Lap An Lagoon

There is a place in Hue that people call Tuyệt Tình Cốc, the Valley of Severed Love. It is not called that because it is sad. It is called that because it is so beautiful that a person wants to sit still, say nothing, and only look.

This is the Lập An Lagoon, at Lăng Cô, in the Phú Lộc area of Hue. The lagoon is brackish, a place where water from the mountains and forest meets water from the sea. The meeting leaves a surface that is strangely still. The water is as flat as a mirror, and it shows the clouds and the green ranges all around. Look down and you see the sky. Look up and you see the mountains. The line between what is real and what is reflected keeps fading, and fading.

On a calm early morning, before any wind, a small child stands in a little boat with a paddle in hand and pushes the boat across that enormous mirror. The boat slides past rows of wooden stakes driven into the bottom. Oysters cling to them in thick layers, white and rough, like pieces of living rock. These are the oyster beds of the people who live here. They raise oysters in the lagoon and harvest them crop by crop. Then they carry them to market, together with shrimp and fish caught at first light.

The oysters of the Lập An Lagoon are famous because the brackish water gives them a natural sweetness. Their flesh is firm, and it does not taste fishy. People in Hue eat them grilled, steamed, or raw with lime, salt and pepper. But the taste is never better than right here, looking out at the lagoon as it reflects the evening sky.

Lăng Cô lies between the Hải Vân Pass and the Phước Tượng Pass. For that reason, it has long been a natural place for travelers on long roads to stop. Many pause only to look at the lagoon once, and then go on. But some stay. They push a boat out onto the water, or simply stand on the bank watching the mountains in their reflection, and they often do not want to leave quickly.

The Lập An Lagoon is not loud. It has no big billboards and no crowds pressing in. It has only water, mountains, small boats, and the smell of oysters blown to shore on the wind. That is enough to quiet a person, the way the lagoon is quiet each early morning before the wind returns.