Basket Boat Races

Since moving to Quy Nhon about a month ago, life has sort of settled into a routine. Granted, it was a great routine—full of spending time with students and fun teammates, finding new coffee shops in town, and preparing to teach come October—but it was a routine nonetheless. Thus, when the opportunity to participate in a really weird group activity came up last weekend, we took it.

The event was called "The Basket Boat Race" and it was pretty much what you might imagine a basket boat race would be like. A little background information first, though, for the uninitiated: Quy Nhon has a sizeable fishing fleet—squid and many other squishy, fishy delicacies are plentiful in these waters. Rather than going to the trouble of constructing a marina, though, the fishermen simply anchor their boats in the shallows near shore and shuttle back and forth in small, round boats that look like baskets.

Combine this background information with the fact that Quy Nhon also plays host to a frequently-changing group of Peace-Corps-ish volunteers from New Zealand and you end up with an official Basket Boat Race. The Kiwis of Quy Nhon took it upon themselves to give all comers—not just Vietnamese fishermen—a chance to experience the glory of the basket boat. And, like true Westerners, they went and turned it into a competition.

Starting at the unconscionable hour of 7:00 Saturday morning, a random group of foreigners and Vietnamese began to gather on the beach across the street from the university. By 8:15, after only a few miscommunications and troubled translations, everyone was ready to don their bright orange life jackets and paddle their hearts out in groups of three. Everyone, that is, except for me (Steven) since I chose to be the official group photographer/videographer.

The resulting chaos (and fun) is chronicled in the video below.