Travelog - A travel guide to Vietnam

Many times ago, Nga Son (Thanh Hoa) has been well known for planting sedge and weaving mat. Even local travelers or visitors all buy the couple Mat of Nga Son as a present. It is cheap, beautiful and comfortable for sleeping… weaving sedge mat becomes the triditional handicraft at Nga Son. The local people at born-time get used to smoking scent, loom and consider the colour of sedge flower as the colour of aristocratic apricot blossom.

The Sedge makes the life of Nga Son�s people less tired. Children go to school and there are always the well pupils at provincial and national levels. Adults is took care more of food and clothes… coming to Nga Son in sedge bloom season, people seem to be lost in the forest of sparkling color. The sedge with 3 edges is planted on a large scale, rising up over the taste of marine soil.

In the changes of the economy market, as the sedge is unmarketable the Nga Son people were full of hardship in some time. There are many people leaving their loom to find new means of living because of lacking patient. From the latest 10 years up to now. Nga Son sedge has found the market again. Beside the 3 edges sedge there has been planted kind of white flower sedge with high productivity on the higher salty rate of land. The tree-trunk is quite round with the stable white fibber and 1.5-2 meter length. The peoples living far from hometown come back and reunite with sedges and looms. All the country, Nga Son is known by sedge and sedge mat. In 1999, Nga Son sold out 2,160,000 mats, increasing by 13% compared with the same period of 1998. With the beautiful models, good quality… Nga Son Mat has rose up and controlled the market, defeated the other competitor as nylon mats, sedge mats from the other village… The face of Nga Son is changing

The redevelopment of sedge and sedge profession brings to Nga Son peoples the big source of income. Only the sedge goods of Nga Son get USD 1.78 million (about VND 25 billion). Work is still an urgent matter in Nga Son. Sedge gives regular job to 16,550 labors (11,172 professional labors among) and the millions of the other service labors. The annual source of income is about VND 69 billion, it makes up over a third the total income on field