My love of boats

I am passionate about boats. I love to draw them and back home in England I even lived on one for 10 years. I can sit and watch boats bob about in a harbour for hours. Just listening to the slap of ropes on masts and watching fishermen mend nets and wind ropes fills me with delight. One of the big benefits of living near the river or the coast in Vietnam is being able to enjoy a seemingly endless variety of traditional wooden boats and ships that move along the canals and rivers and gather in harbours along the coast.

I reckon I was born with some salt water in my veins because my mother’s family were seafarers in the north of England. I can just about remember wooden sailing boats coming and going in their home town but sadly the fishing industry is almost extinct in the UK which is a sad loss.

Here in Vietnam, however boats still form a major part of the transport systems internationally, nationally and locally. Whether you want to ship rice to Australia or take your chickens to market, boats are often the best way from A to B. Many communities in rural areas are only accessible by boat so the rhythms of the tides, the winds and the rain are the factors that set the pace of life.

Here are some of my favourite things to do on the water...........

I like to take a little wooden boat down the river in Hoi An at the end of the afternoon and return to the quay side by the market just as the sun is beginning to set. The low afternoon sun casts a warm glow over the ancient town and paints beautiful reflections in the silken waters of the river.

The thrill of taking a speed boat up the Saigon River to Cu Chi is hard to beat as way to spend a morning. Weaving through the floating islands of water hyacinths leaving a sparkling white wake behind you is truly exhilarating.

A truly evocative sight is the estuary at Phan Thiet which is jammed with traditional, wooden fishing boats moored so close together you could almost walk from one end of the town to the other across their decks.  Teams of fishermen work on their boats and the women ferry supplies and men from ship to shore in coracles and small wooden tenders. The sight from the bridge over the Song Ca Ty (river Ca Ty) reminded me of old paintings of the fishing ports of England a hundred years ago. It was like bringing history to life.

Take a trip from Saigon to Vung Tau on the hydrofoil to experience the open wildness of the river with its backdrop of blue and purple hills in the distance. Go speeding past the crotchety fishing boats with their double and triple tiered wheelhouses and wave to the light house keeper as you pass by.

Arrive in Vung Tau and walk along the beach amongst the curly fishing boats and fishermen fixing their nets.

Shrine house decorated for New Year

Yesterday, we went on a long bike ride along the river. On the way we passed a beautifully decorated shrine house. 

Suspended from the ceiling inside was the big red drum that the cox beats to keep the oarsmen in rhythm and two model dragon boats - one for Hoi An and the other for Cam Chau.

As you ca'n see from the photo, the Hoi An boys are sitting up and rowing but the Cam Chau oars are 'up' . I guess this might mean that Hoi An won the cup last year and that Cam Chau was the loser. 

As we cycled further we came to a meadow with a huge boat house in the middle.  I estimate this boat to be about 60 feet long. In teh bow were the still smouldering joss sticks that must have been lit by team members that morning as they prayed for victory in the coming year.

Chuc Mung Nam Moi ..................... Happy New Year everyone.

What? ..... No Seagulls?

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?