Sights in Vietnam
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Handicraft Workshop
Housed in the 200-year-old Chinese trading house, the Handicraft Workshop has artisans making silk lanterns and practising traditional embroidery in the back. In the front is your typical tourist-oriented cultural show (10.15am and 3.15pm) with traditional singers, dancers and musicians. It makes a sufficiently diverting break from sightseeing.
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Cha Tam Church
President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu took refuge in Cha Tam Church on 2 November 1963, after fleeing the Presidential Palace during a coup attempt. When their efforts to contact loyal military officers (of whom there was almost none) failed, Diem and Nhu agreed to surrender unconditionally and they revealed where they were hiding.
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Vua Meo
The outlandish Vua Meo is a palace constructed in a kind of bizarre ‘oriental baroque’ architectural style on the northern edge of town. Dating from 1921, it was built by the French to keep the Flower H’mong chief Hoang A Tuong happy and looks like a cross between an exotic church and a French chateau. A museum may open here some time in the future.
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Vuon Co
On the road between Can Tho and Long Xuyen, Vuon Co is a 1.3-hectare stork sanctuary. It is a popular stop for group tours coming to view the thousands of resident storks, but is often closed due to a bird flu risk. There is a tall wooden viewing platform to see the storks chattering away in their nests; the best times of day are around dawn and dusk.
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C
Hoa Lo Prison Museum
This thought-provoking site is all that remains of the former Hoa Lo Prison, ironically nicknamed the ‘Hanoi Hilton’ by US POWs during the American War. Those incarcerated at Hoa Lo included Pete Peterson, who later became the first US Ambassador to a unified Vietnam in 1995, and Senator John McCain (the Republican nominee for the US presidency in 2008).
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Long Xuyen Crocodile Farm
For a close-up view of the reptile that once ruled the Mekong, this farm is home to thousands of crocodiles ranging in size from 10cm to 4m. The meat and skin of these animals is largely exported, though some Vietnamese drop in to buy fresh or frozen crocodile meat (50,000d to 150,000d per kilogram). The farm lies 8km south of town on the road to Can Tho.
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Mubarak Mosque
The Mubarak Mosque, where children study the Koran in Arabic script, is also on the river bank opposite Chau Doc. Visitors are permitted, but you should avoid entering during the calls to prayer (five times daily) unless you are a Muslim.
There are other small mosques in the Chau Doc area. They are accessible by boat, but you'll need a local guide to find them all.
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Quan Thang House
This house is three centuries old and was built by an ancestor who was a Chinese captain. As usual, the architecture includes Japanese and Chinese elements. There are some especially fine carvings of peacocks and flowers on the teak walls of the rooms around the courtyard, on the roof beams and under the crab-shell roof (in the salon beside the courtyard).
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Dong Thap Museum
The impressive looking Dong Thap Museum is among the best museums in the Mekong. The 1st floor displays an anthropological history of Dong Thap province, with exhibits of tools, sculpture, models of traditional houses and a few stuffed animals. The 2nd floor is devoted to war history and, of course, to Ho Chi Minh. All interpretive signs are in Vietnamese.
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General Museum Complex
The General Museum Complex is housed in an exquisite building once a school for princes and the sons of high-ranking mandarins. It combines, in an odd juxtaposition, a pagoda devoted to archaeology, a small Natural History Museum and a building devoted to the 'movement of revolutionary struggle and anti-French colonialism resistance war'. There's a tank collection out front.
reviewed
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Revolutionary Museum
The Revolutionary Museum is next to Saigon Con Dao Hotel and has exhibits on Vietnamese resistance to the French, communist opposition to the Republic of Vietnam, and the treatment of political prisoners (including some gruesome photos of torture). There is also a mock-up of the islands and some curiously embalmed animals – including a monkey smoking a pipe.
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F
Du Sinh Church
This church resembles a temple more than a traditional church and was built in 1955 by Catholic refugees from the north. The four-post, Sino-Vietnamese steeple was constructed at the insistence of a Hue-born priest of royal lineage. Look up as you pass under the entryway arch to see a statue in classical Greek style flanked by two fiercely golden Chinese dragons.
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Botanic Gardens
One of the first projects undertaken by the French after they established Cochinchina as a colony was to found these lush gardens. Though once one of the finest such gardens in Asia, they’re now more a pleasant place for a stroll under giant tropical trees. The emphasis is on the fun fair, with kids’ rides, a fun house, miniature train, house of mirrors and more.
