My first night on the offshore platform wasn't as easy to sleep as I'd imagined. Waves crashed incessantly at my feet, and the wind whistled through the metal frame, sometimes a sudden rush, sometimes a prolonged silence. These sounds never stopped, constantly surrounding me. Lying in the small room, I felt as if I were drifting in a vast, distant space.
Amidst the sound of waves and wind, I don't know when I fell asleep. I only remember waking up when it wasn't quite daylight yet. And then, a sound rang out, very clearly: "O... o... o... o...". I lay still and listened again. It was indeed the sound of a rooster.
At that moment, my first feeling wasn't surprise, but… familiarity. So familiar that for a moment, I thought I was at home. Somewhere on land—an ordinary morning, with the sound of roosters crowing to start the day. But then I remembered: I was in the middle of the ocean.
Soldiers at the DK1/15 offshore platform with a rooster raised on the platform.
I jumped up and went outside. The iron staircase was still damp, and the wind blew directly into my face, salty. It was mid-dawn. In the distance, the horizon was just a blurry, indistinct line. The sea remained dark, calm, and deep.
In the midst of this vast expanse of wind and waves, the sound of a rooster crowing could be heard. Not loud, but very clear. It made this place feel familiar. No longer a point in the middle of the ocean hundreds of nautical miles from the mainland, but something very close, very familiar, was present. A small sound, but enough to fill the immense emptiness around it.
I was silent for a moment, doing nothing, just listening. It's hard to describe the feeling at that time. Never before had a rooster's crow moved me so much. On the mainland, it's so normal, sometimes nobody even notices it. But here, it makes you feel down, suddenly nostalgic. Nostalgic for the early mornings back home.
As I left the room, I heard the crowing and noticed that the chickens were being raised by the soldiers in the lower part of the annex—connected to the main building by an iron bridge. The annex was still inhabited. There was a vegetable garden on the roof, and pens for raising pigs and chickens were located below.
It is from there, every morning, that the sound of roosters crowing spreads on the wind, penetrating through the steel frames, touching each person, as if carrying a part of the rhythm of life on the mainland amidst the vast ocean. There, every morning upon waking, amidst the boundless waves, the officers and soldiers on the offshore platform can still hear the very familiar, very ordinary sounds of their homeland.
The business trip finally ended, and I returned to the mainland, back to my normal routine. The sounds of cars, people… everything was there. But strangely, sometimes amidst all that noise, I would remember a morning long ago. A morning at sea—where I heard a rooster crow. A very ordinary crow, yet it stayed with me forever.
Text and photos: Van Dinh
Source: https://baohaiquanvietnam.vn/tin-uc/tieng-ga-gay-giua-trung-khoi
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