Dry Well Rooster - Deep Sea Rooster

Van Ke Hamlet, Van My Commune, is the name of a village located on the slope of a sand dune (now Tan Thanh Commune, Ham Thuan Nam District, Binh Thuan Province). In fact, Tan Thanh was the name given during the years of resistance against the French.

In 1956, there was an elementary school on Cay Coc hill. The school had a thatched roof and dirt walls (mud mixed with straw was an invention of barefoot farmers and tobacco-smoking fishermen who built it together!). Yet it protected from the rain and wind year after year. There were teachers who graduated from Saigon Pedagogical College and came here to teach students who were almost the same age as the teachers. The students sat in class but waited until class was over, then went home to follow the buffalo to the fields, or to the sea to catch fish. There were some who fell asleep on their desks because they had stayed up late grinding and pounding rice the night before.

Then the time came to leave school, each of us going our separate ways. Those who had the means continued to go to school. Those who didn’t had the means dropped out. Some went to the forest to join the revolution, others went to sea to become fishermen.

Van Ke is a land that perhaps no other place in the country has. Here there are dry wells that never run out of water, even in the dry seasons when the grass withers and the soil dries. Especially the gardens, fruit trees, and wells are located on a white sand slope, walking barefoot in the sun can burn the skin, but the gardens are tilted, going up and down every day is tiring. Even though they are tilted, the soil is always moist, the fruit trees are lush all year round. In each garden, people dig at least one well, and around every corner there are wells. Just dig a hoe about half a meter deep, cover the four sides with boards, and there will be a well with clear water gushing up, the water seems to boil, gently spraying the water filtered by the white sand, reflecting the surface, looking at the clear blue water, drinking it sounds sweet! The spring water has fed the villagers from generation to generation, the water flows down to the rice fields to make the rice grow well, and the water flows from the well into the fields to create mud puddles for the buffaloes to soak in after plowing.

During the noon break, we went into the garden to find the well to drink from because the well was very shallow and did not need a ladle or bucket. It was called a well, but in fact it was just a pond with a spring of water.

I regret that today those wells no longer exist, because people filled them in to make room for dragon fruit.

When talking about Van Ke dry well, we also talk about Ke Ga deep sea. All are Ke, but one side is fresh water, one side is salt water.

I guess that if Ke Ga hamlet did not have a lighthouse, no one would know where Ke Ga was on the map, and in the logs of voyages, people remember that this place once caused much suffering to ships passing through the deep sea of Ke Ga.

Before the Ke Ga lighthouse was built, ships passing through this sea area often encountered accidents because they could not determine the location or coordinates of the coast. Realizing that this was a dangerous sea area, in 1897 the French colonial government built a lighthouse to guide merchant ships when passing through the sea area. The lighthouse was designed by French architect Chnavat and put into operation in 1900. The construction time was 3 years.

The lighthouse is 65 m high from sea level, 3 m wide at the base and 2.5 m at the top, and the wall is 1 - 1.6 m thick. To get to the top of the tower, you have to take the spiral staircase inside and the island is only 5 ha wide. On low water days, you can wade out, sometimes the water is only up to your waist.

There is one thing people want to know, were the workers French or Vietnamese, and during the construction, did anyone have an accident? Because at the foot of the tower there is a shrine with bundles of incense and half-burned incense sticks from visitors.

Ke Ga Lighthouse is the oldest in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. And today, tourists have come to this land of wind and sand to admire the beauty of the old lighthouse, and looking far, far away, the boundary between the sky and the sea will see a deep water area. This place has sunk countless ships when there was no Ke Ga Lighthouse.

The dry well of Van Ke is gone. The island, sand dunes, and deep sea of Ke Ga still exist, but where did the ancients see it?

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