Emerging into the arrivals hall of Tan Son Nhat International Airport for the first time in more than a decade, I see my name on a board and look up to the beaming smile of a be-suited driver, who escorts me to a gleaming Mercedes-Benz. I pass in luxurious, air-conditioned comfort through Ho Chi Minh City. The modern world has swept Vietnam into its eager embrace; Japanese cars and mopeds now outnumber bicycles ten to one, computer shops and high-rises sprout throughout the city… but the familiar chaos of interweaving vehicles and pedestrians remains.
We head south towards my destination, deep inthe heart of the Mekong Delta. Outside the city an age-old rhythm is once again apparent; the roads are newer and better maintained, but the flanking fruit stalls, the expansive green fields, the regular rise and fall as we arc over rivers or canals on sturdy bridges, glimpsing hand-rowed longboats and bulky rice barges – these are quintessential Delta images that will never disappear.
This region is Vietnam’s rice basket. Its eponymous benefactor is the Mekong Song Cuu Long –“the River of Nine Dragons” as the Vietnamese call it, because by the time it has entered the country after its long journey from the Tibetan Plateau it has split into two main waterways: the Hau Giang, or Lower River, also called the Bassac, and the Tien Giang, or Upper River, which empties into the South China Sea at five points.
After a 30-minute vehicular ferry ride to cross the Bassac, a short drive brings us to the gravelled entrance of the Victoria Can Tho Resort. Its refined, 1930s-style French colonial architecture, colonnaded lobby and languidly turning ceiling fans place me back in a world of privilege, plantation owners and French Indochina.
It opened in 1998, by far the most luxurious hotel establishment to be found in the Mekong Delta region, offering French cuisine of the finest quality, a large, colonial bar with a pool table, spa facilities, tennis court and swimming pool – nothing quite like it had been seen in the Delta before. The Victoria group certainly showed vision in predicting that this colourful, fascinating region of southern Vietnam would become a popular destination for upmarket travellers as well as backpackers.
And why is Can Tho so popular? To find out, I book an early morning trip on the converted rice barge Lady Hau, 20 minutes of genteel sailing – coffee and croissant in hand – up the river to the famous Cai Rang Floating Market. Before dawn every day, large boats arrive from the Delta hinterland to sell produce to small-boat owners, who then paddle up the myriad narrow canals and waterways that form a vast and intricate water network around the main town, shouting out their wares to canalside households as they go.
It’s a way of life that has changed little in thousands of years – in a land where water is so all-pervading, the seasons defined by the rise and fall of the Mekong’s massive flow, the best way to visit friends and family, transport goods, in fact to do anything, is by water.
At this time of year, the boats at the floating market are full to the gunwales with sweet potatoes, cabbages, carrots and spring onions, as well as pineapples, dragonfruit, custard apples and passionfruit. It’s a cornucopia of fresh fruit and vegetables, testament to the fecundity of the alluvial soil that blankets the Delta, replenished every year when the Mekong breaks its banks and floods, leaving a new layer of rich silt each time.
I transfer to a smaller longtail boat. Chugging through the market mêlée, small boats with open kitchens pass among the buyers and sellers, providing hot noodle snacks and lunch for the industrious market-goers. The larger boats’ engines emit deep staccato belches, like flatulent elephants, while smaller boats buzz by like elephant-sized mosquitoes – it’s hard to know where to look, so much is happening all around you.
Eventually we leave the market behind and turn off onto a narrow, tree-shaded watercourse, winding our way along curving natural waterways and up straight, man-made canals. In places these are only two boats wide, bridged by simple structures made from a single tree trunk. It’s easy to see why these are called monkey bridges – you’d need simian-like agility to cross them, although young boys and girls actually cycle across, I’m told.
After visits to a fruit orchard and a fascinating rice-noodle factory, I am dropped off at the town’s bustling riverfront promenade park. An afternoon storm is approaching – yet again, I see how water dominates the natural rhythms of life for all who live here – and I retreat to the hotel for tea, a game of backgammon, and the pleasure of reading a newspaper on a veranda as cooling rainwater courses down the slanting roofs, dropping in a waterfall onto the terracotta-tiled terrace.
The following day, early morning light bathes the Victoria Can Tho’s beautiful yellow-and-white façade in a pure, soft, golden light free of industrial fumes. This is also the best time to wander around town, before it’s too hot. Can Tho is the Delta region’s largest town, and it is booming. Shops selling mopeds, modern appliances and high-tech accessories sit alongside the more traditional dried-food stalls and colourful shops touting religious paraphernalia.
