Hoi An Craft Villages Guide: Thanh Ha Pottery and Tra Que Herbs

Two craft villages sit within a 20-minute ride of Hoi An’s Old Town, and together they tell the whole story of how this corner of Vietnam was settled: Thanh Ha, a 500-year-old pottery village founded by families who fled a civil war, and Tra Que, a 400-year-old herb village renamed by a Nguyen dynasty king. Both are still working villages — about 23 pottery families fire Thu Bon river clay today, and Tra Que farmers still fertilize their herb beds with seaweed hauled from the lagoon.

Thanh Ha has been making pottery since the early 16th century — around 500 years — and its origin story is one of migration. During the 17th-century civil war between the Trinh Lords in the north and the Nguyen Lords in the south, Vietnam was split for 250 years at the Gianh River in Quang Binh province. Families from Thanh Hoa province fled south to escape the fighting, settled on the Thu Bon river, and named their new village Thanh Ha to remember the homeland they left. The craft survived because the clay is local. Potters collect raw clay from beside the Thu Bon river, clean out the soil and gravel, knead it by foot for about two days, then rest it for two weeks before shaping. A finished piece fires for eight hours at 600 to 900 degrees Celsius — lower than the 1,000-plus degrees porcelain needs, which is why Thanh Ha ware keeps its warm terracotta colour and unglazed, chemical-free finish. Today around 23 craftsman families — roughly 100 workers — produce about 400,000 pottery items a year: pots, kettles, jars and the little whistle toys you will see in every Hoi An souvenir shop. Nothing is glazed with chemical enamel; the finish comes from the river clay itself.

Tra Que is about 400 years old and started as a fishing settlement — vegetable growing was only the side job until the herbs became too famous to ignore. The village was originally called Nhu Que, “the scent of cinnamon,” after the smell of its greens. In the 18th century, a Nguyen dynasty king travelling along the De Vong river heard about a village growing strangely fragrant vegetables and stopped to taste them. The greens carried the flavour of cinnamon and tea flower, so he renamed the village Tra Que — “tea flower and cinnamon” — and the name stuck. The secret is in the soil and the fertilizer. Tra Que sits on alluvial soil that holds moisture while staying porous, and farmers fertilize their beds with algae and seaweed collected from the nearby lagoon instead of chemical fertilizer. That lagoon seaweed is what gives Tra Que scallions, cilantro, Malabar spinach, purple perilla and saw leaf the aroma Hoi An cooks insist on — most cao lau and mi quang herb baskets in town come from these beds.

Both villages are hands-on, not look-through-a-fence. At Thanh Ha you sit at a kick wheel and shape your own pot or whistle toy with a potter guiding your hands; fired pieces can be collected a few days later or shipped. At Tra Que you join the morning routine — planting, watering with the traditional scoop, and on some visits a foot massage using crushed herb leaves — then taste the herbs in a meal cooked with what you picked. Timing matters. Pottery drying yards look best in dry-season morning light, and Tra Que is at its most alive before 9am when farmers are watering. Both villages are quietest and coolest in the morning, which is why we schedule them early.

The villages sit 3 to 5 km west of the Old Town, so they fit three of our routes. Thecountryside cycling tourrides the flat dyke paths between rice paddies to both villages over about five hours. Thefull-day Old Town and villages tourpairs them with the Ancient Town and a boat crossing, and thecountryside and local life touradds Thanh Ha by car for families or anyone who prefers not to cycle. If you only have one free morning, choose by energy: bicycle if you want the paddies up close, boat-and-walk if you want the river, car if you are travelling with small children or grandparents. Either way, go before 9am — the villages are a working place first and a visitor stop second, and that is exactly why they are worth going.

More detail is being prepared for this post.