Livelihoods in the Flood Season, Part 2: Boatbuilders cling to a fading craft

At the start of the flood season, Bà Đài Creek in Long Hậu Commune, Đồng Tháp Province, gives little sign that it was once one of the region’s busiest boatbuilding villages. Yet older residents still remember the sound of saws and chisels from morning until night, and the workshops that once struggled to keep up with orders.

The craft was closely tied to life on the waterways. During the flood season, a boat carried people, fish and goods, and served as a livelihood for residents who cast nets, set traps and visited their fields. In 2015, the boatbuilding craft was recognized as a national intangible cultural heritage.

Today, abandoned sawmills and boat workshops sit beneath weeds. Yards that once overflowed with timber and newly built boats have fallen quiet. Only a handful of workshops still keep their fires burning.

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Now I mainly make these small ones for restaurants and tourist sites, for landscaping. Customers order more near Tet for decoration.

At one small workshop beside the creek, 55-year-old Nguyễn Văn Tám was finishing wooden boats after more than 30 years in the trade. But his new boats are too small to row on the river. They are made for decoration.

“Now I mainly make these small ones for restaurants and tourist sites, for landscaping. Customers order more near Tet for decoration,” Tám said. Each sells for 600,000 dong. He recalled a time when he could build more than 100 boats of different sizes a year. Now he sells fewer than 20 in an entire year. “I only dare build when a customer orders first. If I build them in advance and there is no buyer, my capital is just tied up,” he said.

Nearby, 60-year-old Nguyễn Văn Ích continues to build boats by hand, as he has for more than 40 years. He recalls that around 1986, more than 200 households in the area practiced the trade. The number later fell to more than 100, then to several dozen. Today, fewer than 10 households remain.

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I only dare build when a customer orders first. If I build them in advance and there is no buyer, my capital is just tied up.