Awake at five, because that is when it happens
Ham Ninh works between five and nine in the morning and is asleep by two in the afternoon, which is why almost every visitor sees the wrong half of it. This is the other half.
At a glance
- Duration
- Six hours, 05:00 - 11:00
- Group
- Maximum 8
- Starts
- Hotel pick-up, 04:40 - 05:10
- Ends
- Back at your hotel by 11:30
- Difficulty
- Easy, but early and often wet underfoot
- From
- USD 39 per person
Why five in the morning is the whole point
Ham Ninh sits on the east coast facing the mainland, in the shallow water where the flower crab are. The village works to the tide and the dark: small boats and basket boats go out in the evening and come back between five thirty and seven, the catch is sorted on the pier, the buyers take it, and by nine the pier is empty. Coaches arrive at eleven, which is why the standard description of Ham Ninh is that there is nothing much to see.
There is a great deal to see at six. Twelve to twenty boats come in on a normal morning. The crab are graded by size on the concrete, live, into blue plastic crates with the small ones thrown back over the edge. The squid boats unload separately and faster, because squid keeps badly. Buyers from Duong Dong stand at the top of the ramp with cash and a set of hanging scales, and the price argument takes about forty seconds because everyone already knows what the price is.
You are not on a viewing platform for this. You are standing on the pier with the crews, four or six of you, and your guide is telling you what is being said. That is only possible because three of our guides are from families in this village, and it stops working entirely above about eight people.
The morning, hour by hour
| Time | What happens | Where |
|---|---|---|
| 04:40 - 05:10 | Hotel pick-up in the dark, in order of distance | Your hotel |
| 05:40 | Arrive at the pier before the first boats | Ham Ninh |
| 05:50 - 07:00 | The boats land, sorting and selling on the concrete | The pier |
| 07:00 | Sit down for breakfast at the kitchen behind the pier | Ham Ninh |
| 08:15 | Walk the village lanes: net repair, drying racks, the temple | Ham Ninh |
| 09:15 | Leave the village as it goes quiet | Ham Ninh |
| 09:30 | Vietnamese coffee at a roadside stall on the Suoi Da Ban road | Inland |
| 10:30 - 11:30 | Back to your hotel | Your hotel |
Times shift by up to thirty minutes with the tide and the weather. On a morning when the fleet stayed in - which happens perhaps fifteen days a year in the southwest monsoon - we tell you the evening before and you choose another date or a refund. We do not run this morning as a walk around an empty pier and charge you for it.
Day by day
Ham Ninh - the boats, the pier and breakfast
You are collected between 04:40 and 05:10. It is a 35 minute drive across the island from Duong Dong on an empty road, and most people sleep through it. There is coffee in the van and we stop for nobody until the pier.
The old stilt pier that appears in every photograph of Ham Ninh was taken down years ago and the replacement took a long time to arrive, which changed the village and not for the better - the boats now work off the shore and a shorter concrete ramp. We will show you where the old one stood and explain what happened, because it is the single most common question and the honest answer is more interesting than the photograph.
Breakfast is at a kitchen fifty metres behind the pier run by a family who have been buying from these boats for three generations. Flower crab steamed with nothing on it, salt-pepper-lime dip, rice porridge, and squid if any came in. You eat at the same table as whoever else is there, which at seven in the morning is crews and buyers rather than visitors.
Prices
| Group size | Shared, per person | Private, whole group |
|---|---|---|
| 1 traveller | USD 68 | USD 68 |
| 2 travellers | USD 54 | USD 118 |
| 3 - 4 | USD 44 | USD 185 |
| 5 - 6 | USD 39 | USD 245 |
| 7 - 8 | USD 39 | USD 305 |
The optional boat hour at 07:30 puts you on a working basket boat with one of the crews for an hour in the shallows, hauling a short line of traps. It costs USD 14 per person, all of which goes to the boat. It is worth doing if the sea is flat and you do not mind sitting in an inch of water. Every other price on the site is broken down on the prices page.
What the price includes
- A guide from the island for the whole morning, in English
- Hotel transfers within Duong Dong, Long Beach, Ong Lang and Cua Can
- Breakfast at the kitchen behind the pier: crab, porridge, squid when landed
- Vietnamese coffee at the roadside stall on the way back
- Drinking water through the morning
- The flat visit fee we pay the kitchen and the crews, paid in front of you
What it does not include
- Alcohol
- The optional 07:30 basket boat hour, USD 14 per person
- Travel insurance
- Anything you buy from the boats or in the village
- Tips
Gallery
Who this morning is not for
- Anyone who will not get up at half past four. This is not a soft start and there is no later version of it - the village is finished by nine.
- People who find the handling of live animals uncomfortable. Crab are sorted and boiled in front of you and we are not going to hide it.
- Families with children under six, who will be asleep on their feet by seven and miserable by eight. From about eight years old it works well.
- Anyone expecting a photogenic stilt village on the water. The old pier is gone. What is here is a real working shore, which is better, but it is not the postcard.
- Travellers who want to shop. There is no shop, and the dried squid stalls that open at eleven for the coaches are closed while we are there.
Questions travellers ask most
What happens if the boats do not come in?
We watch the marine forecast and the crews tell us the evening before. If the fleet is staying in, we call you by 20:00 and you take another date or a full refund. On average that happens about fifteen mornings a year, almost all of them between June and September.
We do not run the morning anyway and hope you will not notice, which is the reason this trip has a cancellation policy at all.
Is the breakfast safe to eat?
It is cooked to order in front of you and the crab were alive ten minutes earlier, which is a better hygiene position than most hotel buffets. The kitchen has been serving the crews for three generations and their customers are not tourists.
If you have a shellfish allergy, tell us when you book and the family cooks something else. Say it in the form rather than on the morning.
Can we take photographs of the crews?
Of the work, yes, freely. Of people, ask first and your guide will ask for you - it takes four seconds and the answer is almost always yes, which is precisely why it is worth asking.
The exception is the money changing hands at the top of the ramp. Do not photograph that. It is the one thing that reliably annoys people here.
Is this the same as the Ham Ninh stop on a standard island tour?
No. The standard island day tour reaches Ham Ninh between eleven and one, when the pier is empty and the dried seafood stalls are the only thing open, and it is normally a commission stop.
We are there five hours earlier for a completely different reason, and there is no shopping element to our morning at all.
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