People of Cua Lap

Return to VVG's Home Page

VVG ~ Photographic Essay

All New -- 40 pages, hundreds of handicrafats from Thailand -- click here or see below

The People of Cua Lap

Go or Return to the Cua Lap Main Page | Homes Of Cua Lap

On 24 June 2005, the Prime Minister approved the US's Winvestment - LLC Group's license to build a US$ 300 million tourism project in Vung Tau city, the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau, The site is along coastal waterways of Vietnam's East Sea (also known as the South China Sea). This $276.3 million project will have a profound, positive impact on the people of the area, region and Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC).

NOTICE

The material that follows was the original plan to preserve the integrity of the world's last large open and unified site that possesses all five of the criteria for any successful 5 star development: the site is within one hour of (1) the region's population center; (2) the regional business and financial center; (3) a major international airport; (4) on the beach; and (v) on a major highway.

All financial information must now be addressed to the lead developer, Winvestment - LLC Group. V V G makes no representation that the developer will realize its estimated results or that any example shown here will actually reflect the program's future performance or condition.

What follows below is for historical purpose only. The lead developer will in due time publish its own plans that may vary substantially from those that follow.

Greater HCMC is home to more than 11 million people, and when the Resort opens, will be less than a one hour drive away. This region has attracted more than $20 billion in direct foreign investment since 1989. The resort at Cua Lap will be the first up-scale, eco-tourism, residential, recreation, and entertainment community closer than a three hour drive away from this dynamic "second" city as Saigon is so often called in the domestic press.

Elements of the resort at Cua Lap will include 5-star hotels, offices, apartments, private villas, a marina, golf course, tennis courts, and of course the beach. There are more than 4 1/2 km (2.8 miles) of virgin beach. This will also be the first full service, five-star, elegant resort community in the nation.

There will be a Triple A rated gold course and club, a world-class marina and club with slips for 200 craft, a full scale Aquarium including a 30-meter long shark tank, an IMAX Theater, regular commercial movie theaters, a shopping mall, restaurants, an exotic Fishing Lake, Botanical Gardens with more than 3 km of nature trails, and an authentic Fishing Village. Visit our page that more fully describes the Cua Lap Resort and see the linked maps to locate Cua Lap.

There is no beach that will ever be physically closer to the people of the greater HCMC region then the beach at Cua Lap Resort Yet the population today in this isolated area continues in its innocent yet hard working ways, much as it has for the past 4,000 years. The people are still a hunting and gathering society in its elemental form.

A sea-change will happen to the lives of these fine people as the Cua Lap Resort takes shape. There are now approximately 28 families that make their homes as squatters on the 150 ha (372 acre) site. Most live in make-shift shacks and shanties. Some have improved their homes with scrap lumber and thatch. A few have applied brick, concrete and white-wash.

None of these few, isolated residents have ever paid for or been awarded the right to use the land. However, many of the 28 families claim to have lived in their simple homes since 1975.

We, who are the developers of the Cua Lap Resort, will offer these families reasonable and just compensation based upon current value before development. We will help them to relocate their permanent homes. That is the minimum that the law of Vietnam requires. However, we intend to do much more.

Employment of adult members of the families. Each adult member of the original families will be offered employment by the Cua Lap Development Corporation. These families now eke out an existence living by farming the rich land or fishing the abundant waters in the surrounding sea. However, without capital to buy modern equipment or learn better methods, they incorporate the same techniques used for the past thousand years with little improvement in productivity or their own lives. Click here to see their current homes and meet more local residents

We intend to help them improve their working skills and living conditions. There will be hundreds of acres of lush lawns and gardens throughout the Cua Lap Resort. In addition to the natural flora and fauna to be preserved, we will be importing tens of thousands of flowering trees and shrubs, and building tens of acres of both annul and perennial gardens. Plans are in place to bring in as many as 10,000 palm trees to be planted throughout the resort. The Botanical Garden will have exotic plants from all over Vietnam and Southeast Asia for all to enjoy.

