Oct 23, 2009 – Three women rowing in bamboo basket boat, Vietnam – Sami Sarkis / Getty Images

• This watery nation is home to one of the world’s rarest mammals.
  They only recently discovered it
• “Rub-a-dub-dub, three maidens in a tub…”
  Where will they make landfall?
• Who in this war-torn land could prevail against an undefeatable enemy?
  Two sisters, warrior queens
• Want to sail the ocean blue in your very own bamboo boat?
  Start here

These amazing basket boats are woven from bamboo, and lacquered in some fashion to make them waterproof. They are lightweight and easy to carry from place to place, apparently good in shallow water because of little draft, and often used as tenders for larger boats. But they are also utilized for fishing and getting from place to place in their own right, as this guy demonstrates. His curious use of a plastic pot is atypical for steerage or propulsion, as normally a paddle is used in seasaw fashion to advance the vessel at walking pace. Perhaps he is bailing, as appears to be the case, but the boat does seem to be setting well in the water. Controlling these boats is another mystery to the uninitiated, as you might well imagine, in that they tend to just go round and round like a spinning bowl in the water when powered with improper technique. One of those things you have to know how to do, looking somewhat easy as you observe local use, but quite baffling without proper instruction and lots of frustrating practice. They tend to be freqently seen throughout central Vietnam. Where bamboo basketry of all sorts is commonplace, this is one of the larger, more inventive uses. People baskets, intended to contain the water on the outside rather than within.

Source: Photographie Irie