Binh Hung Island

A small island lies in the sea off Cam Ranh. It has a communal house, a pagoda, a shrine, and even a lighthouse built on a mountain. Yet the tourism authorities of the province neither organize nor advertise any tour to take visitors out to it. That raises the question of why.

This is not a question asked for fun. It has a real, clear answer, set down in official papers. The only catch is that the answer does not fit in one sentence. It comes in layers. Peel one away and the next appears, and each one shows a little more of the island called Bình Hưng.

The first layer is the easiest to rule out. Perhaps the island is simply too far away.

It is not. The way out is so familiar that everyone in the area knows it. A road runs to Bãi Kinh. From there a boat, a ghe, makes a crossing of only about half a nautical mile. A nautical mile is the unit seafarers use to measure distance on the water, and half of one is a very short way. The engine starts, the bow cuts the water, and the sea opens out on both sides. Before the ear has grown used to the engine, the far shore is already close. So distance is certainly not the reason.

The second layer lies in the name.

The island goes by two names side by side. In official documents, it is Hòn Chút. In daily life, it is Bình Hưng, the name of the village. People use them interchangeably, sometimes one and sometimes the other, and both point to exactly the same place. A place with two names is often a sign of two ways of seeing it. One is the name used by the people who live there. The other is the name on the papers that manage it. The two views do not contradict each other, but they are enough to signal that the story is not simple.

The third layer is the address.

Today the island belongs to Nam Cam Ranh commune, in Khánh Hòa province. In the past, this area was part of Cam Bình commune, in the city of Cam Ranh. Administrative borders changed, the names of the units changed, and the paperwork had to be written again from the start. The island did not move at all. It stayed exactly where it was, just as it lay before any map ever drew it.

And here is the last layer, the one that answers the first question directly.

Bình Hưng Island lies inside the protective belt around the Cam Ranh military base.

A protective belt sounds like something grand, but it is easy to picture. Someone sets the tip of a pencil on a map and draws a ring around a place that must be kept safe. Everything inside that ring follows its own rules. That is not because there is anything bad inside. It is because something inside needs to be kept undisturbed. This small island sits entirely within that ring.

A circle on paper has a very concrete result in real life. The tourism authorities of the province do not organize or advertise tours to Hòn Chút, which is Bình Hưng Island. This has nothing to do with whether the place is beautiful or not. Some areas on the map are simply kept in a different way, and keeping them matters more than opening them.

The same is true around the lighthouse. It has its own technical area, and there are no-entry signs. Those signs are put up to be obeyed, even when curiosity is calling very loudly.

At this point, another question rises on its own. If the tourism authorities take no visitors to the island, then what is on it?

More than one might expect.

On the island there is a temple called lăng ông Nam Hải. Ông Nam Hải is the whale, honored by coastal fishing communities as a guardian of people who work at sea. There is a shrine called miếu Bà. There is the communal house of Bình Hưng village. And there is Bình Hưng pagoda. Four buildings, four names, standing side by side on a small island in the middle of the sea. A bare rock rising out of the water never has such things. Only where people have lived for a long time, long enough to call it home, do they build places to gather, to burn incense, and to remember.

The people of the island hold a ceremony at lăng ông Nam Hải and a ceremony at the communal house, once every two years.

That rhythm is worth a pause. A birthday comes around once a year. The ceremonies here make people wait twice as long. They wait through two rainy seasons and two sunny seasons, through two rounds of rough seas that settle into calm again. Because the wait is so long, the whole village knows when the day arrives. A child who grows up on the island grows up to that rhythm, a rhythm slower than the calendar on the wall.

The lighthouse stands apart. Hòn Chút lighthouse sits on Hòn Bù mountain. By day it is only a quiet tower printed against the sky. By night it does exactly what its Vietnamese name says: it is a lamp of the sea. Its light is not meant for the people on the island, because they already know the way home. It is for those out there on the dark water, who need a point of light to know where they are.

Put all the layers together, and the first question changes shape.

Asking why the tourism authorities take no visitors to the island turns out to be asking in the wrong place. The better question is who the island is for.

The answer lies in the things that are already there. A temple, a shrine, a communal house, a pagoda, and a ceremony that comes back every two years. People built these things for themselves, not for visitors passing through. The communal house does not hold its festival because someone has come to look. It holds it because the time for its ceremony has come.

Seen that way, the whole matter feels lighter. There is, it turns out, a way to hold a place close without ever setting foot there. It is to know that the place is real. It is to know that in the sea off Cam Ranh lies an island with two names, sitting inside a circle drawn on a map. And there, people still hold the communal house ceremony once every two years, steadily, with no need for anyone to watch.

What remains are questions that have no answers yet. One is how large the island looks from Bãi Kinh. Another is what sounds ring out on the day of the communal house ceremony in Bình Hưng. A third is who climbs Hòn Bù mountain to watch over the lamp when night falls. Those questions can wait. A good question is not spoiled by having no answer yet. It simply lies quiet, waiting for its turn, just like the ceremony on the island.

Night falls over the sea off Cam Ranh. On Hòn Bù mountain, the lighthouse comes on and sends ring after ring of light across the water, steady and patient, never missing a night. Below it, the roof of the Bình Hưng communal house rests quietly in the dark, waiting for its festival season to come around again.