Awesome coracle village in La Gi town

On bad weather days, the coracles are pulled up to the shore covering around 500m of the sand line. When the sky and the sea are more calm down, they start casting nets on those coracles. The life of a fisherman who casts nets along the shore by coracles is hard enough to cover his family's daily living expenses.

Villagers start going to the sea

In the days of June 2023, we witnessed the big waves in the Tan Hai commune with several fishing boats moored in the distance. The people on the boat dropped the coracles into the sea and shook them until they reached ashore. Foreign tourists found it curious that they took pictures continuously. The boat was round like half a giant ball, with no bow, no stern, and no hull; even though the waves hit back and forth, they still surfed on every strong wave. The fisherman would turn the coracle over when it was hit by the storm, shake it for a few times and then climb into the basket. A fisherman, Nguyen Van Hieu, over 70 years old, in Tan Hai commune and familiar with fishing by coracles for decades, shared: "Once I was hit by a wave on a rocky island, the rock wall stood up and the waves hit constantly. Normally, it is hard for ordinary boats to overcome this wave, but the coracle just floated on the waves and was not damaged much. Therefore, on the journey to conquer reef seas or fishing grounds, old fishers often have coracles that were accompanied by large boats as a tool going ashore or fishing squid far away; it was like a "supportive arm" whenever the ship went out to fish...".

Old fisherman Hieu added: "It's not easy to sit or control the coracle as it looks. First of all, the feet need to stand firmly in the middle of the coracle, two hands grasp the rim of the basket, the body forwards to the expected direction, and the hips and shoulders shake vigorously to move the coracle forward. The more well a person shakes, the more quickly the coracle moves. Moving the coracles by using the body has become an annual contest in many coastal localities…”. Nowadays, in some fishing villages, people not only use coracles for fishing but also for serving tourism. Visitors can experience rowing coracles or the boat owner will carry a few more customers to admire the scenery near the shore.