Ly Son Island

A row of round peaks rises out of the sea, set against the blue. There are five of them, and each one is an extinct volcano. This is Lý Sơn, an island about 30 kilometers off the coast.

The best way to see it from the start is as a museum of volcanoes in the middle of the sea.

Two of the five extinct volcanoes are Hòn Sỏi and Giếng Tiền. Two more are Hòn Vung and Hòn Tai. The fifth is Thới Lới. Each one shaped a landscape of its own, both on the island and under the water. Beneath the surface lie coral reefs and a varied ecosystem, inside the Lý Sơn marine conservation area. On land there are crater rims, cliffs, a stone gate, sea caves, and green fields of onion and garlic spread across the black rock.

Thới Lới is the tallest of the five, 169 meters high. It hides two craters. The larger is nearly a kilometer across, the smaller about 500 meters, and inside there is a freshwater lake. From the summit the whole island lies in view: the garlic fields, the villages, the cliffs along the shore, and far off, the little island called Đảo Bé, or An Bình.

In the northeast is Hang Câu, where a wall of volcanic rock stands straight beside the sea, about 120 meters high. It is the rim of the old Thới Lới volcanic ring. In the west, Cổng Tò Vò is an arch of volcanic stone reaching out into the water, and each evening the sunset pours onto the sea beneath it.

But Lý Sơn is also a place of memory.

The island is tied to the history of the Hoàng Sa flotilla. In the late 18th century, the scholar Lê Quý Đôn compiled a book called Phủ biên tạp lục. It records that the Nguyễn lords formed the flotilla from men skilled at the sea. The Nguyễn lords were a noble family who ruled southern Vietnam from the 16th to the 18th century. Some of the men came from the villages of An Vĩnh and An Hải. These lay in the Sa Kỳ area. Others came from Lý Sơn itself. They sailed out to the Hoàng Sa and Trường Sa islands to survey the sea routes. Generation after generation, fishermen and soldiers left each season, and many never came back.

Those men are remembered at Âm Linh Tự and at the wind graves. These graves are a way for the people of Lý Sơn to keep the memory of those who went away and never returned, not even their bodies. Each grave is built with a figure that takes the place of the lost life, and families pray from afar to the relative who vanished at sea. Every year, in the second and third lunar months, the island holds the Khao Lề Thế Lính Hoàng Sa ceremony to remember those generations.

It is a festival of national rank. The story behind it is why this small island carries a weight of history that few islands in Vietnam can match.

A visitor to Lý Sơn sees two layers at once. One is the natural landscape of volcanoes, blue sea, coral and cliffs. The other is made by people. It is in the communal houses of the two old villages, An Vĩnh and An Hải. It is in the Hoàng Sa Flotilla exhibition house. It is in Chùa Hang, the Cave Pagoda, and in Âm Linh Tự. It is in Lý Sơn garlic, in the ocean tuna, and in Đảo Bé, with its small beach of clear water.

Lý Sơn is an island to be seen slowly. Not because it is large, but because every corner needs time to sink in. A black stone by the road may be a fragment of lava from the island's volcanic age. And a nameless grave at Âm Linh Tự is part of a story that has never closed.