Chau Doc and Around
Since the opening of the border
to Cambodia a few kilometres north of town, CHAU DOC has boomed in popularity, and is the only place apart from
Can Tho where you are likely to see foreigners in any numbers. Snuggled against
the west bank of the Hau Giang River, the town came under Cambodian rule until
it was awarded to the Nguyen lords in the mid-eighteenth century for their help
in putting down a localized rebellion. The area sustains a large Khmer
community, which combines with local Cham and Chinese to form a diverse social
melting pot. Just as diverse is Chau Doc’s religious make-up: as well as
Buddhists, Catholics and Muslims, the region supports an estimated 1.5 million
devotees of the indigenous Hoa Hao religion. Forays by Pol Pot’s genocidal
Khmer Rouge into this corner of the delta led to the Vietnamese invasion of
Cambodia in 1978.
On Doc Phu Thu and a few other
streets in town, colonial relics are still evident, but their grand shophouse
terraces, flaunting arched upper-floor windows and awnings propped up by
decorous wrought-iron struts, are interspersed with characterless new edifices.
There are several places of
interest to visit in the area around
Chau Doc, including a Cham community
and the brooding Sam Mountain with
its kitsch pagodas. Further afield are a bird sanctuary, a battlefield from the
American War and the scene of a Khmer Rouge massacre. If you’re making the
journey up to Chau Doc from Long Xuyen on Highway 91, look out for the incense
factories, where the sticks are spread out to dry along the roadside, often
arranged in photogenic circles.
CHAU DOC FLOATING MARKET
Since this floating market was
only established recently, you have to wonder whether it’s more for the benefit
of tourists than locals. Nevertheless, if you’ve managed to get this far
through the delta without visiting any of the other floating markets along the
way, it’s certainly worth a look. As usual, boats advertise their products by
hanging a sample from a stick on the deck.
CON TIEN ISLAND AND CHAU GIANG DISTRICT
Two settlements a stone’s throw
away from Chau Doc across the Hau Giang River are worth venturing out to, and
most people visit both on a half-day tour.
One is the cluster of fish-farm houses
floating on the river next to Con Tien
Island, above cages of catfish that are fed through a hatch in the floor.
Fish farming is big business in the delta, and some of these cages can be over
1000 cubic metres in size.
The other settlement is a Cham community in Chau Giang District, which you can visit independently via a ferry
from a jetty south of the tourist jetty on Le Loi. Here you’ll discover
kampung-style wooden houses, sarongs and white prayer caps that betray the
influence of Islam, as do the twin domes and pretty white minaret of the Mubarak Mosque.
SAM MOUTAIN
Arid, brooding Sam Mountain rises dramatically from an
ocean of paddy fields. It’s known as Nui Sam to Vietnamese tourists, who flock
here in their thousands to worship at its clutch of pagodas and shrines. Even
if the temples don’t appeal, the journey up the hill is good fun. As you climb,
you’ll pass massive boulders that seem embedded in the hillside, as well as
some plaster statues of rhinos, elephants, zebras and a Tyrannosaurus rex near
the top. From the top, the view of the surrounding, pancake-flat terrain is
breathtaking, though the hill is, in fact, only 230m high. In the rainy season,
the view is particularly spectacular, with lush paddy fields scored by hundreds
of waterways, though in the dry season the barren landscape is hazy and less
inspiring. There’s a tiny military outpost at the summit, from which you can
gaze into Cambodia on one side, Chau Doc on the other.
Tay An Pagoda
At the foot of Sam Mountain the
first pagoda you’ll see is kitsch, 1847-built Tay An Pagoda, the pick of the bunch, its frontage awash with
portrait photographers, beggars, incense-stick vendors and bird-sellers
(releasing one from captivity accrues merit, though some clever vendors train
the birds to fly back later). Guarding the pagoda are two elephants, one black,
one white, and a shaven-headed Quan Am Thi Kinh. The number of gaudy statues
inside exceeds two hundred: most are of deities and Buddhas, but an alarmingly
lifelike rendering of an honoured monk sits at one of the highly varnished
tables in the rear chamber. To the right of this room an annexe houses a
goddess with a thousand eyes and a thousand hands, on whose mound of heads
teeters a tiny Quan Am.
