Ancient Traditions

Yesterday we went down to the water where the Chinese-style fishing nets are set up. As you see from the photo, they use a cantilever system that is quite ingenious. We haven’t seen them in operation yet, but hope to one of these mornings when we have recovered completely from jet-lag.



The scene is very lively in this fishermen’s enclave. They pull their long black boats up on shore and lay a tarp on the sand. Then they work together to untangle the net into a huge puffy pile while removing the shrimp and small fish from the netting and throwing them onto the tarp. Some of the fishermen worked on their boats. Others carried fish in huge plastic containers filled with ice – taking them to the market area.


Makeshift tents provide some shade for the fish vendors and their catch. I recognized some of the fish (red snapper, shark, prawns, octopus) but many were new to me. Lots of haggling was going on and people roamed around checking out their options. It seemed like the bulk of the buying may have happened earlier, since not much money was exchanged for fish while I was there.

We writers straggled along the shore with our notebooks, finding shady spots in which to write down a few impressions, reflections, thoughts.