Kim Bong Carpentry Village 2026: The 630-Metre Bridge, the Ten-Minute Boat, and the Island the Old Town Was Built From

Stand on Bạch Đằng in the morning and look south across the Thu Bồn. The green bank half a kilometre away, low and flat with coconut palms along the edge, is Cẩm Kim — and the village on it, Kim Bồng, is where the Old Town behind you came from. The carved door frames, the roof timbers, the beams in the assembly halls: Kim Bồng hands cut most of them. It is the single closest thing Hội An has to a source, and the great majority of visitors never cross the water to see it.

We drive it most weeks, usually as a first-morning stop before the heat, and it is one of the few places near Hội An that costs nothing and asks nothing of you. Here is the shape of the visit from the driver's seat.

What is Kim Bong carpentry village, and why does it matter?

Kim Bồng is a woodworking village on the south bank of the Thu Bồn, founded by families who came south from Thanh Hóa and settled here around the 16th century — local lineage records name the Nguyễn, Phan, Huỳnh and Trương clans among them. As Hội An grew into an international trading port, the village grew with it, and by the 18th century the craft had separated into three distinct trades: mộc xây dựng, the architectural carpentry that raises houses; mộc dân dụng, the fine furniture and carving work; and đóng sửa tàu thuyền, building and repairing boats. Each is still practised on the island today.

The recognition arrived late but clearly. The village was listed as a traditional craft village in 2005, and in November 2016 the craft of Kim Bồng woodworking was inscribed as national intangible cultural heritage. Then, on 31 October 2023, Hội An joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in the field of Crafts and Folk Arts — a designation that rests on exactly this kind of village rather than on the Old Town's photogenic frontage.

One administrative note that matters if you are reading maps or older pages: since 1 July 2025, when Quảng Nam was merged into Đà Nẵng city, Cẩm Kim is no longer a commune of its own. It sits inside the new phường Hội An. The island did not move. Only the letterhead did.

How do you get to Cam Kim — bridge or boat?

Both work, and they produce different mornings.

By car, over the bridge. Until 2016 Cẩm Kim was effectively an island with a ferry. The Cẩm Kim bridge — 630 metres across the Thu Bồn, opened on 29 January 2016 — ended that. From the Old Town perimeter the drive is short: out on Nguyễn Tri Phương, onto Duy Tân with the river on your left, then over the bridge. Call it 5 km and ten to twelve minutes. From An Bàng beach it is about 8 km. From central Đà Nẵng or the airport, budget 45 to 55 minutes for the 35-odd km, the same corridor as any Hội An transfer with a ten-minute tail on the end.

By boat, from Bạch Đằng. Small local boats cross from the quay near the Hội An market in about ten minutes, and arriving at Kim Bồng by water is the honest way to see a boatbuilding village — you land where the timber lands. Fares are agreed on the spot; quoted figures for the crossing run around 25,000–50,000 VND a person, with a private boat for a small group in the 150,000–200,000 VND range. Fix the price and the return time before you step in, because the afternoon supply of boats is thinner than the morning's.

The combination most of our passengers end up liking: boat over, car back, with the driver meeting you at the craft centre. You get the river arrival and you do not spend the return crossing watching the clock.

Where does the car actually stop?

On the island the lanes narrow fast. The main road in from the bridge runs through Trung Hà hamlet to the Kim Bồng craft centre, and that is where a car parks and waits — there is room at the centre and along the approach, and no reason to take a vehicle deeper. Everything worth seeing sits within a ten-minute walk or a slow bicycle loop from there: the workshops, the boatyards on the bank, the family compounds where the mat looms are set up.

A practical point we make on the phone: coaches do not really belong here, and neither does a hurry. The island's whole development direction is a rural, low-traffic one — Cẩm Kim has been shaped as a "làng quê sinh thái", an ecological village, with community tourism reported at roughly 14,000 visitors a year and around 8,000 educational-tour participants over the 2021–2025 programme. Those are small numbers by Hội An standards, and they are the point. Walk it, cycle it, keep the car at the edge.

What is there to see once you are on the island?

Four things, in descending order of how much time they take.

The woodworking. Open-sided workshops with the smell of jackfruit wood and sawdust, men working a chisel on a dragon's head or a temple door panel, benches of carved screens, ancestral tablets, statues and furniture for sale at village prices rather than Old Town ones. Some workshops will let you sit down and cut a simple piece yourself for a small fee.

The boatyards. Wooden fishing hulls up on blocks along the bank, being re-planked and caulked by the same trade that once built the ghe bầu trading boats. This is the least touristic thing in Hội An and often the most memorable.

The mat weaving. Sedge mats — chiếu — are still woven on two-person looms here, one feeding the reed, one beating the frame. The craft was formally recognised in February 2025, part of a deliberate effort to keep it alive rather than let it become a photograph.

Basket boats and bamboo. Thúng chai, the round bamboo coracles you see in the Cẩm Thanh palms, are stitched and waterproofed here. Watching one being made explains the boat better than riding in one does.

What time should you go, and how long does it take?

Leave Hội An around 07:15 to 08:00. The workshops keep working hours — roughly 07:00 to 17:00 with a long break through the hottest part of the day — so the early window is when the tools are actually moving, and the island's light is at its best before nine. Ninety minutes on the ground is enough for the workshops, a boatyard and a short lane loop; two hours if you cycle or stop for coffee. You are back in the Old Town before the pedestrian hours end at 11:30, which makes Kim Bồng the natural first half of a day whose second half is the heritage houses, or a tailor fitting, or the beach.

Two dates worth knowing. The Ngày hội làng nghề truyền thống Kim Bồng is the village's own festival, held in the first lunar month just after Tết — the 2026 edition ran on 27 and 28 February at the craft centre, with woodworking and boatbuilding demonstrations, bamboo carving, basket weaving, a country market and folk games. And the flood weeks of October and November: Cẩm Kim is low ground in a river that rises, so in those weeks the island is the first thing we drop from a plan and the first thing we put back two days later.

If you want a morning that starts on the water and ends in the Old Town — boat across, driver waiting on the far bank, back before the heat — describe the day at hoiandriver.com/quote. A real driver prices it, a 10 percent deposit holds the date and the car, and the balance is paid in USD at the end of the trip.