Cai Be, Sa Dec, and Tan Chau of Vietnam have been listed among the six of the coolest towns found along the Mekong river, as compiled by Australian travel newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald.
Sa Dec city in Dong Thap province is among six coolest towns along Mekong river. (Photo: The Sydney Morning Herald)
According to the Australian media outlet, most towns can be found set back a little from the ever-flooding Mekong river, although Cai Be district in Tien Giang province is an exception.
“Its French colonial church appears to float on the waterlily-tangled water, and its market becomes mobile as locals take to rowboats piled with greens and tropical fruit, their wares advertised on the ends of long wooden poles,” The Sydney Morning Herald noted.
Moving along the river, Sa Dec city in Dong Thap province is the next destination. “If you’re a fan of 20th-century, Vietnam-born French writer Marguerite Duras (and why wouldn’t you be) you’ll want to visit Sa Dec where she lived and wrote The Lover,” the article wrote.
Visitors to the area can enjoy Sa Dec’s crumbling waterside mansions and rickety temples, while surrounding flower farms are an Instagrammer’s delight, it added.
The newspaper also introduced visitors to Tan Chau town in An Giang which is located close to the Cambodian border and is famous for its silk manufacturing, with glorious lengths of shimmering silk emerging from rattling and clanking machines. The most coveted is black and dyed with a local berry and dried in the breeze.
The town is also devoted to mat weaving, slipper making and eel farming, whilst it is surrounded by rice fields and villages where monks snooze and kids show off by leaping into the Mekong from nearby bridges, it described.
The other three destinations to make the list are Phnom Penh, Koh Onha Tei, and Angkor Ban in Cambodia.