Chua Xu Temple
Fifty metres west of Tay An, Chua Xu Temple honours Her Holiness
Lady of the Country, a stone statue said to have been found on Sam’s slopes in
the early nineteenth century, though the present building, with its
four-tiered, glazed green-tile roof, dates only from 1972. Inside, the Lady
sits in state in a marbled chamber, resplendent in colourful gown and
headdress. Glass cases in corridors either side of her are crammed to bursting
with splendid garb and other offerings from worshippers, who flood here between
the 23rd and 25th of the fourth lunar month, to see her ceremonially bathed and
dressed. Shops in front of the temple sell colourful baskets of fruit that
locals buy to offer to Her Holiness.
Chua Hang
A few hundred metres west and
then south around the base of Sam Mountain, the multi-storey Chua Hang (Cave Pagoda), is a popular
stopping-off point for local tourists, although the tiny grotto after which the
pagoda is named is rather a let-down after the sweaty ascent.
TRA SU BIRD SANCTUARY
Beyond Sam Mountain, the varied
attractions at Tra Su, Tup Duc and Ba Chuc could all be covered in a busy day’s
travelling, though this remote area is not a place for hurrying. This bird
sanctuary is located about 23km from Chau Doc and consists of a protected forest
of cajuput trees and wetlands that attract a great variety of birds including
storks, egrets, cormorants, peafowl and water cocks. A boat ride around the
sanctuary combined with a walk to a viewing tower takes a couple of hours and
costs around $7 per person depending on how many in the group. Even if you’re
not a dedicated birder, you’d probably enjoy floating around this watery
wonderland with its huge lily pads and moss-shrouded trees.
TUP DUC
During the American war, Tup Duc gained the rather ignominious
moniker “Two Million Dollar Hill”, a reference to the amount the US military is
said to have spent trying to dislodge the Viet Cong from its slopes.
Now the Vietnamese government has
ploughed in money of its own in an attempt to turn it into a tourist resort, by
installing pedal boats on a lake, an ostrich-breeding farm, a flower garden, a
shooting range, a restaurant and refreshment kiosks at the foot of the hill.
There is also a small museum here, an electronic mock-up of the battle and
dummies in a cave on the hill, re-creating a Viet Cong briefing scene. Kids
will probably latch onto you and lead you up a stairway past the huge boulders
that provided such effective cover to the Viet Cong. Squeezing through the
narrow passageways formed by the jumble of boulders, it is easy to see how it
made such a perfect hide-out.
BA CHUC
Both Tup Duc and Ba Chuc are
located in a sweep of staggeringly beautiful countryside southwest of Chau Doc,
though their significance is far from peaceful. Refugees fleeing Pol Pot’s
Cambodia boosted the Khmer population here in the late 1970s, and pursuit by
the Khmer Rouge ended in numerous indiscriminate massacres; a grisly memorial
to the worst of these, at the village of Ba Chuc, stands as testament to that
horrific era.
Ba Chuc Memorial and Phi Lai Pagoda
The memorial in the centre of the
village pays homage to to the 3157 villagers massacred, most of them clubbed to
death, in two weeks in April 1978. Only two villagers survived the tragedy. An
unattractive concrete canopy fails to lessen the impact of the eight-sided
memorial: behind its glass enclosure, the bleached skulls of the dead of
Vietnam’s own “killing fields” are piled in ghoulish heaps, grouped according
to age to highlight the youth and innocence of many of the dead.
Many of the victims were killed
in the adjacent Phi Lai Pagoda,
where bloodstains on the walls and floor can still be easily seen. A signboard
in Vietnamese beside a tiny door below the altar notes that forty villagers
perished here when a grenade was thrown into the cramped space.
Between the memorial and the
pagoda is a small room, where a horrific set of black-and-white photos taken
just after the massacre shows buckled, abused corpses scattered around the
countryside. Some of the images on display are extremely disturbing and you
should not enter if you are a sensitive type. There are also a few cafés and
food stalls set up to cater to visitors to the site.