To catch a glorious sunrise on Tam Giang Lagoon, you are supposed to wake up at 3 am. Yes, that was what I did last Sunday.
When I arrived at Asian Travel Mate Office on Lê Lợi Str. at 4am, many guests were already there waiting for the bus, ready for the sun-seeking trip. I could read from their faces that they wished they could have slept a little bit more. But it was too late to come back now as the bus had appeared from nowhere.
After brief greetings, a few guests tried to take some rest on the bus. Outside, the moon was faint but very round. It looked lonely admiring its own beauty while the paddy fields below were soundly asleep. We hit the lagoon at about 4:45am (My alarm clock rings at this time every morning to wake me up for a jogging.) to stumble upon the splendid sunrise cracking from the horizon. Its glory reflected on the stretching quiet waters which were stirred up by the sampan people’s paddles from time to time.
We were absorbed in the beauty of the dawn when a small boat approached the shore where we stood and picked us up. Sitting on the wet panel of the thin boat, we glided towards the sun, playing hide-and-seek behind the clouds with a silver lining. We were transferred to a bigger boat which later on brought us closer to house-sampans on the lagoon. The cover of this boat was turned into a sundeck which was, for me, a terrific idea. From this sundeck, life of the people on this lagoon was vividly happening in front of us. I saw people selling and buying fishes harvested from the lagoon, a little boy yawning to welcome a new day, a whole family, mom, dad and two children, sitting balance on a thin boat rowing through the darkness and the dawn. All intermingles into a picturesque and peaceful scene of life.
Our boat was running with the sunlight and snaking among the maze of fish traps. At time, we stopped to check the traps but mostly the contents had been emptied by their owners. I guess we were not early enough! When the sun got higher, guests started to lie down on the sundeck side by side, sunbathing in the first light of the day, indulging in the generous breeze and admiring the blue clear sky above them. I beheld the sunlight dancing in the water, the maze of fish traps showing off their owners’ cleverness before closing my eyes and enjoying a lovely morning on Tam Giang Lagoon.