A peaceful dawn on Go Gang Raft Village

Update: 15/10/2012
If you have been lucky enough to visit Long Son Island Commune in Vung Tau City, you might not have noticed the beautiful sunrise on the newly-built Go Gang Bridge.

With our aim to witness the activities of a raft village in early morning, my friends and I took a car to drive from Vung Tau City to Go Gang Island in Long Son Commune at 4:30 a.m. Just 40 minutes later we arrived at Go Gang Bridge to admire the whole view of the raft village below and an endless horizon where the sky and the sea mingled into one.

There were not many people traveling on the bridge at that time so we freely jumped and lay on the bridge’s surface for photos and breathed in the fresh air from the sea which was mingled with fish and sea salt.

Just a moment passed and we all made a ‘wow’ as the sun rose from the horizon and dyed the sky dark orange. Our group consisted of five and ten eyes were engrossed with that miracle scene and we pushed our cameras’ buttons in unison. The sun and its changeable colors reflected on the water surface like a giant silk painting and some tiny floating houses bubbled on the water and fishing boats surfing on the water made for some lively patterns.

When the sun was rising above, we decided to come to the small path beneath the bridge to watch fishermen transferring fish from small boats to trucks to take them to the markets. After that, we went to a raft house not for seafood but to watch daily activities of people who live all-year round on the water surface.

After admiring sunrise scene, tourists are advised to pop along to Nha Lon (Great House), a place to worship the great men of Taoism, Confucianism, Ong Tran and his relatives of the Le Family on Long Son Island. The house was built on an area of two hectares and includes a temple, a place to celebrate festivals with a school, a market, and Ong Tran’s graveyard. Or you can climb up to a mountain on the locality to have a panoramic view of the whole of Vung Tau City. Tourists who find it difficult with directions can ask enthusiastic local people so they can obtain useful information about the history and culture of the location.

You may say that the sunrise scene and raft village is the same everywhere but I think it would be different if you do it on Go Gang Island in the early morning, not at the bustling atmosphere of an afternoon party eating seafood as we usually do every weekend.

Source: Saigon Times