Coming to Cu Lao Dung at the end of Hau River, visitors can enjoy many rustic dishes made from willow flowers and fruits.
King Gia Long gave the mangrove tree the beautiful name "thuy lieu" because both the tree and the flowers looked very elegant. The tree leaned to reflect in the water; the flowers were delicate and delicate, pale white with a pinkish-purple color. When they fell, they spread like a silk carpet over a body of water, and they also saved the king from starvation.
Willow flowers and fruits.
But people in the West still call it the mangrove tree. Mangrove is a tree that grows naturally along rivers and canals in the West, helping to retain alluvial soil. It is a familiar image to people in the river area, like bamboo fences to people in the North and Central regions.
The Western people often process the Bần flower into many rustic dishes such as: Bần flower mixed with pork, silver shrimp, and snakehead fish. Sour Bần fruit can be eaten raw and dipped with fish sauce made from seafood. Ripe Bần fruit is used to cook sour soup, braised fish or soaked in sweet and sour fish sauce to dip boiled sweet potato leaves, spinach... But in Cu Lao Dung, Bần flower and Bần guava fruit, Bần dia are also dipped with fish sauce.
Cu Lao Dung chicken gizzard shad is not expensive, and is caught from the bottom from June to September of the lunar calendar every year. It looks strange because it has an orange-yellow color and a shiny head like an ornamental fish. There are many ways to make fish sauce. The Chinese marinate the fish with salt, the Khmer marinate it with salt or palm sugar, and the Vietnamese add a sour pickling method, and the chicken gizzard shad fish sauce is also made according to this sweet and sour recipe.
Flowers and fruits with fish sauce and chicken gizzard.
Sitting on a boat gliding out to the sea to welcome the sunset and while the sun is about to spread its golden rays before setting, stop by the ancient mangrove forest to pick young mangrove fruits and newly bloomed mangrove flowers, not buds but not yet fully bloomed, bring them to the kitchen, wash them, slice the fruit thinly, chop the flowers into small pieces and dip them in chicken gizzard fish sauce.
A slice of sour and astringent mangrove fruit, a bitter and sweet mangrove flower, dipped with a small piece of golden fish sauce, a whole, rotten fish with sour, sweet and spicy taste that numbs the tongue. One piece or many pieces, sipped with wine or eaten with rice, seems to bring back all the flavors of the countryside and the atmosphere of the pioneering period.
Cu Lao Dung is the easternmost district of Soc Trang province, located at the end of the Hau River, with two mouths, Dinh An and Tran De, flowing into the East Sea among the nine mouths of the Mekong River. Cu Lao is blessed with many things by nature: 25,000 hectares of alluvial land, rich seafood, and a natural mangrove forest hundreds of years old. The tree species chooses the riverside areas of landslides and alluvial land to grow and hold the soil, and now blooms in the rainy season, falling white into the river.
Take a boat through the ancient cajuput forest of Cu Lao Dung to the estuary.
Tourists can travel by road 47km along the Nam Song Hau National Highway from Can Tho city or from the center of Soc Trang city about 20km along National Highway 60 to Cu Lao Dung. But more special is to choose to take a ferry about 20 minutes from Tra Vinh across a branch of the Hau River to explore Cu Lao Dung, the boat weaves through the canals to see the blooming flowers.
Yen Ly
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