I skipped the big cities for Vietnam's charming less-visited waterways

Sydney Morning Herald

01-05-2025

'I am Y and I am 44 years old,' the descendant of emperors tells me.
I may not be a princess, but I'm a princess about one thing, and that's bandying my age about in public. Phan Thuan Y invites me to call her Y (pronounced Ee), and lets me off the hook – she knows it's a Vietnamese custom to state your age, so you can tailor your honorifics and your position in society. What is unalterable is that Y is a great-grandchild of the last, now deposed, Vietnamese royal family.
However, there is no formality as Y and I ramble through her garden and around the carp-filled pond.
'A civil war is the worst war, and 1975 was very difficult [for such families as ours],' Y says.
'Our relatives said we should burn everything, to erase our history.'
As we enjoy the serenity, she recalls the pigs and chickens that her family kept here to stave off starvation; the years her father, a noted historian, spent in a re-education camp, and the fight to keep even their kitchen table.
Hers is just one of many stories on this journey through Vietnam. This trip, I've turned my back on the big cities – Ha Noi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang; even tourist-loving Hoi An, and definitely Ha Long Bay.
Instead, I'll begin my exploration of Vietnam's waterways in the imperial city of Hue, in central Vietnam, continuing south to the fishing village of Ke Ga, and further south again to Can Tho, in the Mekong Delta.
The Perfume River flows
It's sunset, and we're sailing down the Perfume River in a timber dragon boat. Swimmers wave to us from the golden river, and we pass the city's mascot, the seven-storey Thien Mu pagoda. From the river, you can see the rules that governed Hue life; the royal city on the left bank, the university and schools, homes and commerce on the right bank, connected by bridges floodlit in a rainbow of colours.
Location, location, location: Hue (pronounced Hwey) was Vietnam's capital city for 143 years under the Nguyen Dynasty, which fell when the last emperor, Bao Dai, abdicated in 1945, ousted by the communist regime. It is also just 80 kilometres from the 17th parallel, the dividing line between the warring North and the South in the 20-year war that ended in 1975.
Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the royal city's scars are man-made and natural – bullets and fire, termites and cyclones. On a sultry afternoon, my guide Tu and I walk the Imperial City to view Phan Thuan Y's life's work; the architect has dedicated her skills to restoring the pagodas, gardens and shrines of the Imperial City, including Kien Trung Palace, a riot of Vietnamese-French architecture built in the same year as her home, in 1921. It took 11 years, but the palace finally re-opened late last year.
These intimate, private tours are organised by my hotel, Azerai La Residence. The small hotel group Azerai was founded by Indonesian hotelier Adrian Zecha, best known for creating the pioneering Aman Resorts. He's brought Aman's same focus on cultural tourism to Azerai, but at a fraction of the price.
La Residence draws me into 1930s Hue, with whitewashed columns and geometric tiles, claw-foot baths and four-poster beds looking out to the slow-moving Perfume River. The seven rooms of the historic wing, with their round curved balustrades and dark timber floors, were once the French colonial governor's residence, and today they're the pick of the bunch.
'I don't know why more people don't visit Hue,' shouts Tu over the roar of mopeds later that night. On our way home from a bar food tour, we glide silently into oncoming traffic on cyclos; our aged drivers pedal unconcernedly, confident we won't be flattened. Hue's a walkable city with a Forbidden City, rainbow bridges and its own, famously salty coffee, he says. It's not crowded, and it's even got a train street. I don't have an answer for him.
On the East Sea
You need time for Ke Ga. A small bay on the East Sea (also called the South China Sea), its best-known neighbour is the resort town of Mui Ne, an hour north. Ho Chi Minh City is only 180 kilometres due west, but once off the freeway, the pitted local roads are a danger to loose molars.
