South East Asia Adventure | Fishing and other craziness in Hoi An

This post was written by Margaret.
“Give a girl a fish; you have fed her for today. Teach a girl to fish; and you have fed her for a lifetime”

Hoi An was a delight – partly because of our very entertaining guide and part because we were able to participate in Vietnamese life rather than just observing it as you feel you do most of the time when you are a tourist. 

On our first day in Hoi An we took a trip on the river that started with a basket boat ride out to the fishing boat.

As you can see, Nguyen our guide – though vertically challenged or perhaps because of it – had a great sense of humor, and loved to entertain. (And his wife does laundry. Travel Tip: don’t send white clothes to a hand laundry!)

We loaded onto Captain Cook’s boat and were greeted by the captain (cook) and two crew members – that’s a 2:1 ratio of crew to client! Not bad service. Here is the crew and Carol on the boat.

Views back to the beach and of other boats in the harbor were wonderful: bright greens and turquoise, fishing boats of all shapes and sizes.   I think our first stop was to see a beautiful house constructed of bamboo and other local woods with all the furniture hand made by the owner. They served us tea on the porch  - using  a teapot and cups also I think of bamboo (was that right Carol?) then we walked through the village to another dock where the boat picked us up again. Our guides had made presents for us.

Then starts the fishing.

There are many ways to catch fish. Very large nets, tied to four large poles in the water, connected to an apparatus on shore that you climb on in order to pump these pedals that shorten the ropes that attach the net to the four poles, thereby raising the net from the water.  If you are lucky there are fish caught in the net.  You pluck them out one by one! and throw them in a bucket.

Then there is the net you throw from the boat. Harder than it looks!  

How it is supposed to be done.

Carol caught on very quickly to the net throw though we could not have survived on her catch that day.

But no problem, Captain Cook lived up to his name. Back on our own boat again we sat down to one of the best meals of the trip. Several kinds of shrimp, spring rolls of course fresh out of the pan, egg pancake also with shrimp, calamari, rice crackers, a great Larue beer, and a picture is worth a thousand words. It was just all so fresh – and the captain had brought all the ingredients with him in a cooler and cooked everything on this boat that didn’t even have an obvious galley. 

I can’t leave this post without mentioning the artistic talents of our guide who was with us throughout Hoi An, the trip over the pass to Hue including the marble mountain and around Hue. In addition to providing us with an impromptu ride to town with both of us on the back of his motorcycle, Nguyen loved (old) pop music and loved to sing and when we met he immediately began humming a tune that we thought sounded familiar but the words didn’t seem quite right.  Before he left us in Hue – which was several days after the fishing trip, we begged for a recordable rendition of the song, so here it is.