Fish sauce

It stretches along Bac Dang, Trinh Hai, Duc and Thursday Quania streets, a labyrinth of stalls selling everything from tropical fruits to dried squid.

The air here is thick with the smell of fish sauce, spices and rotting fruit.

I bought some mangoes and a bottle of Nuoc Man, Rach Gia's famous fish sauce, which has aged for months in wooden barrels.

The vendor, a woman with a warm smile, charged me $15,000 for the bottle.

She explained that the quality depends on the fermentation process, and hers is made from anchovies caught in the deep sea.

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Trucks have been hauling decades-old fish sauce, the kind of sauce that's used for dipping and marinating in Asian cuisines.

It's a condiment many people in Newfoundland and Labrador have never even tried.

It's like, well, we use ketchup.

But even more intriguing, how the sauce came to be and why the mayor of a tiny town called St. Mary's was watching as the first trucks pulled away in tears.

I prepared a story about all of this.

This is Fish Sauce.

Fish Sauce St Mary's is half the size it was when this story began.

It's a good reminder that despite all the resort building and casino complexes popping up, this place still has a heart.

The economy here is built on things like fish sauce, pepper, and tourism, but the daily life is still very grounded.

Speaking of fish sauce, you can't talk about Koh Troal without talking about Nuoc Mam.

It's the island's defining industry, and apparently, it was the first Vietnamese product to win EU Protected Designation of Origin status.

That's a big deal.