Chau Doc is a border town with natural area of 104.7 km2 located in the southwest of country. The town is situated 250 km to the west of Saigon. It takes about six hours from Saigon to get there. Its current population is about more than 119.000 people. Chau Doc is a bustling center of trade and river transport. It is ancient provincial capital, after the liberation day it became the town of An Giang province consisting of 4 wards: Chau Phu A, Chau Phu B, Mount Sam and Vinh My and 3 communes: Vinh Te, Vinh Nguon and Vinh Chau.
Intersection of Chau Doc and Hau River is in front of the town. That Tung Mountain stands behind the town. Chau Doc town is a famous tourist center of An Giang Province and the Mekong Delta as well. The main attraction of Chau Doc is Sam Mountain. It is situated 7 km from the town along Bao Ho Thoai Street. The mountain has a number of pagodas at its base. Chau Doc is associated with many country’s events. Especially, Thoai Ngoc Hau event called upon people to build Vinh Te canal which is significant for both irrigation and military.
Chau Doc Market
Besides, Chau Doc has a large street market on Le Cong Thanh Street. Here you can get everything from something tasty to eat to a new Hi Fi. There is also a great food market.
Lady Temple
Lady Temple is located at the foot of Sam Mountain, Vinh Te Commune, Chau Doc Town, An Giang Province. Ba Chua Xu Temple is constructed according to the Chinese character “Quoc”, has 4 square roofs, roofed with blue pile-shaped tiles.
Lady Temple was built in 1820 on Sam Mountain. According to a legend, in the early 1800s villagers found a statue of a lady dating to the 6th century in the forest. They built a temple in her honor, hoping that she would bring them better crops and better lives. This is why the marble statue of the Lady temple, meaning “country lady”, is worshipped. The Lady temple is organized annually at the end of the 4th lunar month, worshippers touch her statue and ask for her protection and benediction.
Sam Mountain
Sam Mountain is the highest mountain in the Mekong Delta. On the way there, you can enjoy the sights of the two rice fields along the road, and drop by for a short visit to a small Khmer village. You will have a short walk up on the mountain side to see the daily life of mountain people. There are dozens of pagodas and temples, many of them set in caves, around Sam Mountain. The Chinese influence is obvious and Sam Mountain is a favorite spot for ethnic Chinese.
Sam Mountain does not only offer beautiful landscapes, but it is also where many historic remains deeply loved by the inhabitants of Nam Bo plain are located. The Lady temple, Tay An Pagoda, Thoai Ngoc Hau Tomb, Tao Ngo Garden and Bach Van Hill are among the famous sites to visit near Sam Mountain. To the top of the mountain, there is a shrine with good views of the surrounding countryside. Climbing the peak is, of course, the highlight of a visit to Sam Mountain. The views from the top are spectacular if weather permitting and you can easily look out over Cambodia. There is a military outpost on the summit, a legacy of the days when the Khmer Rouge made cross-border. The outpost is still functional and the soldiers are quite used to tourists taking photos now, however, you should ask permission and perhaps ply the soldiers with cigarettes before taking photos of them or anything that could be considered militarily sensitive.
Walking down is easier than walking up, so if you want to cheat, have a motorbike take you to the summit. The road to the top is on the east side of the mountain. You can walk down along a peaceful, traffic-free trail on the north side which will bring you to the main temple area. The summit road has been decorated with amusement-park ceramic dinosaurs and the like. But there are also some small shrines and pavilions, which add a bit of charm and also remind you that this is indeed Vietnam and not Disneyland.
Floating Fishing Village
One of the special features of Chau Doc is the floating fishing villages. People take advantage of the river to raise many kinds of fishes specially the cat fish that exported to some countries as Taiwan, China and even to America. Raising fishes on the water is very popular nowadays in Vietnam. Chau Doc also well known about what Vietnamese called “Mam” that made from fishes.
Vinh Te Canal
Vinh Te Canal is an 87-kilometre-long canal in southern Vietnam, designed to give the territory of Chau Doc a direct access to the Ha Tien sea gate, Gulf of Thailand.
After the construction of Thoai Ha Canal, Emperor Gia Long of Nguyen Dynasty ordered the mandarin Nguyen Van Thoai to dig a new canal along the Cambodia – Vietnam border. The construction of the canal was started in the end of 1819. The project used about 80,000 local Vietnamese and Khmer workers. After the death of Emperor Gia Long, the succeeding Emperor Minh Mang continued the project. The workers, especially the Khmers, were heavily exploited by being forced to do hard work, which resulted thousands of deaths from fatigue and consequent disease during the canal’s construction. Consequently, Vinh Te Canal became a symbol of Vietnamese mistreatment of the Khmer and was used later by the Khmer Rouge in anti-Vietnamese propaganda. The construction was completed in 1824 and Emperor Minh Mạng named the canal after Chau Vinh Te, the wife of its builder Nguyen Van Thoai. From that point on, the canal plays an important role in the southern Vietnam's communication, transportation and the definition of the border of Vietnam and Cambodia.
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