Life originated in water. If anyone does not agree with this theory, the Vietnamese of Phu Quoc are certainly not. All their existence is connected with water. On the water, they build houses and businesses. Food is obtained from water. Even domestic Fukuokan dogs come from the water.
Noon. Along the coast, the head of an old woman in a straw hat with curved fields sticks out like the outlandish squid in the muddy water of the Gulf of Thailand, like a “primordial soup”. Nearby is a canister from under the boat fuel with a hole in the middle. It can be seen that it is clogged with shells to the top. Passing by American tourists gasp and throw money into the water, like feed. The old woman smiles with a toothless mouth, grabs a bill and thrusts a wet dress through the collar.
– Who is this woman? I ask my guide Tien, a native of Fukuoka.
– A fisherwoman from Ham Ninh village. She’s over 70. She catches sea snails all day, and then sells it on the pier, Tien yawns. – But she already realized that you can earn differently.
Other fishermen in conical straw hats non-la, wary as gulls protecting the prey, place basins along the pier with a catch: scallops, mussels, seahorses.
– Seahorses really eat?
– They must be soaked in rice wine and drink tincture. Gives strength to men! Well, in general it’s an energetic. Invigorates.
Phu Quoc wakes up
The only eatery of the fishing village of Ham Nin resembles a clumsy ship assembled from plywood, tin, boards – everything that came to hand. Inside, near the wall, hammocks are hung. In each of them, like an oyster in a shell, a man curled up. The Fukuokans are so fast asleep that they don’t hear the roar of motor boats or the scooters speeding along a road.
At five in the morning, fishermen go to sea. Get tired. A quiet hour in hammocks is an alternative to seahorses: in a dream, strength is restored. Local people are undernourished. The fish then pecks, then no. Money is not always found. Phu Quoc has still not recovered from the bloody storms. When the wars ended in the 1980s, the island fell asleep with the economy, like a fish.
However, now Phu Quoc is starting to wake up – it smelled of tourism. Ham Nin eatery is a holiday today. Tien brought the Russian delegation – sellers of tours. Large white women swim gracefully to a table drowning in dishes: a soup of grandmother snails with chili, freshly caught and fried lobsters, shrimps, mussels, squid. And suddenly a flock of flies sticks around the plates. Some guests frown squeamishly. Out of solidarity with the starving Fukuokans, I take up food.
“And don’t forget that!” “Thien hands me a saucer of brownish, odorous liquid.” – Nyk-mum fish sauce, our pride! Fields to them rice. It will be more satisfying.
With sauce, rice becomes spicy, spicy, thick. This is how to plunge into the thickness of sea water after a shallow fresh river. Unexpectedly delicious.
Anchovy Secret
It’s hard to breathe in a factory in a suburb of Zyong Dong, where mommy novices do The feeling that I was in the stomach of a giant rotting fish. Its entrails – 300 wooden barrels of three-meter height – are tied with ship ropes and filled with sauce. At the entrance, sitting silently, as if having taken water in her mouth, a girl named Lan and selling bottles of sauce for 45,000 dong apiece (about two dollars).
– How do you withstand the smell? I wrinkle my nose.
Lan shrugs:
– I like. He is marine, native, home. My ancestors Fukuoktsi came up with a recipe for fish sauce 200 years ago.
At first, the residents of Fukuoka prepared the sauce at home, for themselves. In the 19th century, the French colonialists – lovers of spicy seasonings – put production on stream: opened factories, established exports. Deliveries continued until 1975. After the victory of Vietnam in the war with the United States, the US government imposed an embargo on all Vietnamese products, and Fukuoka sauce producers switched to domestic sales. In the 1990s, the embargo was lifted, but the “ship sailed away”: a similar sauce from Thailand has already taken a place in the world market.
“Similar, but not the same,” Lan frowns. – Well nothing. As soon as we resume exporting, the Thais will remain with nothing. Our sauce is the best!
– What is the difference between your sauce and Thai?
– In each tank we put 9000 kg of Pacific anchovies and 3000 kg of sea salt. Nothing else. Mix and wait while the fermentation process is going on. After a year, the sauce is ready. And Thais can mix other fish and add chemistry. This is because they do not have a Fukuokan anchovy. He is special. Strong. And it has a lot of minerals, protein. From our anchovy even pepper grows!
