Imagine a tempestuous night, a gale ripping rooftops. A thin, one-handed fisherman named Nguyen Thi Hung huddles in a weathered wooden boat—his home—as Tropical Storm Washi thrashes Halong Bay, in northern Vietnam. The storm splits a fishing boat in half; it kills 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 boat’s blazing lights, which beckon squid to 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 people 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 California’s , Vietnam so depends on water that 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 is 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 beyond 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. Nine years later, I am still haunted by the flavor of an exquisite curried crab that retains a vibrant place among my taste memories. 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. Strolling 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, three 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.
It is boisterous. Traffic beeps, a passing man pushes a make shift cart of steaming corn. And then it comes: the largest, juiciest crab I’ve ever seen, its body resting on a bed of fried lemongrass and garlic. I crack the crab, smack my lips, and am reassured: My Halong Bay remains.
And so do the idiosyncrasies of Vietnam. Just as I finish, the cops arrive, brandishing nightsticks. They topple tables, snuff out grills, and confiscate food from stalls across the street. A Vietnamese sidewalk is no place for capitalism. I’ve seen scenes like this several times, in back alleys and neighborhood streets. It’s the sort of daily subjugation that hides behind a smiling facade. A day later, the stalls are back and the cops are there relaxing. Honestly, if running-dog street stalls were vanquished, where would the proletariat drink tea?
The next morning, I board a ferry with dozens of commuters to the “other” Halong City, across the bay, where fishing families moor in the harbor until their next trip to sea. They’re anchored 100 yards from Cho Halong, a cacophonous market that hangs its rump over the water. Taxi boats shuffle people to and fro, but the real action is in the market itself.
It’s a whirlwind of activity—crawling shrimp, slithering eels, snapping crabs, and shoppers hunting for perfect specimens. Vendors crouch on plastic stools beside their seafood caboodle. Sellers wear rubber boots and grubby togs and stash money in their bras. Buyers show up in high heels and gold chains, stuffing bills into wallets held high. A girl with squid wants me to buy; I tell her I have no kitchen in Vietnam, and all the women tsk-tsk at the tragedy.
There are smells here, definite smells: the fish, the diesel motors, the stench of a bubbling sewer, all black sludge and garbage on the market fringe. I hire a 16-year-old girl named Tuoi to row me around the boats surrounding the market. Men peel vegetables as we pass, women cuddle babies, dogs snap at intruders. Anyone who thinks the fishing life quaint need only spend a little time with Tuoi. But they rarely do, she tells me. Most tourists are much more inclined to skip the city entirely, heading straight for the bay.
And there it is: all those limestone nubs sprouting from the sea, with hundreds of new “antique” junks heading toward them like a trail of ants across the water. I have booked an excursion on the Emeraude, a swank remake of a 19th-century French paddle wheeler. When it sets sail from the dock in Halong City, I strike up a conversation with a young deckhand named Nguyen Giang, who is pleased to have an American along. “Now our two countries have very good economic and political relations,” he tells me. I tell Giang I want to learn more about the fishermen who live and work on the waters around there, but he can’t help. “The fishermen never come to town,” he says. “They stay on the boat.” Though Giang has spent most of his years in this coastal province, he says that he knows no fishermen.
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