11/01/2024
Why is the wooden ship symbol in Ha Long gradually disappearing?
Quang NinhThe traditional wooden boats in Ha Long Bay will gradually disappear in the near future for both subjective and objective reasons.
On August 12, Japan's Nikkei Asia newspaper published an article expressing regret when wooden sailing boats, the symbol of Ha Long Bay and Vietnam, will disappear in the not too distant future. new, modern cruise ships.
According to people who operate cruise ships to spend the night and visit in Ha Long Bay, the story of "the end of wooden ships" has been told a lot before the epidemic, especially in the period of 2016 when the People's Committee of Quang Ninh province. issue a document on the management of cruise ship operations in Ha Long Bay. This document states that wooden-hulled ships operating in Ha Long Bay will have a term of 15 years, which is different from Decree 111 of the Government when the term of wooden-hulled ships for overnight tourism is 20 years.
After much controversy, the ship's age is still counted as 20 years. However, after the expiration of the service life, the wooden-hulled accommodation vessel should be replaced by a new-built steel-hulled vessel or equivalent material; ships imported CBU from abroad, without increasing the number of beds; It is recommended to replace two small tonnage vessels with one larger tonnage vessel.
Department of Transport of Quang Ninh province and the People's Committee of Ha Long city confirmed that the locality has never had a policy of "death" of wooden ships. However, according to the recommendation of UNESCO with Ha Long Bay, it is not allowed to increase the means of operation in the core zone of the heritage. Therefore, ship owners can only build replacements, not add more.
Many people in the cruise ship business also realize that sooner or later wooden ships "will also disappear" because steel and iron ships have many outstanding, modern and safer advantages than traditional wooden ships. Mr. Chien, a ship owner in Ha Long, said that ship owners all want their ships to be spacious, modern, with more rooms to attract tourists. The disappearance of wooden ships is an inevitable trend because of the competitiveness of the market.
Mr. Nguyen Duy Phu, director of Pelican Yacht Joint Stock Company, which has ships running both in Ha Long Bay and Lan Ha (Hai Phong), said that in the past, he also owned many wooden-hulled ships but sold them out in 2010 because of fear. Explosion.
"Wooden-hulled ships have quite a few problems such as being more prone to sinking than steel-hulled ships and especially prone to fires," he said.
According to Mr. Phu, handling the risk of shipwreck is "relatively simple", but the risk of fire and explosion is "almost impossible to handle". He used to wrap corrugated iron to improve the situation but also "doesn't feel good" because the inside of the corrugated iron layer is still a wood layer. The electric cables on the train run inside the wooden layers, making it difficult to control fire and explosion. If you leave the power cable out, the ship will lose its beauty.
With his experience, Mr. Phu believes that wooden ships are very durable if they are built according to the standards of the "old people". However, the traditional method is laborious and expensive, so ship owners often choose a simpler way, causing the ship to deteriorate quickly, potentially sinking, while the problem of fire and explosion is still "really difficult to solve". . Therefore, although he feels sorry that the wooden ships will disappear in the near future, Mr. Phu said it is an "inevitable" trend.
Mr. Nguyen Van Phuong, deputy head of the Ha Long Cruise Ship Association, has similar views and emphasizes that the cost of building wooden ships is now 2-3 times higher than steel hulled ships. The wood used to build the ship must be acacia wood, which cannot be purchased in Vietnam. The price of wood used to be around 700.000 VND per block, then increased to 1,5 million VND and now up to 50 million VND, so building a new wooden ship is "inherently impossible".
Mr. Phuong wants to keep wooden ships, predicting that in the future, traditional wooden ships may "become priceless treasures". "However, if you wait until the ship becomes valuable, it will no longer be registered," he said.
