Vietnam has a long tradition of building various sorts of boats for seagoing work that are either purely bamboo basketry, or a composite structure consisting of the bamboo basketry supported by greater or lesser amounts of wooden structure. Numerous authors have commented that these boats are more resistant to shipworm than wooden boats and that they are more flexible, better able to survive work in the surf zone. The extremely pragmatic Vietnamese water men simply use them because, for the investment, they best serve the need. These boats take many forms, some of which have spread to every corner of the country’s coastline (e.g., the round variety) and some which remain very local species, found only in the area where they have evolved. Many of them have a long history of development through decades or more, as rowing and sailing vessels, perhaps recently converted to engine power, while others seem to have been recently developed to fill local needs with a relatively inexpensive and durable boat. This paper is the result of 9 years of annual field expeditions of six weeks to two months each, during which the region’s boats were sought out and photographed. Thus, this is the first hand description of the “state of the fleet” as of 2015. It is the author’s expectation that the coastal fishing fleet in the region will undergo radical changes in the coming decades, as a result of legislation and regulation, in response to the availability of other boatbuilding materials and also from the consequences of depletion of both the fish stocks and the forests that have provided the need for boats and the boat building materials. The purpose of this work is to document the vessels in use today and during the past decade, and only secondarily to make any connection to the previous century(s) or imagine the future.