Tam Giang Lagoon

The sky is not yet fully light. The surface of the lagoon lies flat as a sheet of paper, and the only sounds are the soft knock of an oar and a net touching the water. This is Tam Giang Lagoon at dawn, quiet but not still, because far out the fishermen have been at work since midnight.

Tam Giang lies north of Hue. It runs across the areas of Quảng Điền and Phong Điền. Then it carries on into Hương Trà. It is the largest brackish lagoon in Southeast Asia. Not the largest in Vietnam. Not the largest in the region. The largest in all of Southeast Asia. This vast stretch of water lies in the heart of the old capital's country, where fresh water from the rivers meets salt water from the sea. Together they make a very special natural zone.

The people of the lagoon do not live on the bank. They live on boats, on floating houses, and on small wooden rafts moored in open water. A fishing village on Tam Giang has no road and no lane. The way from one house to the next is across the water. Neighbors are a stretch of rowing apart. And when they need to buy or sell, they row out to the floating market.

The market gathers in the middle of the lagoon just as the sky turns pink. There are boats selling vegetables, boats selling fish fresh from the net, and boats selling hot rice porridge. Voices call across the water, hulls knock together, and bargaining goes on in the early wind. Soon the market breaks up. Everyone rows off in a different direction, and the lagoon widens again in the morning light.

In the afternoon, as the sun sinks low, the whole expanse changes color. It turns from blue to a coppery gold, and then to a glowing orange-red. Sunset here is not like sunset at sea, because there are no waves to throw the light back. The water holds still like a mirror and catches every streak of cloud, every shadow of a boat, every shade of the changing sky.

A child who grows up here learns to swim before learning to ride a bicycle. The child knows the smell of the lagoon mud and the croak of frogs at night, and reads the sky for tomorrow's weather. The boat is home. The water is the playground. And the wide lagoon is the first world the child knows.

At the hour before the sun climbs high, the lagoon is still hazy with mist and the sound of oars still carries across the water. That is when the place is at its truest, its most alive, and its most beautiful, in a way no photograph can hold.