The painted boats
Hundreds in the bay.
Trevor Mills — CC BY 2.0 · Trevor Mills — CC BY 2.0 · Vyacheslav Argenberg — CC BY 4.0 · Isderion — CC BY-SA 3.0 de
The fishing village is Mui Ne's older face, from before resorts filled the beaches in the mid-1990s, when visitors came to watch the 1995 solar eclipse. In the bay below it hundreds of painted wooden boats ride at anchor, among them the round woven basket boats, thung chai, that fishermen paddle between boat and shore. The time to come is dawn, between five and seven, when the boats return from the night and fish, squid and shellfish are sorted on the sand, women bargain over the catch, and some of it is cooked at stalls on the beach. A viewpoint on the road above the bay looks over the whole fleet. This is a working market, not a tourist site: the smell of fish is strong and the sand is wet, so wear shoes you do not mind spoiling. It is usually combined in one morning with the nearby Red Sand Dunes and Fairy Stream.
Hundreds in the bay.
The catch sorted on the sand.
On the road above the bay.
Mui Ne bay, east of Ham Tien beach
At dawn, between five and seven, when the boats come in and the catch is sorted on the beach; it quietens quickly after that.