The very best professional landscape gardeners from Asia will be employed by the Cua Lap Resort Development Company to plan and plant these gardens. These same professional will train the Cua Lap Resort workers. It is our intention that among our first hires will be the adults from the current resident families. We will help them to learn the needed skills to maintain and improve upon the work of the domestic and foreign professionals who create the gardens at the Cua Lap Resort.

The adults from each farming family of the original group, as well as a battalion of new hired workers, will find full employment and education as they tend the lavish lands and gardens of the Cua Lap Resort.

The Fishing Village will be a living and working facility, as will be the Exotic Fishing Lake.

The adult fishermen and women from the original families of Cua Lap will find ready employment at the Cua Lap Resort in their own trade. They will also be taught the latest skills needed for new aqua-farming techniques.

The Cua Lap Development Company will farm, grow, and harvest Tiger shrimp, crabs, and large, exotic, domestic fish for fishing in the lake, use in the Fishing Village Restaurant, and sale to the other Resort restaurants, and the general public.

Additionally, fish can be caught in the lake by visitors to the Cua Lap Resort or buy their fish at market prices on the pier.

The Cua Lap Resort Development Company will farm and stock tiger shrimp, crabs, and exotic fish. The exotic fish will be grown to maturity for at least two years before being released to the Lake for the enjoyment of all. The fish will not be from endangered species. We expect that when caught by the visitors, the fish will have achieved a near monstrous size of upwards of 5 kilos (11 pounds) each.

Housing for the families. Each of the original families will be paid for the loss of their current homes in accordance with the applicable rules and laws of Vietnam. We will encourage each family to purchase a new home in other locations with the proceeds they receive. However, we intend to do more.

For the period during which each of the original household families has at least one adult fully employed at any project at the Cua Lap Resort, the extended family will receive the rent free use of one of the 200 cottages at the Fishing Village. Each of the original families will be offered one cottage for residency, free of land use fees or rent.

Please use this hyperlink to read more about the Fishing Village. The original families will be joined by other domestic employees at the Cua Lap Resort who will be offered Fishing Village cottages for rent at slightly subsidized prices to encourage them to live near their work.

Follow our plans and these families. We intend to chronicle the history and story of these hard working people as work progresses. We are aware of the impact we and the project will have on their lives.

While the impact on the current families will be far greater than will be the impact on the more sophisticated city dwellers, and while these local farmers, fisherman, and their families have earned our deep concern and respect, we do so with our eyes fully open. The Cua Lap Resort will drive the desire of many to seek out and even return to other areas in Vung Tau. Our project will be the magnet that will help the entire city revive.

New Squatters - We expect that new-comers will arrive and take up "squatter's rights" along the vast reaches of this under populated site as word spreads of the site's development. The new people will claim an entitlement equal to or exceeding that of the original families. This has been the history of land conversion in many developing lands. We have no reason to expect it will be different in this case.

Therefore, we began to document the homes, and meet the people living at the site since early 1996. Now blessed with photographic film and video tape of the area, the homes, and the people, we expect to be able to move forward without delay and defeat the claims of interlopers.

In spite of the problems others faced and we foresee, we are planning for our land conversion to be more peaceful, equitable, and faster than has happened in other locations. Our long-term planning with the cooperation of the local authorities and the local residents who have become our friends as well, will hopefully provide a model for the development of other projects in other locations.

Please now join world famous photographer, Hans Kemp, and other photographers, as they take us to meet the People Of Cua Lap. Visit this page often. We will be making regular updates.

