Kien Giang

Rach Gia
So the Huong Kings' Anniversary holiday has just passed again. This year it was on a Friday, so we planned another short trip (with a few working days off as well) and headed for the province of Kien Giang. Kien Giang is most well-known amongst travellers for Phu Quoc Island, but it's expensive to fly there and very popular at holiday times.

Instead we decided to go by bus to Rach Gia and Ha Tien. Foreign travellers usually only go to Rach Gia if they are planning to take the high-speed boat to Phu Quoc. However, during the time we were there I saw a number of people who looked a bit more settled in, perhaps staying for a day or two. Rach Gia is Bao's hometown. To understand this concept a bit more, especially as Bao was born and grew up in Can Tho, I asked why he says this. I learned that Vietnamese count their home town as the one where their father was born and raised. I knew that Bao's grandfather lived in Rach Gia, and that Bao used to regularly travel (alone) from Can Tho to visit during holidays. He still has uncles and aunts and cousins there, and it was to his aunt’s house that we headed on arrival off the overnight, sleeping bus from Vung Tau. (Interestingly, we discovered that a number of companies travel directly to the south, meaning that we didn’t have to transfer and spend some time waiting for a connection in HCM City.)

Bao found that the city had changed and grown a lot. Previously the area behind his family’s home was sand and mangroves. It is now extensively filled-in and built on with houses, shops, hotels and boulevards, and the mangroves have been replaced with a seawall. The guesthouse we stayed in was in this area, and we borrowed a motorbike to take a look around the city.

Other than visiting family, our purpose in coming to Rach Gia was to use it as a staging post to get to Ha Tien (rather than continue directly there on the bus from Vung Tau).

Ha Tien
Much of Kien Giang province has been disputed territory with Cambodia over the years, even as recently as the Pol Pot regime when the army of that government regularly invaded, attacked and massacred Vietnamese. Traditionally, the Khmers have regarded any area in which a particular type of tree, similar to a coconut palm but with a different type of fruit, grows as being Khmer territory. This is the case for the land around Ha Tien and further north at Chau Doc. It is from this tree – actually from the flowers – that palm sugar is manufactured.

In the 1700s Ha Tien was protected from the Khmers by a Chinese warlord named Mac Cuu. The tombs of his family are now a principal attraction in Ha Tien. Ha Tien, itself is a very very popular destination for Vietnamese tourists, and a scattering of foreigners. This is because it is also close to some beautiful beaches, and limestone outcroppings and mountains, riddled with caves and turned into temples.

So these attractions are what we travelled from Rach Gia to come and see. We offloaded from the bus and transferred into the town only to discover cup dien – no electricity, a familiar story in the south at this “sunny” time of year. It also took some doing to find a suitable place to stay – facility and price-wise. We discovered why later in the afternoon after returning from touring around the surrounding countryside. Every hotel was absolutely booked out, there were tour buses everywhere, and masses of people were setting up for the night on sleeping mats in the foyers and landings of hotels and guest houses – ours included.

We had lunch in the market and enquired about finding two xe om drivers to take us around for the afternoon, settling on a price of 150,000 dong for each of us. For this, we were taken around the district to Mac Cuu family tombs and pagodas - one to Mac Cuu and his wife, the other to Phu Dung, the daughter-in-law of Mac Cuu and wife of Mac Tinh Tich (Mac Cuu's son and successor in power). This pagoda was first built in the late 1700s, and although it has been rebuilt several times, it still has some original structural posts and the personal altar of Phu Dung.

Afterwards we travelled west to Thach Dong mountain cave pagoda and Nui Da Dung mountain and extensive limestone caves. Here we were very close to the Cambodia border, and looked across the fields from the Vietnamese side to see a typical Khmer style temple on an adjacent hill, as well as some traders avoiding paying duty by travelling through the fields to the Vietnam side! Nui Da Dung was not an easy climb for me - age? unfit? - yet Bao and one of our drivers pushed ahead without effort over the many steps and into dark caves. I was very grateful for our pitstop at the end and drank and drank! 7-up and then a drink made from the local coconut.









There was still no power back in Ha Tien until midnight, so the most comfortable place to be was outdoors along with everyone else drinking coffee along the river-bank. Sadly there was no breeze blowing across the water :(

The next morning we decided to engage the same drivers to pick us up early and travel to Hon Chong to walk through the Chua Hang Grotto and the temple there. Along the road to the grotto there are many beachside resorts, and we were among thousands of visitors with the same intention. Returning to Ba Hon to pick up the boat service, scheduled to leave at 11.30am, we were able to visit an interesting limestone outcrop that Bao had long heard of but never located. It is reputed to have been the home of a crocodile in the past. Now this huge rock sits in a field, showing unique water-worn channels and tunnels at head-height. The rock must have been several feet lower into a water source in the past.

Finally, we visited another very large outcrop, through which we could walk to a central open area. This site, yet again, has various grottoes and caves in which people pray. It was also a Viet Cong base in the past, where artillery were manufactured and where there was a hospital area under cover in a cave.

Hon Nghe
Bao had read and seen information about this small island on the Internet in Vietnamese tourism sites, and was moved to visit because it is a natural and mostly undeveloped place to go. It also rates a mention - alone out of all the small islands in this area - in Lonely Planet. Unlike the Lonely Planet travel suggestions, though, we used the daily regular transport/passenger boat service from Ba Hon. This boat, among one or two others, brings the day's fishing catch to the mainland and returns with all manner of supplies. On our trip the main cargoes were ice and cement. Women from Hon Nghe make the journey each day to buy vegetables for reselling to the rest of the island's population.

During the trip across we were mainly treated to a lightly developed land and seascape. We could see settlements on many islands, and presumed that each had a boat service to support the local fishing industries. Looking back at the mainland, though, was a different story. Cement works are everywhere in this area, taking advantage of the abundant limestone, and the bay near Ba Hon will soon change shape with landfill works extending far out into the water. Bao noted that the shore past Ha Tien has also greatly changed from the past.

Hon Nghe is not an island you go to for a wild time. We had been told, even at the point of embarkation, that there was a guest house to stay in. Lonely Planet, contrarily, advises that tourists are not allowed to stay on the island. During the trip Bao learned the truth from the boat driver: there are no guest houses, but the family that runs the cafe at the jetty sometimes take in overnight visitors. So that is where we stayed, in the front room of someone's house. The cafe owners also took care of our meals. We were well looked after, and not seen as an inconvenience at all.

Of course, though, we were asked why we had come to Hon Nghe instead of going to Phu Quoc, which is where tourists to this province usually head to. There isn't in fact much to do on Hon Nghe, other than to visit the temple on a high rocky headland. We did this three times!

The first time was with a man we met at the cafe. He showed us through the caves and took us down some rocky paths around the headland, before showing us the way to access the road that goes (almost) all the way around the island, a route of about 7 km. A rather hot and thirsty walk as it turned out, passing through numerous tiny settlements, with heads constantly turning to take in the amazing sight of this sweaty, red-faced foreigner!

Late in the afternoon I took a swim off the only, tiny and rocky beach on the island amongst the fishing boats, while Bao took in the sunset. After dinner it was suggested that we take a walk - up to the temple, which we did, catching the stiff breeze and taking the chance to cool down a bit. After that it was an early night, as life on the island really needs to move with nature and follow the sun.









The boat back to Ba Hon was scheduled to leave at 8.30am, though on this occasion people needed to be aboard before the cargo of seafood. So our actual departure time after boarding was about an hour later. During this time we watched baskets of prawns, barrels of squid and bags of fish being packed down in ice and hoisted aboard our boat from various fishing vessels.

Another excellent adventure!