Fish pepper
Black pepper grows all over Fukuoka. In the XIX century, the French brought seeds from India. Pepper trees are floating outside the car window along the driveway. And they have no end and edge. Thien, who volunteered to give me a ride, says that 60% of Fukuoka residents have their own plantations. Occasionally the thickets part, expose the squalid shacks of fishermen on pontoons near dirty canals. Patched tin roofs, faded linen on the ropes, shabby bowls, peeling boats. Looking at all this, you remember how it happens at low tide, when the sea leaves all evil on the shore. But here the bottom groves are again covered by pepper groves. I ask you to stop at the first farm in Suoy May.
Hoang, a thin “nerd” with glasses, leads us between two dense rows of pepper trees.
“They begin to bear fruit when they reach three to five meters in height,” he says. – For growth, you need fish fertilizer. We stick a seedling into the ground, make holes around it and pour a mixture of rotten anchovies with water there. Fishermen bring us worthless, old fish. For fertilizer – just right. The procedure is repeated every two months. Two years later, we are harvesting. Seven kilograms per tree!
Hoang hands me a bunch of green and reddish peppercorns. Remind fish caviar.
“Four months to wait until they turn red.” We collect manually – by peppercorn. It’s easier to sort. We immediately pack part of the crop. The other part is first dried for a couple of weeks in the sun so that the seeds turn black. And another part goes to white pepper: you just need to remove the skin from ripe red. There is no such pepper anywhere in Vietnam. Because the right anchovy is found only in Fukuoka, ”Hoang grimaces, as if he has bitten a pea of pepper. – Merchants from the continent are beating buyers off from us. Their pepper is worse. You can’t sell it at a normal price. And you don’t want to cheapen. Here, up to 70 percent of papaya seeds are added to it in order to make money on the volume. Sell at a cheap price. And tourists do not distinguish papaya seeds from pepper. They don’t understand that a kilo of good pepper costs at least 100,000 dong! Yes, a little expensive. But what a seasoning for mangoes it turns out!
Near the plantation in a shop without windows, as in a grotto, two peasants were hiding. In front of them are dishes on the table with yellowish, greenish, brownish slurry. A peasant takes a slice of mango, dunks in a slurry and hands it to me. The delicacy stings the tongue, and then a very complex sour-sweet-salty-spicy aftertaste arises.
– The saucers have different combinations: salt, lime and pepper; salt, sugar and pepper; salt, garlic and pepper. You were treated to seasoning with pepper, sugar, lime and fish sauce, ”Hoang explains.
“Why dunk mangoes in seasoning?”
– This is an insidious fruit. It is either too sour or too sweet. Seasoning corrects the taste. In general, ours is all eaten with pepper. And the iguana. And the dogs. They have tasty meat. And free, because they’re wild. Caught and ate. Many of my compatriots used to satisfy their hunger. True, times are changing. The Vietnamese government is about to ban the capture of iguanas and dogs for food.
| HISTORY Island of contentionThe Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc is located in the Gulf of Thailand, on the border with Cambodia. The first mention of him as part of the Khmer empire is contained in Cambodian documents of 1615. In the XIX century, the French formed the colony of Kokhinhinu in the south of Indochina, which included Phu Quoc. In 1949, the island became part of the State of Vietnam, formed in opposition to the proclamation of the Communists in the 1945th Democratic Republic of Vietnam. From 1953 to 1975, Fukuoka was home to the largest concentration camp in South Vietnam, where communists and prisoners of war were held. In 1975, the island was captured by the Khmer Rouge – the Cambodian Communists, and Cambodia again declared Phu Quoc to be its own. In 1976, she refused claims to the island. Phu Quoc moved to Vietnam. |
Dog is a Fukuoka friend
The jungle of Fukuoka is humid, stuffy and gloomy. The sky is not visible: it was covered with crowns of evergreen dipterocarpus, myrtle trees and creepers. On bare slippery soil, mossy boulders and buns of lemongrass, resembling algae, come across. Like I’m at the bottom of the sea. Only instead of fish – dogs with woolly scallops on their back: ridgebacks. Taupe and yellowish, earth and sand. They roam, sleep, whine, bark in mesh enclosures. Their pens look like fishing shacks that I saw along the road: shabby, with tin roofs and partially decayed flooring.
- 1 2…4 “Ours all eat with pepper. And the iguana. And the dogs. They have tasty meat. And free, because they’re wild. Caught and ate “
“One good man named Tuan decided to save the Fukuokan Ridgebacks from destruction.” They ran wild in the mountains, jungle and streets, the locals hunted them. Tuan rented five hectares of jungle and opened a nursery reserve in 2005. Organized the catching of dogs. I’m engaged in their breeding, ”says an employee of the Tan nursery, who smelled deeply of dog.