The People of Cua Lap

Some long time residents of Cua Lap, their families and their friends. Please click on any small photo and be patient as the enlargement forms. Then use your browser's return button to return to the smaller photo on this page. Some of these are by Hans Kemp.

click on each photo to see an enlargement


Mr. Dau House 1	Khuong Thi Ho House 21			Nguyen Van Ky House 2	House 20


2 boys House 5	House 20	Ky's daughter-in- law and his grand-daughter House 2	Tran Thanh Tu & her daughter House 3	Phuoc, Tuoi, Tu & Trieu House 6


Mr. Phu House 12	Phu's daughter and his friend House 12	Khuong Thi Ho House 21	House 20	Fisherman


House 6	House 10	Nguyen Thi Nuong House 16	House 11	Mr. Tu (far right) and his family House 16


Tran Van Chau & brother House 17	Mrs. Le Thi Dat and family House 18	Resident & friend House 9	Army men	Army men

See their homes and meet more local residents

Eleven months the year.

Under-populated and almost abandoned to the elements, the site remains in its most primitive and beautifully natural condition. The bay, the beach and the interior. VVG staff are seen on some of our regular visits.

These photos were taken by VVG staff.


1	2	3	4	5


6 VVG staff near house 20	7	8	9 VVG staff at house 21

The following are Hans Kemp Photos.


10	11	12	13	14

Historic & Current Use of the Land

The rains fall almost every day for from 1 to 4 hours of the 5 month long rain season (June to October). However, in the south where Cua Lap Resort is located, it is mostly sunny even during the height of the wet season. Remarkably, this is the case even an hour before some violent storms. The locals know it will rain within an hour when the weather become intolerably hot. Often then, as quickly as the rains come, the cloud cover disappears.

As the rains end and the season dries, the land undergoes 7 months of almost no rain water or cloud cover. Towards the end of the rain season, the historic use of the beach takes on a near carnival atmosphere. This is fish drying season.

Thankfully the beauty captured in the following photographs by world famous photographer, Hans Kemp, does not nab the pungent trail that hovers over the work. Even more fortunately, the easterly winds quickly drive each season's fragrance from the beach.


1	2	3	4

Racks are made of fresh cut timber limbs and tied with what ever is available. Fish net is on top.


	5		6

The catch is placed on the racks and allowed to dry in the air. Usually it takes only a few days. The dried fish are then taken to nearby mills for grinding into shrimp feed and fertilizer.

Into the Future....

The 21st century is about to arrive. It will fall upon some of us. With its arrival will come great change to the people of Cua Lap. Hindered, as well as hidden, for all time from development, the area lacks any paved road closer than 2 km away.

Here we show you the current state of the roadway to the Cua Lap Resort. This four lane Highway 51C connects Vung Tau City with Ba Ria City on Highway 51. The road bed is nearly complete and asphalt will be laid before long.

This roadway brings the Cua Lap Resort to a booming reality. It will also bring a much hoped for benefit to the people of Cua Lap, far above their historic and still current subsistence-level living.


1	2	3	4

The first and third photos were taken by Hans Kemp as the rain season showed signs of coming to its expected end.

The first scene shows the entrance to site from the roadbed of the new Highway 51C that runs from Ba Ria south to Vung Tau City. This four-land new road links down-town Vung Tau to the now renovated Highway 51 that runs north to Bien Hoa. To the left and in the background of Photo 1, and to the right of Photo 4 (where there are now shrimp ponds), will be the Fishing Village.

The second picture was taken ten months earlier. It shows the cloudless blue skies more typical of the region, and the Highway 51C roadbed a few months before construction was halted. The hills of Long Hai are in the distance.

The third photo shows the view south along the roadbed of Highway 51C in the direction of Vung Tau City, 12 km distant. Pavement will be completed by the State at State expense when the Cua Lap Investors come forward to develop the site.

The fourth photo taken in October 2000 shows the road bed nearly completed and most drain lines buried. Asphalt is scheduled to be laid in the region of Ba Ria City early next year and the entire length to the Cua Lap Resort by the end of 2001.

Please return often. We will be keeping a record of the developments and show them to you here.

Write to us | or locate Our Offices