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Koconut-Ville offers unique cultural experience to tourists
Koconut-Ville Farm offers tourists a better appreciation of local culture by way of cultural farm living. (Contributed Photo)
Discover Saipan Tour owner Monique Kramer said it is important that we all do our part to promote our island as a competing destination.
To this end, the company has decided to partner with a local business specifically to enhance the vacation experience of tourists to the islands.
The new partner company, Koconut-Ville Farm, has been in operation for at least a year now.
Owners Tony Camacho and Rose Pangelinan said that when they started farming it was never their intension to establish a business that would cater to tourists.
However, after tourists almost daily would stop by and ask for directions to Old Man by the Sea and then request to buy fresh coconuts, Camacho saw a great business opportunity and the rest is history.
As Koconut-Ville now anticipates growth and part of the program it has offered to Discover Saipan Tour is to give tourists a better appreciation of local culture by way of cultural farm living.
“We tour the children on the farm and had them view and pet some of the local farm animals such as chickens, ducks, land turtle, deer, pigeon, goat, monitor lizard, etc. After the walk-around, a few local artists await the attention of the children to start a cooking and weaving session. The artist will show them how to make coconut candy and weave baskets, hats, bags, and decorative ornaments utilizing coconut leaves. Also, included are refreshments of fresh coconut juice and a variety of local fruits,” said Camacho.
Camacho encourages other tour companies to be more involved in providing tourists with better cultural experiences.
“We had inquired with some tour companies and some surveys showed that most of the disappointment our guests have is the lack of cultural interaction. Koconut-Ville would like to offer better experience for our guests and provide similar services for groups that are willing to at least spend more than an hour for the experience.”
He said there are a number of jungle tour groups with prepaid packages operating locally, but the downfall of these are majority of the tours are done by a third party company that takes tourists around and are hustled to meet the 2-3 hour tour schedule before they have to pick up another group.
“I’ve seen how it’s done and with the travel time to different destinations, it only allows 10-15 minutes per location. Many of our guests feel rushed by this and most of them don’t get what they should. “
Camacho believes what Koconut-Ville offers is a better alternative.
“We encourage all tour agents/operators to capitalize on this program. It could also reduce their cost by limiting the number of destination stops and bring them to Koconut-Ville for a more meaningful experience. Our program will provide at least a minimum of 10 or more people per session which will include the viewing of farm animals and photo opportunities, an hour or more on how to utilize coconut in a variety of ways, sampling of food made from coconut such as apigigi (a local favorite) coconut candy, ahu, and the coconut-weaving session. This is also inclusive of fresh coconut juice and local variety of fruits.”
He readily admits that Koconut-Ville is at its infancy business-wise, but the company is making daily improvements to enhance the 20,000-square-meter property by planting hundreds of fruit trees. These include soursop, lychee, mangosteen, lansones, star apple, star fruit, dragon fruit, ponkan, atis, pomegranate, varieties of citrus, pineapple, papayas, bananas, guava, chico, and over 12 varieties of mangoes.
“It is our goal to create a fruit botanical farm and hope that this will become a future destination for our locals and tourists.”
For price inquiries, reservation, or for more information on Koconut-Ville, call 285-4208. (PR)
