Vinh Long, Vietnam — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Vinh Long known for?

Fruit is the province's calling card. Orchards of longan, rambutan and mangosteen crowd the islets in the river, and family homestays on An Bình draw travellers who want to sleep among the trees. Along the Cổ Chiên River the kilns of Mang Thít fire red brick and pottery, a craft that gave the district its nickname as a kingdom of red brick.

Southern chamber music, đờn ca tài tử, is played here. The boats that run to the Cái Bè market leave from the city wharf.

Where is Vinh Long?

Vĩnh Long sits in the middle of the Mekong Delta, in the south of Vietnam. Water rules the map. The land is wedged between two arms of the Mekong River, the Tiền River to the north and the Hậu River, also called the Bassac, to the south.

Between them runs the Cổ Chiên, a distributary that peels off the Tiền and rejoins the delta downstream, and its channels wrap the low farmland in water on almost every side. Tiền Giang and Đồng Tháp lie across the Tiền River to the north, while Cần Thơ and Hậu Giang spread to the west and south-west. To the east the Cổ Chiên runs south-east past Bến Tre and Trà Vinh toward the East Sea.

Downstream the land opens to the coast. The ground is flat, low and made of river silt, the classic alluvial plain of the lower Mekong. Rice paddies and orchards cover it, cut by a dense web of canals and dotted with islets like An Bình. Ho Chi Minh City lies upriver to the north-east, a road journey of a few hours across the Tiền at the Mỹ Thuận Bridge.

What is Vinh Long like?

Life here runs on the river and the orchard. The province calls itself a land of fruit and flowers, and the gardens of longan, rambutan, durian, and pomelo are as much a part of daily life as the rice fields. Music belongs to the same rhythm. Đờn ca tài tử, the southern chamber music that UNESCO lists as intangible heritage, is played in homes and at festivals across the delta, and Vĩnh Long is one of its strongholds.

Downstream at Mang Thít, potters and brick-makers still shape river clay into tile and jar. Scholarship left its mark too. Vĩnh Long built one of the south's few Temples of Literature, the Văn Thánh Miếu, begun in 1864 at the urging of the mandarin Phan Thanh Giản, the first southerner to earn the imperial doctorate.

The work fell to the scholar Nguyễn Thông, the province's director of education, who saw it finished in 1866. Vietnamese, Khmer and Hoa communities share the province, and Khmer villages hold ngo boat races on the canals. The everyday language is Vietnamese.

Cooking leans on the river and the garden, all fresh fish, herbs and fruit, and travellers often meet it first over a home-cooked meal in an island homestay.

What is the history of Vinh Long?

The province began as Long Hồ. The Nguyễn lords set up the garrison district in 1732 to govern the freshly settled delta, and it once covered Bến Tre, Trà Vinh and part of Cần Thơ as well. Emperor Minh Mạng turned it into a formal province called Vĩnh Long in 1832, and French forces seized the citadel in 1867.

The southern republic revived the name in 1957.

What is the climate of Vinh Long?

Vĩnh Long runs hot all year. The delta climate splits into two seasons rather than four, a dry stretch from about December to April and a rainy monsoon from May into November. Heat and humidity change little between them.

When the upstream Mekong swells in late summer, the water rises across the delta in the floating season, and the orchards and canals fill. Fruit picking peaks around then.

How do you get to Vinh Long?

Most reach Vĩnh Long by road. Buses and cars run down National Highway 1 from Ho Chi Minh City, crossing the wide Tiền River on the Mỹ Thuận Bridge to reach the province from the north-east. The province has no airport of its own.

The closest is Cần Thơ International Airport, a short drive to the south-west. From the city wharf, ferries and sampans cross to An Bình and the other river islets.