Co Tu Village at Ben Giang

At Bến Giằng, the first thing a guest is handed is a pestle for pounding rice.

The first stop is the village of Pà Rồng. Here, Cơ Tu women hand guests the pestle and show them how to pound rice, then how to split firewood. It sounds simple enough. But once guests lift the pestle, they find that the village's everyday work is surprisingly hard. Then the guests sit down to learn rattan weaving.

The village has an elder named Zuông Noonh. He weaves rattan baskets to hold water bottles, then sends them to the cooperative, which sells them to visitors from far away. Those baskets have made life better for his household.

Bến Giằng lies in the mountains of western Da Nang, right where the Hồ Chí Minh Road meets National Route 14D. Route 14D runs west to the Nam Giang border gate with Laos. This is the land of the Cơ Tu, a people who have lived for a very long time among the Trường Sơn mountains. They have their own language, architecture, festivals and music. The commune came into being on July 1, 2025, when three old communes were merged. Two of them were Cà Dy and Tà Bhing. The third was Tà Pơơ. All three lay in the Nam Giang area of the former Quảng Nam province. That area now belongs to the city of Da Nang.

The community tourism here is not packed into a single yard. It spreads across all seven villages of the old Tà Bhing commune, and each village offers a specialty of its own. Some groups show daily life, some look after the food, some weave brocade, and some dance. Each group has its own leader and its own guides. The Cơ Tu community tourism cooperative is the only point of contact for guests. It sends them to the villages in turn and shares the income fairly.

The most unusual part lies elsewhere. Villagers stay home to receive guests only on days when a group has booked ahead. On the other days, they still go to their fields and into the forest. Only a few groups come each month, because the villagers want to welcome visitors without turning their own lives upside down. Most guests are from abroad, and many come from Japan.

From Pà Rồng, guests move on to the village of Zơ Ra, where the sound of the loom takes the place of the pestle. The Cơ Tu loom is surprisingly simple, just a few pieces of wood and two kinds of bamboo fitted together. Guests hear about the twelve weaving steps of the Cơ Tu, look at the geometric patterns, and then try weaving with their own hands.

The loveliest moment comes when the weaver sets in the beads. She cuts the weft thread, then places each bead exactly where the pattern calls for it. The smaller the pattern, the more patience it takes. Every stage in the life of a piece of cloth is done by hand. The weavers grow cotton, ramie and jute. They spin the thread, dye it and weave it. They make the patterns, set the beads and embroider. Then the cloth is sewn into shirts, loincloths, wrap skirts and shawls. Hand dyeing with indigo gives the cloth its own character.

There was a time when this craft almost fell silent. In 2012, a Japanese non-governmental organization came to Tà Bhing to help bring brocade weaving back. By then, few people here still sat at the loom. Community tourism began with those very looms. Today things are different. In this weaving village, Cơ Tu women learn to weave as young girls. Cơ Tu brocade weaving is now on the national list of intangible cultural heritage.

At mealtime, the people of Pà La village take care of the food, and the meal is laid out right inside the gươl, the village's shared house. There is cơm lam, rice cooked in a bamboo tube. There is meat grilled with forest leaves. There is bánh sừng trâu, cakes shaped into a curve like a buffalo horn. Guests eat that meal in the very heart of the village.

In the Cơ Tu language, gươl means community. It is the shared house where the village elders meet to discuss village matters, and where festivals are held. Every gươl has just one main pillar, called the father pillar, and it is seen as the soul of the house. The roof is thatched with leaves, and the floor is made of wood and bamboo. On the beams and pillars are carvings of animals from life in the upland fields, and the rooster and the buffalo are never left out. At each gable end stands a rooster figure, a symbol of wakefulness and of a new day.

No one may quarrel inside the gươl. This is where the old teach the young their customs and customary law, so people compare the gươl to a living museum. The whole village builds it together. To the Cơ Tu, a village without a gươl is a village that has lost its roots. In the old days, when the Cơ Tu of this area founded a new village, the spot for the gươl was chosen right in the middle. The clan houses stood around it, and ordinary family homes went up last. On the first night, the whole village sang lý, beat the drums and gongs, and danced to celebrate the new village. Lý is an improvised Cơ Tu exchange of speech and song, built on metaphor and passed down by word of mouth.

Then drums and gongs ring out in the yard in front of the gươl. People from Pà Xua village dance the tâng tung da dá for their guests. The tung tung is the men's part, recreating scenes of hunting and the celebration of victory. The da dá is the women's part. It grew from the old gestures of making offerings to the spirits, with both arms raised like a pair of bird's wings. In 2014, this dance was recognized as national intangible cultural heritage. The Cơ Tu dance it at the new rice festival and at the ceremony of thanks to the forest. They also dance it at offerings to the spirits of the mountain and forest, and at the celebration of a new gươl. On some visits, guests also hear the gongs and listen to lý, both sung and spoken.

The people who guide guests through such a day are Cơ Tu themselves. Besides their mother tongue, they speak fluent Vietnamese and communicate very well in English. They are the storytellers, leading guests across the land of their own villages. The cooperative, headed by Briu Thương, won the ASEAN community tourism award in 2025.

Toward evening, the guests leave along the main road. The next morning, if no group has booked, all four villages, from Pà Rồng to Pà Xua, go back to their fields and their forest. And on the gable end of the gươl, the rooster still stands, waiting for a new day.