Cam Thanh, Da Nang · Nature
Bay Mau Coconut Forest
Picture yourself sitting in a round bamboo basket boat, low to the water, with nipa palm fronds several metres long closing in from both sides to make a green corridor.
Photo: Christophe95 · CC BY-SA 4.0
What people come for
Paddling a basket boat by hand through the coconut creeks, watching the 'múa thúng' (basket-spinning) show, watching and trying net casting, crab fishing in the shallow-mud stretch, weaving toys from coconut leaves, listening to bài chòi, and cooking classes in the village.
Christophe95 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Getting there and around
There has been an entrance ticket since 1 Dec 2017 under Decision 1995/QĐ-UB of the Hội An City People's Committee, plus a basket-boat ticket and a parking fee, at a low cost level; buy at the official dock, because touts along the access road sell tickets above the listed price and shorten the tour. The managing unit is the Public Service Provision Centre of Hội An Đông ward. It is about 5 km southeast of the old town; the Thanh Tam inland waterway port, operating since Oct 2025, takes boats of up to 26 passengers on the river route from Đà Nẵng.
Before you go
The dry season of February–September is when you can go; November–December brings steady rain, floods and storms, and the authorities suspend all basket boats in heavy rain or floods, as happened on 12–13 Jun 2025 in the middle of the dry season. The creeks are tidal: the water drains from early afternoon and is lowest around the 1st and the full moon of the lunar month; in the 2026 season many stretches have silted up so the boats must be pushed, and dredging is under way. Passengers on rowing boats must wear a life jacket for the whole trip under Circulars 15/2014 and Apr 2015 of the Ministry of Transport, but on site many operators do not require it, so ask for a life jacket yourself before stepping into the basket boat. The basket-spinning show is not for people prone to dizziness or with a weak heart, and you can ask to skip it.
What this place is
A water-coconut forest of Nypa fruticans, the only palm that lives in brackish swamp, green all year on tidally flooded land at the confluence of the Thu Bồn, Trường Giang and Cổ Cò rivers next to Cửa Đại; the name 'Bảy Mẫu' (Seven Mẫu) is the original area, and the forest is now dozens of times larger. The forest lies in the buffer zone of the Cù Lao Chàm – Hội An Biosphere Reserve; it is a protection forest where permanent construction is banned, a nursery for fish fry for the Cù Lao Chàm reef, a refuge for white egrets and kingfishers, and it was once a revolutionary base of Hội An through the two wars of 1945–1954 and 1964–1975, ranked a provincial-level monument in the late 2000s.
Busy and quiet times
In 2026 it averages 4,000–5,000 visitors a day, with over a thousand basket boats and over a thousand paddlers, mostly fishermen who changed trades; it is busiest in the summer months of June–August, and within a day it is crowded in mid-morning and mid-to-late afternoon, with early morning the quietest. The central area has 7 lively routes with karaoke loudspeakers and 6 quiet routes; ask for a quiet route if you want peace.
Photographs
8 of 10 on fileChristophe95 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Christophe95 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Christophe95 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Justin (iNaturalist user 2673842) · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Christophe95 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Christophe95 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Justin (iNaturalist user 2673842) · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Christophe95 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
The story
Bảy Mẫu Coconut Forest — what the old planters left, and what the rowers made of it
Picture yourself sitting in a round bamboo basket boat — a thúng — low to the water, with nipa palm fronds several metres long closing in from both sides to make a green corridor. These are not the tall coconut palms of the beach: this is dừa nước, the nipa palm, a palm that lives in brackish swamp and stays green all year, growing where the Thu Bồn, Trường Giang and Cổ Cò rivers meet before reaching the Cửa Đại estuary, roughly 5 km south-east of Hội An's old town. The elders here say the palm did not arrive on its own: people from the South brought it and planted it long ago, first a few clumps along the creeks, then a forest. The name "Bảy Mẫu" means seven mẫu, a traditional land unit — the area at the start; the forest is now many times that size.
Vibe
Tags
Source
The name, coordinates and English name come from Wikidata (Q138660353) and English Wikipedia, cross-checked against OpenStreetMap around the basket-boat (thúng) dock (Sep 2026). The address by new ward is based on Resolution 1659/NQ-UBTVQH15 (Jun 2025), which merged Cẩm Thanh into Hội An Đông ward. The origin of the nipa palm, the bamboo-and-palm house trade and the history of the revolutionary base come from the Hội An Centre for Cultural Heritage Management and Conservation (2013 and its research features); the ecological role from Báo Đà Nẵng, the Institute of Oceanography – Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (project accepted in 2020), the Management Board of Cù Lao Chàm Marine Protected Area (survey 2014) and the Department of Nature Conservation. The entrance ticket follows the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (2017); the 17 tour routes follow Hội An Radio and Television Station (Feb 2025); Thanh Tam dock follows Nhân Dân (Oct 2025); visitor numbers, the number of basket boats, the managing unit and the dredging follow Tuổi Trẻ (7 Sep 2026). Weather, tide and shallow-creek warnings come from Báo Quảng Nam (Jun 2025), VnExpress (Nov 2025) and Dân trí (Jun 2026); the life-jacket rule from Thanh Niên citing the Traffic Police Department (Jul 2025). The Forbes 2025 ranking follows VOV in English, the Tripadvisor 2024 ranking follows Báo Chính phủ in English. We rejected the figure ‘3 km from the old town’ (calculated from the coordinates it is about 5 km), the distance ‘37 km from Đà Nẵng’, six different forest-area figures, three conflicting service-hour windows, the basket-boat load capacities and the ‘base since 1967’ milestone, because the sources disagree or could not be checked. A new tour expected to launch in Nov 2026 and the Best Tourism Villages 2026 nomination are not mentioned because they are not yet operating or have no result. The gallery photos are from Wikimedia Commons under the CC0 and CC BY-SA 4.0 licences, with each author credited at each photo.
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