5 Best Sights in Can Tho, Mekong Delta

One of the very few remaining examples of 19th-century residences in the Mekong Delta, this house has been designated an official national relic by the Ministry of Culture. Built in 1870, the privately owned house is now managed by the sixth generation of the Duong family. The exterior looks French, but the interior is quintessentially Vietnamese, and all five rooms are furnished with antiques. The house appeared briefly in the 1992 film The Lover, based on the novel of the same name by French author Marguerite Duras, as the ancestral home of her Chinese lover (the actual home of The Lover still exists in Sa Dec but at the time of filming it was being used as a government office). Binh Thuy Ancient House is a 10-minute taxi ride from most hotels, and it's worth visiting Binh Thuy Temple, an ornate structure that predates Binh Thuy Ancient House, along the way.

A bigger market than Phong Dien and used by many wholesalers, Cai Rang is crowded and noisy (with many tourist boats), but still fascinating. The market, about 6 km (4 miles) or 40 minutes by boat from Can Tho, starts trading at around 4 am, in the dark, and is usually finished by 10 am. It really is worth making a superearly start to watch dawn break over the market. Coffee and breakfast are included in most floating market tours from Can Tho.

The Can Tho Museum has a large collection of artifacts from the local region. Displays illustrate the lives of former Chinese and Khmer occupants, and there's a life-size pagoda and a traditional teahouse. You will find a lot of English signage here.

This example of a Khmer Hinayana Buddhist pagoda was built in the 1940s to serve and provide spiritual well-being to Can Tho's Khmer community. Access to the interior is limited nowadays, but the pagoda is an emblem of one of the numerous ethnic groups that live side by side in the Mekong Delta.

This picturesque 19th-century Chinese temple is inside the Guangzhou Assembly Hall, which is next to the redeveloped Ninh Kieu Pier waterfront park. Ong Temple is dedicated to Chinese military leader Kuang Kung (known as Quan Cong in Vietnam). Many of the decorative features of the temple, completed in 1896, were imported from China.