Last month we had some beautiful mornings which found me down at the beach by 7am. This is about the time some of the in-shore fishermen bring in their tiny catches of silver fish.
They use coracles made out of bamboo, woven with palm leaves and coated with tar. Just like the coracles used in Wales and on the River Severn, they are steered with a single oar.
In Vietnam, they can be seen in almost every river, estuary and on most beaches. They use them as tenders to the larger fishing boats and also to set nets and collect catches. Vietnamese fishermen go out in all kinds of seas and are highly skilled at riding the surf back to shore. I can watch them for hours.
The painting at the top of this article shows the young fishermen picking up the boats with poles and carry them back up the beach until they go out again at dawn the next day.
These scenes were captured in December at the end of the rainy season. Mornings are chilly and the seas are rough. The fishermen wear balaclavas to protect their faces from the harsh weather and then roll them up into beanies at the end of each trip.
Once ashore, the women arrive with bowls metal dishes to collect the catch and take it straight to market where they will clean the little fish, gut and fillet them for customers. There can hardly be fresher fish than those available at seaside markets along the long, Vietnam coastline.
These fibreglass blue and green boats are from Phan Thiet where I went last November. There are larger than the Hoi An boats and have metal rods on one side to take a small outboard motor.
The coracle has, very much, become a symbol of Vietnam and is central to a cultural show that's is staged regularly at the Opera house in Saigon. 'The Ao Show' encapsulates, in about one hour, the culture, history and street life of Vietnam that has a lot in common with the stage show Stomp with its rhythms, energy and athletic dance. Don't miss it if your are in Saigon.
A few days away from the bustle and heat of Saigon. I took a brown train from Ho Chi Minh City station for the one hundred mile, four hour journey to Binh Thuan. This little rail stop is about six miles from Mui Ne where I am going to spend 5 days alone with Graham Greene and my sketch pad.
I am travelling with Viets who have a different view of personal space. What's theirs is theirs and what's yours is theirs as well. The train travels through an impossibly narrow single track corridor of dwellings,shops, barbers, wokshops, coffee shops, kitchens, bicycle repair, engine shops, bedrooms, chickens and dogs.
After a while opening to suburbs, more space, warehouses, allotments, small holdings, a massive, massive river, factories, little local stations, graves,acres of rusting corrugated tin, brightly coloured houses, sidings, litter and rubbish everywhere, farms and plantations.
Sometimes we stop but there aren't any names on the stations. people get on but no-one gets off yet. Now rice paddies. The TV in out railway carriage is blaring ( are Viets deaf?) a selection of entertainment that is a good imitation of a Saturday night on the BBC circa 1976. Sleeping children. An old man puts in his eye drops, teenage boy picks his nose. Father nurses toddler, granny asleep with the baby, her feet on a plastic laundry basket full of food and provisions. An American veteran sits beside his Viet wife still so beautiful gazing out of the window at her homeland.
Food trolley selling hard boiled eggs, unrecognisable fruit, plastic bags of sugar cane to suck on. The lady next to me buys three eggs and a little dish of chilli salt which she offers to share with me. The Viets are so generous with their food. free bottles of water for everyone on the next trolley.
The landscape changes.Plantations of saplings growing amid raggy corn. Nick Cage in a very violent movie on the TV - Vietnamese subtitles. Hills look like slag heaps strewn with rocks and scattered with skinny trees.. Bigger hills overcast. Water buffalo in meadows each with a companion heron, cows tethered under tress, fields of dragon fruit. Nick Cage is covered in blood hurls abuse at a dolly blond in denim hot pants as the camper van they were pursuing speeds off into the distance. My fellow travellers gaze emotionless. Fruit orchards banana palms.
Arrive, A small halt straight out of a 1960's French movie. We climb down from the train all luggage being passed hand to hand. Walk across two railways lines that disappear off into an unknown distance. A girl checks my ticket and the two local taxi drivers vie for my business. No-one can tell me how far or how much it will cost we just set sail!
Wow - very swanky hotel! All the guests appear to Russian....... great.
Huge, unrippled blue pool, the sun loungers all have my name on them. Lizards on the lawn, Frangipani, Bouganvilia, dragonflies, tiny white crabs scuttle on the sand in the dusk, shells crostle in the crannies of the breakwater rocks. Gekko chatters in the bedroom, cows trundle along the beach to wallow in lush watery meadows between the beach bars. Blue and green coracles on the beach come and go each night and dawn. Fruit seller girl with two paniers dressed, seemingly, only her smiling eyes show between her mask and the shade of her coolie hat. Luscious mangoes and spiney crimson lychees by the bunch.
NO SEAGULLS! No seabirds at all! Not a sound. Humph.
I sit and draw the little boats. The Russian tourists creep up behind me a peer over my shoulder, silently stealing a glance at my drawings. The fruit seller and a straggly straw hatted pearl vendor, the gardeners and the fishermen all come up to me at the front and squat down beside me just to enjoy the company for ten minutes or so, watch what I am doing and exchange a few words. they talk about me as if I am not there.......but quietly.. as if they know I am concentrating hard. Open and curious, smiling and complimentary in their simple English. Nosey like children. Uncomplicated companions with beautiful hearts.
I take a trip to the local fishing port about 3 miles away. Phan Thiet is the home of nuoc mam, the ubiquitous fish sauce that flavours the Vietnamese cuisine. Nuoc mam is to the Viets what balsamic vinegar is to the French, butter to the English, cinnamon to Americans and sauerkraut to Germans. It is the ever present condiment of choice. It is made by fermenting anchovy-like fishes in vats for months and months and months. They catch them between August and October and the fishing fleet is vast.
Phan Thiet estuary reminds me of old paintings of Whitby from the 1900s when sailing ships jammed together along the banks of the Esk. There are acres and acres of dark brown boats all with turquoise or peppermint green superstructures. There are no eyes on these boats. I wonder why not. I thought all Viet boats had eyes on the bows. Humph...... no seagulls and no eyes. What's going on?
