In my previous post, I talked about the first “agritourism” or “ecotour” tour we did during out recent, month-long trip through Vietnam (thanks to Vietnam Central Coastal Tourism!): Wet Rice Farming with Water Buffalo, and how awesome it was! The second one, also with Jack Tran’s Ecotours, was Fishing and ‘Palm Paradise’, and it was great fun, as well!
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| Elisse casts her fishing net! |
As Dan and I like “active” excursions, where we can actually “do” things and learn stuff, we deliberately chose these two excursions, (which the Nam Hai Resort had sent us information on, prior to our arrival), as they were truly unique, and allowed us to not only learn about traditional Vietnamese agricultural practices, but to actually DO them, and have a lot of fun in the process! I’ve wanted to go to sea in a basket fishing boat ever since seeing them on the shore in Qui Nhon back in 2008 (see my blog posts on our trip through Vietnam after April 2008), and this time I got my chance! And they are amazing (and fun) little boats!
We started the day in the dockyard, watching people repair and do maintenance on the fishing boats, including Jack’s. While our rice farm tour was given by another member of the team, Jack himself gave us this tour, as his expertise is in fishing, coming from a multi-generational fishing family that lives in this area.
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| In the dockyard… |
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| Traditional Vietnamese basket fishing boats… |
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| Elisse and Dan, ready to fish! |
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| Ready to fish- with a cooler full of beer! 🙂 |
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| View from our boat… |
Then we took a basket fishing boat out to Jack’s boat, and went out to sea, where a charming (and extremely patient) older fishing couple demonstrated and then taught us to cast the fishing nets! It was amazing to see them toss the huge net, seemingly effortlessly, into a giant flower- and it was incredible to then try to do it and not totally fail at it!
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| The fishing couple who taught us to cast the nets… |
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| Watching the net being perfectly cast… |
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| How it’s SUPPOSED to look… |
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| Elisse gets ready to swing and cast the net… |
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| Elisse casts the net! |
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| “Palm Paradise” |
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| Basket boat fun! |
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| Elisse with her crown of palms, rowing in circles… |
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| A barge full of palms, soon to be a roof… “Palm Paradise”… |
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| Totally adorable! |
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| Happy Dan! Our delicious seafood lunch on board! |
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| Stuffed squid- Elisse in seafood heaven! |
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| This is why we love to travel! |
We had a truly delicious seafood lunch on board, including excellent stuffed squid- and we were both stuffed by the time we were finished!
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| Our boat… |
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| Back at the lighthouse… |
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| We raised and lowered the fishing net by pedaling with our feet! |
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| Dan folds the net between his fingers… |
Docking, we went on shore, climbed up into the stand, and, pedaling like mad, raised and lowered the net with our feet! Then we ran down to see if we’d actually netted any fish!
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| Dan’s catch! |
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| readies the net… |
We had a great day with Jack and highly recommend this tour, too. He offers truly unique and well-planned tours that not only enable tourists to have fun while learning about traditional Vietnamese agriculture, they help his community by providing income and prosperity to the residents. The delightful (and patient!) fishing couple who taught us to cast the nets, as well as Jack, his assistant, and “Capt. Cook”, were all good-natured, and seemed to genuinely enjoy the day, and how much pleasure we derived from the experience.
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| …and Dan casts the fishing net! |
Yes, these tours are “Must Dos” when you go to Vietnam!
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