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Dishing
up:
A chef puts the finishing touches on a meal for waiting
customers. — VNS Photos Trang Duong
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Breath
of fresh air:
Visitors walk along a canal bank in the Dong Thap Muoi,
which is criss-crossed with many small ditches.
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Can
Tho ready to give visitors taste of Delta
by
Thuy Lien
Can Tho, known as
the Mekong Delta’s western capital, will host the five-day Mekong
Festival 2003 beginning on Thursday, October 2.
All tourist
companies in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta’s 12 provinces will
participate in the festival: Tourism and Investment Promotion.
Can Tho provincial
tourist company director Dinh Viet Khanh says the festival will be held
on Cai Khe Island and the Ninh Kieu Wharf, Can Tho, and will include all
of the Cuu Long’s specialities.
These will be
dispensed from a culinary zone of food shops or provided by choirs and
musicians from the Viet, the Hoa (Chinese Vietnamese) Khmer and Cham
populations.
A floating market
will be held off Ninh Kieu Wharf and 50 boats and sampans laden with
fruit, flowers and other produce will give visitors a taste of the
"floating" season.
Entertainment will
be provided by three musical troupes renowned for their performance of vong
co, or songs of nostalgia. They will be accompanied occasionally by
wind and string instruments.
The Hau River, a
major tributary of the Mekong, will also serve as a venue for boat races
to be contested by many groups, especially the Khmer.
Visitors to the
festival can travel the Hau River to My Khanh tourist village, just 10km
downstream.
Hemmed between the
Cai Rang and Phong Dien floating markets, My Khanh is a perfect
rendezvous for tourists who do not want to travel too far to taste the
different flavoured fruit the Cuu Long offers.
The My Khanh site,
an expansion of an orchard developed in 1996 by entrepreneur Le Van
Sang, allows tourists to pick their own fruit or catch their own fish to
be served beneath the dense foliage or inside restaurants.
From My Khanh
tourists are invited to make excursions by boat or bus to floating
markets, the stork colony in Thot Not, upstream of the Hau River, or to
the Khmer Pagoda near Soc Trang Town, home to a large colony of bats.
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Colourful
fleet:
The Khmer people hit the river on board their dragon
boats with fruit and incense offerings placed at the
bow. — VNS Photo Dao Hoa Nu
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A further
southerly overland journey will take visitors to the southernmost tip of
Viet Nam, Ca Mau, famous for its coastal mangroves and bird rookeries.
But widespread
forest fires have destroyed many of these.
At present Ca Mau
Province has 21 rookeries with a total population of 50,000.
This was just half the number of birds counted at Dam Doi, one of Ca Mau
biggest rookeries, in the early 1980s.
From Can Tho, a
100km trip up the Hau River to Chau Doc allows a turn into another major
tributary of the Mekong, the Tien River, which runs though Vinh Long,
Tien Giang, Tra Vinh and Ben Tre provinces known for their many orchards
and bird rookeries. — VNS |
