Using only pieces of wood joined together, fishermen in the Tran De estuary, Soc Trang province, can easily and skillfully navigate muddy beaches where the mud is up to their waists. With one foot resting on the makeshift platform, they cast their nets for mullet, hunt for crabs, catfish, and many other types of seafood. This is "mong-going"—a unique livelihood on the mudflats of the Southwestern Mekong Delta.
With its simple wooden planks, the boat helps fishermen easily move across deep, muddy banks.
The fishing boat is very simple to make and doesn't cost much, so many poor fishermen choose it as a means of catching seafood near the shore to make a living. All that's needed is a piece of wood about 3cm thick, over 1m long, and about 50cm wide to make a boat. The wood is planed smooth to be slippery and glide on the muddy water. After sawing the wood, one end is heated with fire and bent to create a point where the boat's nose rises above the mud. Near the middle, a vertical wooden bar serves as a support for the fisherman to hold onto and steer the boat as desired.
At dawn, I followed Mr. Tang Hien and his son to Mo O beach in Trung Binh commune, Tran De district. A small boat carrying rice, water, and other supplies headed towards the sea. Mo O estuary appeared before our eyes. The sun was just rising. The small boat bobbed up and down with the undulating waves. Mr. Hien gripped the helm firmly, his face looking more tense than usual. I joked, "If we keep going towards the sun, the light will shine down on our lives." The small boat sped off. The wind lashed against everyone's faces. Reaching a shallow area, Mr. Hien's son dropped anchor. That's where we stopped the boat to wait for the tide to recede. Looking back, the mangrove trees along the shore were about a few kilometers away.
After anchoring the boat, Mr. Hien began casting his nets for mullet. The water stretched out endlessly, but only knee-deep. A net over 200 meters long intercepted the schools of mullet that had washed ashore to feed on seaweed and were now returning to the open sea with the receding tide. About half an hour later, the water receded completely, revealing large mudflats, and the boat lay still. Mr. Hien's son, Chi Thien, began unloading the fishing gear. Standing on the boat, he gave commands, directed, and lowered the wooden sling. Thien's knee rested on the back of the sling, his hand on the wooden support, his other foot pushing off the mud to propel it smoothly and skillfully. "On a muddy beach where the mud is waist-deep like this, whether we're casting nets for mullet, catching crabs, or setting nets for starry pufferfish, we all use our feet to move around. Without our feet, we can't even lift our feet to walk. If we can't even walk, where would we get the strength to pull in the nets or catch fish? The fishing profession relies on these feet to navigate the mud; without them, we could never move," Mr. Tang Hien asserted.
As the sun rises higher, the tide recedes faster, leaving behind vast stretches of muddy shores, sinking knee-deep. The beach now resembles a "playground" for fishermen, who begin performing graceful and skillful dances with their wooden paddles. From the mangrove forests along the shore, the fishermen paddle out to the water's edge to begin their livelihood. They gather whatever remains on the mud after the tide has receded, such as fish, crabs, shrimp, and snails. According to the fishermen, paddling with a paddle may seem easy, but it requires the right technique to move quickly and maintain stamina. "One leg rests on the raft, while the other pushes off the mud to propel it forward. Both hands grip the handlebars to steer and control the direction as desired. For skilled and healthy fishermen, each push can propel the raft up to 3 meters. In four hours, with just this simple raft, each person can travel 70 to 100 kilometers across the vast mudflats," explained young fisherman Tang Chi Thien, son of Tang Hien.
Today, Mr. Hien and his son, along with other fishermen from Mo O, struck a school of mullet. Their small boats glided along the edges of the nets to remove the fish and put them into buckets. Mr. Hien confidently stated that even a small boat like this could carry up to 150kg while still gliding smoothly through the shallow mud. According to fisherman Nguyen Quoc Kha, this profession is strange; you earn money when your hands and feet are covered in mud, but if your clothes are dry, your pockets are practically empty. "Every day we go out to catch fish and crabs, we earn a few hundred thousand dong. We make a lot of money, but we don't have much left over; it's just enough to get by. We have to go out to catch fish and crabs according to the receding tide, so we can only fish for eight to ten days a month," Mr. Nguyen Quoc Kha explained.
BUI QUOC DUNG/NHAN DAN NEWSPAPER
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