Cu Lao Cham Islands

A mouthful of water, cool, clear and sweet. After many days adrift at sea, with only salt on the lips, nothing is more precious. And out in the salt sea, about 15 kilometers east of the Cửa Đại pier, an old well has kept that sweetness for hundreds of years. The well stands on Cù Lao Chàm.

Cù Lao Chàm is a group of eight islands, large and small. Together they curve in a bow that faces the mainland, like a folding screen sheltering Đại Chiêm, the old river mouth of Hoi An. The largest island is Hòn Lao, which covers 1,317 hectares. Most of the islanders, more than 2,400 people, live on Hòn Lao. Their hamlets include Bãi Làng and Bãi Hương. Today this is the island commune of Tân Hiệp, part of the city of Da Nang.

Cù lao is a Vietnamese word for a small island. On Arab and Portuguese maps from the 15th to the 17th century, the islands carry the name Pulao Cham. The Nguyễn dynasty also left a great book, the Đại Nam nhất thống chí. It is an official geography of the country, compiled by court historians. The book records a lovely old name for the islands: Ngọa Long dư, the island of the sleeping dragon. Sailors from Vietnam and from abroad used the island as a landmark. Setting out or coming home, their boats stopped here to take on firewood and fresh water.

But people had lived on the island far longer than that. At Bãi Ông, the sandy soil still holds stone axes left by people who lived here more than 3,000 years ago. At Bãi Làng, under the earth, lie shards of Cham pottery, Islamic pottery and pottery from Tang dynasty China. The shards tell us that from the 7th to the 10th century, the people of Champa lived on the island. Champa was an ancient kingdom on the central and southern coast of what is now Vietnam. The islanders traded with merchants who called from the Middle East and from China. The small island was a stopping place on the Maritime Silk Road.

When ships came in, they needed water. In Xóm Cấm, about 200 meters west of the Bãi Làng pier, there is a well built in the Cham style. Its mouth is round and its shaft is lined with brick. It is about 4.5 meters deep, and its floor is laid with ironwood. The water of a Cham well is always clear and always sweet. Its spring runs strong even in the driest season.

Long ago, when merchant ships and fishing boats put in, sailors went to the well and drew water for the next leg of the voyage. People also say that Arab trading ships used to call at the island for water. Even now, families around Bãi Làng and Xóm Cấm draw water from the well. People believe a spirit of the well guards the spring. So every evening they light incense and pray for a peaceful hamlet and for water that never runs short.

Also in Bãi Làng is the Tiền Hiền shrine, where the islanders remember the forebears who cleared the land and founded the village. It was built from what the island had: lime, brick, stone and coral. Inside is an ancestral tablet for Phục Ba tướng quân, a name that means the general who tames the wind and waves. A trading house that held the bird's nest tax in Hoi An once offered an inscribed board to the shrine. It carries four characters, Hải Bất Dương Ba, meaning the sea raises no waves. That is the simplest wish of people who live in the middle of the sea.

Nearby stands Hải Tạng pagoda. An old stone inscription records that it was first built in 1758, on another spot about 200 meters from where it stands today. Rain and storms damaged it. So in 1848, in the reign of Emperor Tự Đức, the pagoda was moved and rebuilt where it is now.

Any talk of Cù Lao Chàm turns to bird's nests, its famous specialty. Thousands of swiftlet nests cling high on sheer cliff walls in the rock caves of five islands: Hòn Lao, Hòn Tai, Hòn Lá, Hòn Khô and Hòn Ông. People here have gathered the nests since long ago, in the days of Champa.

The Vietnamese carried on the trade, above all the villagers of Thanh Châu in Hoi An. They began in the 16th century, in the time of the Nguyễn lords, a noble family who ruled southern Vietnam from the 16th to the 18th century. The nest gatherers had to climb the cave walls, set up scaffolds and pry loose each small nest. Then came the reign of Emperor Gia Long, the founder of the Nguyễn dynasty. Under him, Hồ Văn Hòa served as an official and also held the post of keeper of the bird's nests. In 1848, a shrine to the founder of the bird's nest trade was built on a grand scale. It stands on a sandy mound at Bãi Hương, facing the sea. Every year, on the 10th day of the third lunar month, the nest gatherers come back here to offer incense on the founder's memorial day. The bird's nest harvest of Thanh Châu is now a national intangible cultural heritage.

Now look down into the water around the island. Beneath the surface live more than 130 kinds of coral and more than 170 kinds of fish. There are hundreds of kinds of seaweed, snails, clams, shrimp and crabs as well. It is a whole city under the sea, and for centuries trading ships glided over it. In 2009, UNESCO recognized Cù Lao Chàm and Hoi An as a World Biosphere Reserve.

That same year, in August 2009, the island commune began to say no to plastic bags. It became the first island in Vietnam to do so. Eateries were given stacked metal lunch tins to hold food. Schoolchildren sat folding paper bags as gifts for the market vendors. Ten years later, plastic bag use on the island had fallen by about 85 to 90 percent.

Evening falls over Bãi Làng. Waves wash against the sandy shore, and talk and laughter drift out from the houses. And in Xóm Cấm, the old well still quietly keeps a spring of clear, cool, sweet water in the middle of the wide salt sea. Generations of sailors have leaned down to draw that water. They would drink a long, deep mouthful, then raise their sails and go on their way.