.: MENU goes East - A fishing village and pearls on Ha Long Bay

Monday, June 27, 2016

MENU goes East - A fishing village and pearls on Ha Long Bay

On our second day we were taken to visit the Vung Vien floating fishing village. Most of the people now live on land, some have remained but they still earn their income from the sea and it was very interesting to see how they used to live and still work afloat

The village is now all on moored pontoons and is situated in a secure bay which protects it from the weather. They can get very bad typhoons in the area

The boats on which people live and from which they fish

It's a small cabin but, apparently, it serves their needs

In the Information Centre, Huang explains how the village works. There is also a small museum and a social centre

We were then taken on a tour in these small boats (4 people at a time) rowed by very adept and strong rowers, mostly women

Off we set

all wearing our life jackets

And we were offered the traditional conical hats as protection from the sun. Made from palm leaves, bamboo and bark "Non la (palm-leaf conical hat) is a traditional symbol of Vietnamese people without age, sex or racial distinctions"

Standing up to row

Our rower was a friendly man

Lynne took the offer of the hat. One is very cool underneath it; no wonder it is still in use

Passing houseboats

in the shelter of the rock formations

Up closer, you can see the nets and other fishing paraphernalia

Nowadays the houses float on polyethylene drums

Working boats, with fishermen tending their nets

Hundreds of tiny fish in tanks beneath us. Fish farming is part of the operation

A school for the village children

Shrimp and crab nets

We head for the hole in the rock. The wind blowing through it was strong and the rowers had to turn round

This is the pearl fishery. The oysters are grown on strings beneath the buoys

Pearl oysters growing. It takes at least 5 to 6 years before they might produce a pearl and the odds are low

These are the more mature oysters, which have been seeded

We watched this expert seeding the oysters. First he prises them open gently, places a small piece of antiseptic and then the round bead that the oyster will coat with nacre over the next few years until it produces a cultured pearl. When that is done, he closes them and they go back into the sea. The bead is an irritant and the oyster produces calcium carbonate to coat the irritant, which becomes nacre or mother of pearl