The next day, we visited the Tra Que (chah gweh) Vegetable Village in the morning. The village was established about 300 years ago, and supposedly has the best tasting herbs and vegetables because they use no fertilizers or pesticides, but the water they use has a specific kind of algae that makes everything taste so good. All the produce is used in Hoi An by most of the local restaurants. There is supposedly a whole list of plants that they grow, but when we were there, I only saw a few varieties of things... We saw lettuce, a lot of mint (peppermint!), what looked like green onion, cilantro, morning glory, thai basil with small leaves and a few other odds and ends here and there. I was looking for that weedy herb that I saw in many dishes that I liked, but never saw it there. Lots of the farmers supplement their income by also having a cooking school for tourists, and part of the experience is to "practice being a farmer" which I jokingly translated into temporary free labor... well, better than free, they pay you to weed your garden!! Supposedly, there is a fee to view the village, but we couldn't find a ticket booth and when we asked a person overseeing some "temporary farmers", she said that a guy walks around to issue tickets, and if you see him, run the other way!
To be honest, I didn't think the herbs or veggies that I had (that all supposedly came from the village) tasted much different than normal - or had any more flavor than what I grow at home. In fact, I thought the hydroponic herbs I grew (comparing apples to apples) were more flavorful... but in any case, here's some photos of it.
Green onion?
Lettuce
Fish mint down at the bottom!!! Run!!!!
A papaya tree here and there
A reservoir containing the magical algae water... there were several of these scattered around, plumbed into pumps that fed the sprinkler irrigation system.
Some peppermint down at the bottom.
