Con Son Islet Can Tho

On Cồn Sơn there is no sound of motorbikes and no busy asphalt road. There are gardens, birdsong, the smell of damp earth, and the quiet of an islet in the middle of the river.

This is Cồn Sơn, an alluvial islet of about 70 hectares in the Hậu River, in the Bình Thủy area of Cần Thơ. The Hậu River is one of the two branches of the Mekong that flow through Vietnam. Before 2015, about 30 households on the islet lived purely from farming and raising fish. Tourism was not on their minds.

Then a few households began trying out visits to their fruit gardens. Word of it traveled. In 2015 the community formally set up the Cồn Sơn Agricultural Tourism Cooperative, with about 30 households taking part. Each household takes charge of a different activity. One has an orchard, another a fish raft, another makes folk cakes, and another performs đờn ca tài tử. Đờn ca tài tử is an art of music and song of southern Vietnam that evokes life on the Mekong Delta's land and rivers. All of these households are tied together by family lines and by neighborly feeling.

Cồn Sơn has been recognized as meeting the ASEAN Homestay Standard. That is a set of community tourism standards for the ten countries of Southeast Asia, issued in 2017. The recognition is a regional honor, and it speaks to the quality and sustainability of the model.

The best-known and most unusual specialty of the islet is the flying snakehead. The name sounds strange, and seeing it is stranger still. The snakehead, a freshwater fish common in the western delta, is trained by conditioned reflex. For many months the keeper feeds the fish at a set signal, until a fish that hears the signal leaps up by itself to look for food. The result is dozens of snakehead rising together, from 30 to 50 centimeters out of the water, so that they look as if they are flying. This specialty is found only on Cồn Sơn. No other place in the western delta has it.

Just as special is the fish raft of Mr. Lê Văn Bon, known on the islet as Bảy Bon. He has spent many years protecting the rare freshwater fish of the Hậu River. His raft holds many prized species. The most notable is the cá thác lác cườm, a long, flat fish with a handsome pattern. It is made into a fish cake from a family recipe, chả cá thác lác cườm. There is also a pond of koi, an ornamental Japanese carp, where visitors can reach in and feed them.

The fruit season runs from May to August. More than 20 orchards on the islet grow durian, rambutan, mangosteen, pomelo, dâu and bananas. In the orchard, visitors may pick fruit and eat it on the spot. Nothing is fresher than a red rambutan picked and peeled under its own tree.

Many visitors want to try the cầu khỉ, the monkey bridge. It is the traditional bamboo bridge of southwestern Vietnam, a single bamboo pole laid across a ditch, with one thin rod for a handrail. Crossing it takes balance. Anyone who falls is soaked to the skin, but the ditch is shallow, so no harm is done.

Another activity that people from the city rarely get to do is draining a ditch to catch fish. A short stretch of a small ditch is bailed dry. Then people catch snakehead, cá rô and catfish out of the mud with their bare hands. They end up covered in mud and enjoying every minute.

The women of the islet teach the making of folk cakes of southern Vietnam. The cakes include bánh xèo and bánh khọt, as well as bánh ít trần and a steamed banana cake. Whatever is made is eaten right away.

In the afternoon, a group of local artists sit around their instruments and play đờn ca tài tử. UNESCO recognized this art in 2013. It is not a staged show. It is a real setting, real families and real music.

Cồn Sơn is quite different from the Mỹ Khánh tourist village right next to it. Mỹ Khánh is a large, professional private business with many entertainment shows. Cồn Sơn is a community, simple, natural and genuine. Anyone who wants to see how life in the west really goes on, and not a version put on for visitors, will find it here.