The painted eyes on the bows of Phu Quoc boats

Boat eyes at the fishing wharf

Each pair of painted eyes can have its own expression: some are outlined with heavy, forceful strokes, others use lighter, brighter colour. For a boatbuilder or owner, the eyes can be a personal mark, a decorative detail and part of a long-standing custom of praying for a safe voyage.

Below those bows, the fishing wharf carries on with ropes, fish crates and constant conversation. Walkways are often wet with seawater and crowded with working gear, so visitors should observe from public areas where they can stay safe without getting in the crews' way. The harbour changes hour by hour with the tide and fishing season.

A small detail that opens onto the whole estuary

The eyes on a boat may draw you in first, but stay a little longer and the rhythm of the river mouth becomes clearer: boats following the channel, crews loading and unloading, and careful preparation before heading into open water. The brush marks on the bow and the work on the wharf belong to the same story of island life.

Boat-eye motifs once seen around Rach Gia, Phu Quoc and the Gulf of Thailand often used round eyes painted black and red against a blue field. Local tradition distinguishes some Phu Quoc fishing boats by eyes painted looking downward towards the water, unlike motifs that look straight ahead in places such as Can Duoc or An Giang. Fishermen associated that downward gaze with finding fish below and avoiding reefs and submerged rocks.

Why are Phu Quoc's painted boat eyes becoming less common?

Several practical changes help explain the decline:

• Steel and composite hulls: Traditional wooden boats have increasingly given way to composite vessels and larger steel-hulled boats for offshore fishing. As materials and construction methods change, hand-carved or hand-painted boat eyes are less naturally part of the building process.

• Navigation technology: Fishing crews once relied heavily on accumulated experience and spiritual customs. Modern boats now use GPS, radar and fish finders, so the symbolic eyes no longer carry the same practical place in how crews think about finding their way.

• Fewer artisans maintaining the ritual tradition: Painting the eyes has been associated with experienced craftsmen and, in some traditions, ceremonies before the first brush stroke. As older artisans in Kien Giang have passed away, fewer younger people have learned a craft tied to those rituals and taboos.

• Commercialisation and standardised boatbuilding: Some tourism and night-squid-fishing boats are built to industrial forms that omit the eye motif or reduce it to a quick decorative mark, losing some of the older character associated with the downward-looking eyes.

As these painted eyes become less common around river mouths such as Duong Dong and An Thoi, they also mark a wider shift from older waterway traditions towards a more industrial fishing and tourism economy.