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Imperial Enclosure
Housing the emperor's residence and the main buildings of state, the Imperial Enclosure is a citadel-within-a-citadel, with 6m-high walls that are 2.5km in length. The enclosure was badly bombed during the French and American wars, and a large part of it is still park-like ruins. Restoration of the least damaged sections and the complete rebuilding of others is an ongoing project.
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Seminary & Hill-Tribe Museum
This lovely old Catholic seminary wouldn’t look out of place in a provincial French village. Built in 1934, it has a chapel with beautiful wood carvings and a ‘Traditional Room’ upstairs that functions as an unofficial museum of hill-tribe life and the Kon Tum diocese. You may have to ask one of the Seminary residents to unlock the museum for you.
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Ca Mau Market
This is a wholesale market and not really a place for people to shop. The animal life on display – such as fish and turtles – is cleaned, packed into crates, frozen and sent to Ho Chi Minh City by truck. It’s an interesting place to wander around – it certainly bears little resemblance to the supermarkets at home. However, animal rights advocates will not be pleased.
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Gia Long Falls
Down the road from Dray Sap and Dray Nur is this shorter waterfall, named for the first emperor of the Nguyen dynasty. He wanted to have a bridge built across the river but it was never completed; remnants are still visible through the overgrowth. The falls’ future is in doubt as the new Buon Kuop Dam has been built upstream and may eventually poach the water supply.
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Ton Duc Thang Museum
This small, seldom-visited museum is dedicated to Ton Duc Thang, Ho Chi Minh’s successor as president of Vietnam, who was born in Long Xuyen, An Giang province, in 1888. He died in office in 1980. Photos and displays illustrate his role in the Vietnamese Revolution, including a couple of very lifelike exhibits that represent the time he spent imprisoned on Con Son Island.
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Dien Tho Residence
The stunning, partially ruined Dien Tho Residence (1804) once comprised the apartments and audience hall of the Queen Mothers of the Nguyen dynasty. The audience hall houses an exhibition of photos illustrating its former use, and there is a display of embroidered royal garments. Just outside is their Highnesses' enchanting pleasure pavilion, a carved wooden building set above a lily pond.
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Cua Lo Beach
It’s pleasant enough, with white sand, clean water and a shady grove of pine trees – but the concrete, karaoke, massage parlours and litter won’t suit many travellers. Nevertheless, if you have time to kill, come for a cooling dip and a seafood lunch at one of the beach restaurants.
Cua Lo is 16km northeast of Vinh and can be reached easily by motorbike or taxi.
reviewed
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Dien Bien Phu Museum
The site of the 1954 battle is now marked by several monuments, including the Dien Bien Phu Museum, which contains a startlingly eclectic collection of exhibits. Alongside the usual weaponry and guns there’s a bathtub that belonged to Colonel de Castries, a bicycle capable of carrying 330kg of ordnance, and plenty of photographs and documents, some with English translations.
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Ho Chi Minh Museum
Adjacent to Ho’s Mausoleum, the huge concrete Soviet-style Ho Chi Minh Museum is a triumphalist monument dedicated to the life of the founder of modern Vietnam, and the onward march of revolutionary socialism. Mementos of Ho’s life are showcased, and there are some fascinating photos and dusty old official documents relating the overthrow of the French and rise of communism.
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Cai Be Floating Market
This bustling river market is worth including on a boat tour from Vinh Long, but it is best to arrive early in the morning. Wholesalers on big boats moor here, each specialising in just a few types of fruit or vegetable. Customers cruise the market in smaller boats and can easily find what they’re looking for, as larger boats hang samples of their goods from tall wooden poles.
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To Mieu Temple
On the other side of the courtyard is the long, low, red and gold To Mieu Temple itself. Inside are shrines to each of the emperors, topped by their photos. Under the French only the seven liked by the colonial power were thus honoured - Ham Nghi, Thanh Thai and Duy Tan were only added in 1959. The temple is flanked on the right by a small robing house and on the left by a shrine to a soil god.
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Nam Thien Nhat Tru
Modelled on Hanoi’s One Pillar Pagoda, this structure is similar but not identical. The One Pillar Pagoda of Thu Duc, Hanoi’s original pagoda was built in the 11th century, destroyed by the French in 1954 and rebuilt by the Vietnamese; Ho Chi Minh City’s version was constructed in 1958. Officially known as Nam Thien Nhat Tru, most people call it the One Pillar Pagoda of Thu Duc.
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