At 3 am, Hoi An’s streets resemble dog-gnawed pork bones, licked clean of all scent and viscera. No light, no noise, no movement. But that’s the time you must venture out to witness the Duy Hải Fish Market in action.
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After you cross the Cửa Đại Bridge leading away from Old Town, you’ll turn into a warren of homes and notice the first signs of activity. A few motorbikes rumble in the distance, some homes have lights on, and finally, on the tiny streets that lead to the water, small restaurants and coffee shops emerge, brightly lit against the lampblack dark. In a simple wooden-walled shop playing bolero, middle-aged men slap playing cards onto plastic tables filled with phin filters and drinking glasses. Their workdays are already over and it is time to relax now that they are back on firm ground. At the docks, women are just beginning to work as sanguine light clots on the horizon.
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A fish market is a testament to the messiness of making things work. All-purpose plastic bins and baskets fill with fish, the mucus-slick scales shimmering on the cement like dropped costume jewelry. Women weigh, sort and separate the catch before selling them to the wholesalers who will take them into town for use in restaurants and grocery stores. These are family operations: the women work in concert with their fathers, husbands or brothers who steer the boats towards the dock. This is not a place for fashion. Mismatched pajamas. Stained sweatshirts and tattered hats are the ad hoc uniforms for those crouching in knee-high rubber boats, occasionally splashed by the water seemingly trickling everywhere. Fish blood and exhaust linger in the air.
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While removed from the immediate action, the commotion is no less intense on the water. Duy Hải’s handful of docks service a good number of boats coming in from the sea, and smooth coordination is required to bring them in efficiently and without collision. The conventions governing the order and procedure of their arrivals is beyond outsiders, instead it operates with a mysterious mathematics not unlike the currents themselves: we don’t understand it, but we trust it.
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Frayed and tangled nets with stained floats and bobbers pile on the boat decks. Weather-battered wood boasts brightly colored, peeling paint; the familiar eyes at the front are chipped and fading. A sluice of salty muck, algae, oil, and sweat lay a damp sheen to every surface. Only the ocean surface below or the cloud cover above hints at purification, some clean future; a hot shower, and the clear broth the catch will accompany
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As six am nears, there is little end to difficult work to be done, but the daylight ushers in a new hazard: tourists. With matching paint jobs and helmets,, motorbikes near the dock, and camera-gripping visitors descend on the scene. The men transferring fish to shore, and the woman shouting prices and preferences to eachother must now be mindful of the interlopers. Duy Hải, like many sites of traditional activity, has now become a spectacle for foreigners and locals alike. It’s a good time to depart. And looking back from the bridge, the chaos imperceptible, a hint òf the day’s heat already draped on the mountains in the distance, we are reminded of the peculiar, frail shuffling our species does along the hem of the great oceans.
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