Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
DAVID FARLEY
Vietnam's Bowl of Secrets
FROM
Afar
“B
ALE
. . .?”Isaidtoashirtlessman,whohaltedmefromgoinganyfartherdownthenarrow
lane. He simply pointed, his long fingernail directing me the opposite way. I was on the back
streets of Hoi An, a prettied-up UNESCO-protected town on the central coast of Vietnam. I
had ventured into this neighborhood, clearly not a place many tourists wander, in the hope of
finding a well. The Ba Le well was actually listed in my guidebook, which I'd accidentally
donated to the seat pocket of the airplane earlier that morning.
AsIreversedcourseandproceededdeeperintotheneighborhood,thebuzzofscootersgrew
fainter with each step, replaced by the incongruent sounds that poured out of open doors and
tangledintheopenair—AmericanB-grademoviedialogueandVietnamesepopmusic.Afew
turnslater,thereIwas,staringatthesquare-shaped,concreteBaLewell,oneofitssidesabut-
ting the wall of an old building. Two men were using a bucket, tied to a rope, to fish out water
and then pour it into huge plastic containers on a bicycle fashioned into a cart. They ignored
my presence as I looked down the well: splotches of Day-Glo-green moss clung to the bricks,
and a billowy image of myself looked back at me from 10 feet below.
Until relatively recently, Hoi An's 80 or so wells, centuries old, were the town's main
sources of drinking water. The town now has a modern system for running water, but many
residents still make the pilgrimage to Ba Le. The well is thought to have been built in the 10th
century by the Cham people, a native population whose empire flourished in central Vietnam
untilthe15thcentury.Asthestorygoes,there'ssomethingspecialaboutthewaterfromtheBa
Le well. An entire mythology has accrued around it. Some say the water is medicinal; others
claim the well has some mystical connection to fairies.
But finding the well was only the first step of my quest in Hoi An. My main motivation for
traveling 10,000milesfromNewYorkwastoeatoneparticular dishidentified withthistown,
a dish supposedly made exclusively with Ba Le water.
In 2012, most major cosmopolitan cities offer nearly every cuisine, including Vietnamese.
One Vietnamese specialty you'll almost never find, though—not in Little Saigon in Southern
California nor even in the real Saigon in southern Vietnam—is
cao lau
(pronounced “cow
laow”). According to tradition, this pork-a-licious, herb-scented noodle dish has an umbilical
attachment to Hoi An. The uniquely textured noodles must be made with local ingredi-
ents—specifically, water from the Ba Le well and ash from a certain tree that grows on the
ChamIslands,some13milesoffthecoastofHoiAn.Butnotmanypeopleknowhowtomake
caolaunoodles.Onefamilyhas,forgenerations,hadamonopolyonmakingthesix-inch-long
