I just loved the colourful boats in Vietnam. In the middle and the south, people paint eyes on their boats (we didn’t see this in the north). This has a few reasons:
- They consider their boats as fish. To avoid possible danger, they need eyes.
- If you paint the eyes of a sea serpent on your boat, sea monsters will be deluded and won’t attack.
And the funniest thing? People told us it’s the North Vietnamese who are superstitious.
If you want to know more about why Asian fishermen paint eyes on their boats, check out this article by Nguyen Thanh Loi, who teaches culture at The National College of Education Ho Chi Minh City.
Do you want to discover more about Vietnam? Read what we did.
