Vietnam 4 - Hoi An - Tra Que Herb Village





Hoi An is kind of an interesting place from the perspective of a Canadian, or at least this Canadian.  It was described as a small city (which it is) and peaceful (which it isn’t).  I guess if you are used to Ho Chi Min City (former Saigon) or Hanoi, then Hoi An is peaceful.  But for us crossing the street remains a challenge and we are gradually getting used to the horn honking.

But sort of within the “metro” town there is an island upon which organic herbs and lettuce are grown. 



The plots and garden beds are amazingly tidy, about 4 feet wide, with walking paths between them.  The ones we saw were irrigated and held a wide variety of mostly unknown, to us, green plants.  In most fields there was a farmer busy hoeing one of the beds.  It appears that each plot holds a number of actual garden beds of which some seem ready to harvest, some are barely seedlings and some are dirt that is being broken up and turned.

Automatic irrigation, though we did see one woman with a yoke containing 2 watering cans



One of the tour ads for the island that we saw indicated that a typical fertilizer was seaweed, which makes sense given Hoi An is a coastal city, and we did see a very fine seaweed ready to go as fertilizer.  The use of seaweed as the fertilizer also is part of making the product organic.

Walking among the beds and plots was very peaceful.   Not a horn was honked and there was a gentle breeze that took away the heat and humidity.  It was also the first place, so far, that Bob and I have been able to walk side by side.  In the town itself the sidewalks are filled with stuff – pop up restaurants, motor scooter parking, advertising stands, food vendors.

There is a small temple in this field

Tra Que is also known for cooking schools.  This seemed like a plan for one day soon as we are really enjoying the Vietnamese food, and have purchased many of the ingredients for the sauces, but have yet to get close to the flavour profiles we are tasting.  If we take a course it would be mostly to learn to make a BBQ sauce, a salad dressing and a dipping sauce.

View from one of the cooking schools



So we headed off to check out a few of the cooking schools, which typically have a restaurant on premises.  The first one we tried was Kumquat BBQ and it was very impressive.  The cooking school facilities seemed professional and the hygiene for the food etc seemed top notch.  We tried a rolled pancake type thing and it was great! – OK a winner maybe.  We continued walking (the paths were lovely) and came across a second one, whose name I forgot.  This one was very busy and fairly crowded with people standing around tables with burners, but with too many people for the size.  We did not even attempt to eat there – Loser.  Finally we went to the Water Wheel which was one we had seen well reviewed on trip adviser etc.  The facilities here seemed better with smaller groups but it was clear that this school was focused on giving an enjoyable cooking experience to tourists.  The customers seemed to be having fun, but I doubt any of them were planning to cook within the next couple of days – so another Loser.

We now have a morsel of a plan, and shall see where this leads


Using a palm frond to shelter tender seedlings

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