On the Waterfront
Tourists throng to Vietnam's Halong Bay for scenic beauty and delicious seafood. But for locals, Halong is the center of an age-od culture that resolves entirely around the sea
By Karen Coates Photographs by Jason Lowe
Imagine the tempestous night, a gale ripping rooftops. A thin, one-handed fisherman named Nguyen Thi Hung huddles in a weathered wooden boat-his-hom-as Tropical Storm Washi thrashes Halong Bay, in northern Vietnam. The storms splits a fishing boat in half, it killls a shrimp farmer in his field. Hung loses a few nights of work at sea. He worries about his next catch. He always worries as he toils beneath his boats's blazing lights, which beckon squid ot the murky surface: Will he catch enough? It depends on luck.
Just south of China, Halong Bay is saturated with beauty-nearly 2,000 limestone isles jutting precipitously from the lapis-colored sea. It's the place to visit in Vietnam today, but it is more than that; it's a place of historical eminence as well. For it was here that some of Vietnam's first peoploe got their start, more than 25,000 years ago. They lived in island caves and survived by the sea. They fished. They ate. And they set the tempo of a culture. Even today, from its wet rice paddies with fattened fish to a coastline longer than CFalifornia's, Vietnam so depends on wate rthat the same word, nuoc, means both "water" and "country" in Vietnamese. As everyone living on the bay understands, a Vietnam without water is a Vietnam without food.
These days, Halong Bay makes it into every guidebook. It's a place where tourists are told they can "discover the real Vietnam." Thousands of visitors bob on these waters, crammed onto wooden junks fashioned to look antique. At the same time, Halong Bay is a place where people like Hung work hard and eat cheap, just beyound the tourists' gaze.
It was in Halong Bay, on my first excursion to Asia, in 1996, that I ate some of the most memorable meals of my life. Nice years later, I am still haunted by the flavor of an exquisite curried crab that retains a vibrant place among my taste momories. Today, I live in Thailand, where the fish is good - but not good enough to banish the memory of lime-drizzled fish, of meals prepared by aunts and mothers in the corridors of ancient Vietnamese villages. It was time, I thought, to revisit Halong Bay.
And then Tropical Storm Washi blows ashore.
But I will not be deterred. After waiting around in Hanoi for the storm to pass, I scuttle off to Halong City by taxi. This is not an especially pretty town, but it makes up for that with its truly outstanding seafood. Scrolling through the streets, I pass a humble little restaurant called Toan Huong, where customers are crowded inside and out, and tables clog the sidewalk. I spot a gathering of a dozen relatives, theree generations, with grandma at the center, and I instantly know this is the restaurant for me: No respectable Vietnamese family takes grandma to dinner at a dump.
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Ingredients for sour fish-head soup |
A basket of baitfish |
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Tending to the spring rolls |
Karaoke night in Bay Chay |
| Photographer: Jason Lowe - Gourmet Magazine | |
Most villagers rarely sit at a table or set food on shore. Legs grow wobbly with time. "I go to land about once a month," Hung says, "I don't walk very well." His life, like that of his neighbors, is firmly anchored in the sea.
It's a life, a job, that has cosst him plenty. Twenty years ago, before he could afford a boat and net, he fishes using dyanmite. It's illegal, but people do it. Hung made a living that way. Until he blew off his right hand.
I paddle away from Hung and board the John Gray boat again. We set off into a gorgeous sunset with pink and orange cascades lighting the islands. Lounging in a deck chair, I take in the scene, as fishing boats wobble in the bay.
Inside, a feast awaits. It seems incongrous, extravagant: a salad with tomato-peel flowers and carrot florets, corn soup with shrim and crab, a whole fish garnished with ginger and tomatoes - enough to feed a family of eight. I sit on a plush red chair at a table with white linen. A uniformed waiter pours a glass of wine and sets the bottle to chill in an ice bucket. An evening breeze whispers through the wooden windows of this massive boat I have chartered exclusively for myself, three times the size of a squid boat and incomparable in elegance and sheer comfort.
The food keeps coming, I keep eating. I think of Hung.
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Source: Gourmet - Travel (December 2006)
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