Wandering around this in many ways typical Asian town, two initially incongruous smells pervade the air, redolent of the old French Indochina: they are coffee and fresh bread – one of the most pleasant colonial customs to have endured in Vietnam is the coffee and baguette culture that the French instilled during their tenure in this tropical land. Coffee shops abound, with low, deckchair-like seats facing the street in rows, cheap but cheerful places to relax and watch the world go by. Bicycles freewheel past with baskets stuffed full of fresh baguettes, leaving tempting scent trails that draw you further into the backstreets. It’s such an easygoing place, you have to watch the time or a whole day will disappear before you know it.
That’s something I must not do, because this afternoon I’m heading to the Victoria’s other Delta property in Chau Doc, a small market town also on the Bassac, but more than 100 kilometres upstream, very close to the border with Cambodia. The river is the fastest way to get there, and the hotel runs a speedboat service between the two.
It’s an exciting four-hour journey, filled with interesting sights as the boat begins by hugging the river’s right bank as it pushes upstream against the powerful current. Huge wooden vessels ply the main channel, built in the same fashion as the smaller Mekong craft, but large enough to travel the ocean, carrying massive loads of rice and vegetables out… and bikes, cars and electronics in. Fish-processing factories dot the shoreline, but as the river narrows – at Can Tho it is more than a kilometre wide – the view becomes purely rural, with Chinese-style cantilevered fishing nets perched on the riverbanks, and hamlets straddling countless side canals that snake their way into the flat land beyond.
Finally I see a hill ahead – my first in days – and at the confluence of the Bassac with a 200-metre-wide waterway that links it to the Tien Giang, the mighty Mekong’s Upper River, we pull in at the Victoria Chau Doc Hotel, where I am met by a member of staff dressed in a beautiful ao dai, who presents me with a chilled mixed-fruit cocktail that first caresses my throat sensuously, then explodes with refreshing zest.
What a superlative welcome, and I continue to be impressed once in my room, with its sweeping, 180-degree balcony view of river life below. You would never imagine that in this small but vibrant backwater town you could find such rich, decadent luxury, with poolside cocktails and haute cuisine available in authentic colonial splendour.
Chau Doc and its surroundings have plenty to offer besides a wonderfully re-created hotel. I board a small boat for a dawn visit to Chau Doc’s own floating market – every Delta village has one, of course. My guide, a softly spoken ex-teacher, well educated and highly knowledgeable about his hometown, says proudly, “You know, we have Cham Muslims, Khmers, Buddhist and Christian Vietnamese, such a mix of peoples in Chau Doc, but we live harmoniously here, never any conflict.” Perhaps they’ve experienced enough terror and pain, and realised the futility of racial or religious conflict.
Our boatman takes us to see Chau Doc’s famous floating houses. Built on a platform of empty oil drums, what’s unusual about them is in fact what’s underneath, for suspended below in the muddy Mekong water are huge wire fish cages where hundreds upon hundreds of catfish are farmed. The family feed them through a trapdoor in the middle of the living room floor, and once the fish are around one kilo in size, they harvest them, laying their gutted and filleted carcasses out in rows under the sun to dry.
There are many holy sites to visit in the Chau Doc area, from mosques to churches, temples and pagodas, but the most impressive is the Temple of Lady Xu, six kilometres west of town at the bottom of the hill I saw as I arrived in Chau Doc, which in fact is ambitiously named Sam Mountain.
It’s hardly surprising that in a land that is virtually all low-lying floodplain, a 260-metre prominence would be given reverential status. Sam Mountain is home to a host of temples, pagodas and cave retreats, many with their own legends and stories. At its base, the Temple of Lady Xu features a kaleidoscope of colourful paint, candlelight and neon gaudiness; it’s a major pilgrimage site for both Chinese and Vietnamese families, who bring whole roasted pigs to offer in exchange for the Lady’s grace.
My last stop is at the top of the mountain, from where the inspiring 360-degree view gives me another perspective of how the Mekong dictates every aspect of life here. Huge tracts of land are under water, while the curving waterways and arrow-straight man-made canals stretch off into the hazy distance, their banks lined by stilted houses, ubiquitous tethered
boats alongside.
To the west more hills mark the border with Cambodia and the edge of the floodplain. From there on, life is intrinsically different, governed by other natural phenomena and populated by equally different cultures. The Mekong Delta is a world unto itself, exotic in almost every sense, imbued with sights, sounds and scents that all evoke its inextricable link to the Mother of Rivers.