Locals are asked not to confuse Fukuoka Ridgebacks with Thai and Rhodesian relatives, although the breed has not been officially recognized. Island dogs are smaller than overseas brothers.
– And smarter. One of our Ridgebacks, nicknamed House in 2011, won the champion title at the World Dog Show in Paris! – Tang rejoices.
At the entrance to the nursery there is a board with a description of the nature of the Fukuoka Ridgebacks: “They know how to hunt. Find and bring things. Gather garbage. Respect the hosts. Organized. Can be trained. Survive in the caves. They have a great memory. Strong jaws. They react to any change: an unusual noise, a darkened sky or a too bright moon. They are able to climb mountains and swim. ”
“Swimming is the most important thing in our conditions,” Tan said. – By the way, the first Ridgebacks sailed to us by sea. They say that about 200 years ago, local fishermen saw a flock of wild dogs approach the island. Perhaps they were taken somewhere on a ship, the ship sank, and they escaped.
Tan shows me the paw of a three-month-old puppy: between the fingers – membranes, like a gull.
– This is a real Fukuoka ridgeback, waterfowl!
No one controls the birth rate of puppies. Males and females live together. Now there are about 400 dogs in the kennel.
– What do you feed such a horde of?
– Anchovies, of course. Two bowls a day – and the dog is full. And when you no longer feed, we sell.
The most expensive ridgebacks are brindle. Such a dog costs 500-700 dollars.
– Who buys them? After all, the people are poor.
“People are starting to realize that ridgebacks are housekeepers and friends.” Many specifically save money on them. And if someone does not care about the color, gender and age of the dog, we can give it for a symbolic amount or even free of charge. We often buy puppies from fishermen, those who live on floating farms. They are lonely, says Tan.
Catch up to the storm
Over the sea a dull bark of ridgebacks floats. Dogs feel the guests are approaching. I am sitting in a bright grassy green boat resembling the shape of a sea shell. Trying to row, as my companion Dan shows. The guy works at a boat station in Bay Keme, in the south of Fukuoka.
We approach the rotten raft. Two bronze-colored ridgebacks scurry back and forth, sniff, grumble. Their owners are the brothers Lang and Khai, the same bronze Vietnamese of about 50 in appearance.
Somehow, getting out of the boat, I step onto the flimsy boards. They swing, scatter underfoot. In the middle of the raft are two huts covered with tin. Sea salt gradually corrodes walls. Instead of windows and doors – curved slots. In one building – two dilapidated hammocks, in another – a rusty electric stove, powered by a solar battery.
– What else is needed for life? – argues Hai. – The main thing is a shelter for sleeping and a place for cooking fish.
Behind the huts is something like a screen that closes a hole in the raft from prying eyes.
– This is the toilet. A typical Fukuoka fishing toilet, explains Hai. – A cesspool is not needed. Everything goes into the water. There is no roof so that the head of a seated person is visible. Immediately clear: busy. In villages, too, such toilets are installed on the shore on poles.
The brothers live on the raft for three years. On land are rare. Sometimes they go to fairs to sell fish.
– We have a fish farm here. We usually go fishing in the open ocean. There are more species than in the Gulf of Thailand. Got it – we’ll bring it to the raft, let it out to the pools and begin to fatten it, ”says Hai.
Three pools are cut down in a raft. Tackles are enclosed in them so that the fish does not go back to the sea. Huy leans over one and throws a handful of anchovies there. Long silver fish whip their tails with water, jump, eagerly swallow food.
– Cobia. My favorite fish. If you feed her up to 10 kilograms, you can sell on the market for 200,000 dong apiece! – proudly reports the fisherman. – We’ll take these to the market the other day.
In Bay Keme storm season begins. Staying here is not safe. Two weeks later, the brothers will order a barge for one and a half million dongs, attach a raft with all the belongings to it and move to the north of the island, where winds and waves have not arrived yet. You have to move every six months after the weather.
– And when on land? I ask Haya.
“Maybe never.” What is land compared to the ocean? A piece of land. Our house is water, the fisherman concludes.
Фото: HEMIS (X3) / LEGION-MEDIA, SIME / LEGION-MEDIA, LAIF / VOSTOCK-PHOTO (X5), ALAMY / LEGION-MEDIA, VARIO IMAGES / LEGION-MEDIA
