The First 1000 km, Part 1--Hanoi and Sam Son

Written from Hue (Central Viet Nam) November 20, 2018
I've come, again, to Hue and will be here three days more or less, that being the time it takes to make a new pair of glasses here.  Actually, two pair, since I can count on wrecking one pair every year or so and this is a new, slightly stronger prescription (did I mention old age creeping up??)  I suppose if you're not in Viet Nam the information that Hue has the best optometrists and least expensive eye glasses anywhere I know. . .probably isn't that important to you, but if you're passing through. . .oh well, you understand.
But there have been two factors at work that have limited my writing to you, first, I have been on the road a lot of each day lately, and perhaps more importantly, I've been very slow to get my body and my time zone together this year.  I did bring a bit of a cold with me and that can't have helped, but I've been sub par a long while now, so if not on the road, I tend to be sleeping.  So I've accumulated a fair stack of photos since last I wrote, I think I'll just throw them up for you with enough caption to make sense of them. . .sort of!

My breakfast egg in Hanoi has been fried in this self same pan (or so it looks) for at least the past twelve years.  She makes a fine sandwich, but her husband fries the eggs even better  

Rolling flower shop. . .makes it easy to take a bouquet home.  This is right across the street at the moment.

Cute kids everywhere and they always catch me with the camera.

Ordinary evening traffic on my street.

Amazing what people will buy at a night market.  There's so much for sale I suppose it wears down your resistance.  

Hanoi, especially my neighborhood, is full of art galleries, some lovely, some interesting and others. . .well, somebody must like them. . .

Sometimes the best is not on top

Okay, so it's not realistic, but really pretty, yes?

Oops.  This is just before I got shooed out. ,. .I'd missed the sign that said "no photos!"

You've been to this bakery before, but it's always worth another look to see what they've done now. . .

This is just some of the every day stuff, prices run from 25 cents up to gee, 75 cents for something outrageous (pineapple upside down cake. . . yes)

These next few photos are sort of documents, not great art, but marking the further development of the longshore fishing from Sam Son beach.  Sam Son is about the closest nice beach resort to Hanoi and has become vastly popular in the years I've been passing through, so much so that I have to hunt around for a place to stay and eat that I can afford.  At one end of the beach (it's a couple of miles long) they've built a monstrous "golf and beach resort" with multiple hotels and hundreds of villas and. . .you can barely imagine.  I rode through several years ago before construction was complete.  Now they don't let wanderers like me past the gate.  I suppose if i had a reservation?? But I don't golf!
More importantly for my work, the evolution of the inshore fishery, which has been very vigorous at least since the 1980's, has finally broken almost entirely with the past. . .bamboo and tar used to make their surf boats for example, but the year I broke my leg (2010 was it??) was also the last year bamboo boats have been woven here. . .now they are all fiberglass.  For a while they were just fiberglass copies cast on old woven bamboo hulls, but now even that has passed and they are almost all laid up over other plugs. . .and the design is freed up from the constraints of woven slats of bamboo.  Most noticeably, the chines of the boats are hardening. . .sharp corners between the sides and bottom. . .giving more initial stability, but with some interesting possible problems in bigger waves.  The first generation of the glass boats are now beginning to be worn out and they're being scrapped high up on the beach. . .so they have a life not much different from the old bamboo and tar boats.  They simply break when banged hard enough.  H'mm. Bamboo was famous for bending instead. . .but then the tar leaked.  Oh well.
Another big change in the lifestyle. . .many little diesel powered capstans have been built on the beach, making it easy to simply drag the boats up out of the water. . .one or two men instead of a gang of a dozen pushing the boat up across the sand on old car tires.  The tires still help going downhill though!  There's no winch offshore!!

An old hand cranked diesel single cylinder engine does so many things in Viet Nam, here, with a gear reduction, it winds up the line that pulls the boats up the beach.  Turning fairleads here and there allow the one winch to bring up boats on several different tracks and people can steer the boat as it skids up the sand.  Way easier than pushing up through the sand with a bunch of your friends and neighbors.

The "snail trail" where she was dragged up by the winch.  This is a second generation fiberglass boat, not quite like the old woven baskets, square corners between topsides and bottom instead of the easy round shape of the old ones,

These diesel powered fishing rafts aren't much bamboo anymore.  Three heavy timbers sawn and bolted to the shape, some bamboos bent with heat to make the curve of the bulwarks and split bamboo to cover the styrofoam top and bottom. . .all held together now by heavy monofilament line and a very few bolts.  They're really good boats for landing on the gently sloping beach.  Many are still rigged to sail as well, though only downwind. . .when the breeze suits they'll power upwind then sail downwind dragging their nets.  This is a completed hull, but still needs her mast, cabin, motor and fishing gear. . .about half done.  

This one is not so pretty, but it's working today. . .a very rudimentary cabin, but any shade is very welcome under the hot sun.  They've landed two big baskets of tiny shrimp and now will spin the boat around in the shallows and launch out again for more.

The beginning of the end of today's work for a beach seine team.  There are perhaps 30 people involved and a monstrously long net.  Here they've completed a set and are beginning to pick up the net off the beach and load it onto the raft for the next set.  This raft is an innovation in the past few years, built much like the offshore rafts, including with a diesel engine, but with the engine set way forward and working through a slot down through the hull so that the set can be made in a wide arc offshore from the beach and back in again, enclosing quite an acreage of water.  Then the whole crew works together to haul the net ashore, crowding everything along before it until the catch is all in one small spot and can be transferred to baskets and sold (and carried home too).  The older rafts were not motorized, just poled out to a depth determined by the length of poles the men could swing to push with.  I suspect this is a more productive method, though at much greater cost.  Another nearby team still uses the plain style raft.  H'mm.

If that's it, it was a small haul.  I've seen much more in the past.

Not machine tracks. . .these are the tracks of the crew hauling on the long lines to bring the last of the net ashore.

Tiny shrimp, there are vast quantities coming ashore at fishing ports all along the northern coast just now.