healthy ending to an enjoyable afternoon of riding in the famous cocount boat! RT, Thanh Dong Village, Vietnam 2026