It's August and the windy off-season season in the all-white, tropical modernism Azerai Ke Ga Bay resort. Ahead of a long weekend, we're the only non-Vietnamese guests, all the staff are Vietnamese, and the dishes and produce are sourced locally. Days are best spent dangling over the lip of the hotel's infinity pool, watching dramatic waves crash against the nearby lighthouse and dash onto the white-sand beach. Fishermen's flimsy-looking basket boats are tied up on shore, guarded by packs of mouthy, ill-proportioned hounds.
The province's claim to fame is the dragonfruit and, like the hounds, they're misshapen and misunderstood. Sweet, fuchsia-coloured dragonfruit juice is served as I check in, and I can eat it at breakfast, take a body wrap in it in the spa, add it to sparkling cocktail in the bar and even go on a dragonfruit farm tour.
If you've never seen a dragonfruit tree, it's like a cactus crossed with a Christmas tree, reddened fruits dangling like baubles from snake-like branches. A farmer offers us a bag of ripe, fragrant fruit for our day trip to Ta Cu mountain, a slow drive past buffalo nosing through banana groves and salt fields glittering in the morning sun.
The cable car is a good trade for our van at the base of Ta Cu; it's a cool, 15-minute ride above the jungle of strangler tangled figs and palms to the top. From here, it's a short walk with Vietnamese pilgrims past a group of cat-riddled pagodas to a 49-metre-long white Buddha, reclining amid the trees.
That same jungle threatens to swallow the resort, which is washed thoroughly by a rainstorm as the head chef talks me through a class of fresh rice paper rolls and caramelised fish caught in the bay earlier this morning.
Floating on the Mekong Delta
The air is close today in Can Tho – I suspect it's close every day in this delta port city in the south of Vietnam. It's set on the Hau River, which splinters from the Mekong River back in Phnom Penh, the two waterways running parallel until they meet again in the Mekong Delta.
It's a change from Ke Ga's brisk seaside breezes, even the food is different in this land of sugarcane fields and waterways.
'We use more sugar in the south, more chilli, more fish and more veg,' says my Can Tho guide, Minh. I can't begin to think of what 'more chilli' looks like, but this is the land of fish soups, with a heavy hand of sour tamarind and sugar.
Mountains of brown coconuts line the river's edges in the early morning as we sail toward breakfast at Cai Rang's floating markets. Mrs Loan gets up at 3.30am to prepare her soup stocks so I can climb aboard her candy pink breakfast boat and order a bowl of bun nuoc leo. White vermicelli noodles (bun), are loaded with great chunks of fish, prawns, roast pork and flavoured with Can Tho's feted signature fish sauce, shredded banana blossom and a side of very red, very seedy chopped chilli.
We watch as a young bridal couple balance in a small boat, exchanging vows against a backdrop of the red Vietnamese flag and gritty market boats. A huge grey police boat tosses aside small islands of water lilies in its powerful wake. On a barge loaded with sand, a man undertakes the Sisyphean task of shovelling the sand from one side to another. Houseboats where small, white, pugnacious mutts stalk the decks like pirate captains.
By night, the nearby Ninh Kieu wharf is a rainbow of neon as families promenade and snack in its gardens, photos at the feet of a golden Ho Chi Minh. That's ahead of us this evening, but now, by the 8am, a cloak of heat has enveloped the river and the water traffic has slowed.
The mood is more contemplative, more subdued in the heat, and I fight the urge not to doze. And all the while, the rich tributaries of the delta continue to flow and, like the Perfume River and the East Sea, continues to feed, entertain, transport and to inspire us.
The details
Stay
The 1930s Azerai La Residence Hue has 122 rooms, set on the Perfume River, doubles from VND5,000,000 ($309) includes breakfast, all-day tea, coffee and pastries in the lobby. The contemporary, beachside Azerai Ke Ga Bay has 57 suites and pool villas, doubles from VND6,100,000 ($377) includes breakfast and daily Vietnamese afternoon tea. See azerai.com
Tour
Azerai's cultural activities include a tour of Princess Ngoc Son's house, bar food tour by cyclo and dragon boat cruises.