Fisherman pulling his coracle also called 'basket boat' or 'thung chai', woven from bamboo, up the Cua Dai Beach near Hoi An, Vietnam, Southeast Asia

---

The thung chai, or “basket boat”, traces its history back to the French colonial era. As the story goes, the French arrived in Vietnam and began levying taxes left, right and centre – including a tax on the ownership of boats. Most of the poor Vietnamese fishermen who depended on boats for their livelihood could not afford to pay the taxes, so they invented a new type of boat: the thung chai. As they were woven from bamboo the fishermen argued they were not boats but baskets and therefore could not be taxed.

---

Size: 3645px × 2421px
Location: Hoi An, Vietnam, Southeast Asia
Photo credit: © Wendy Johnson / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: adult, asia, asian, bamboo, basket, beach, boat, chai, coast, coastal, coracle, cua, culture, dai, destination, drag, dragging, east, edge, ethnic, fish, fisherman, fishermen, fishing, hemispherical, hoi, holiday, landscape, male, man, natural, outdoors, poor, rural, sand, sandy, seashore, seaside, south, thung, tourism, tourist, tradition, traditional, travel, vacation, viatnamese, vietnam, water, waterfront, waters, waterside, world, woven