Thoi Son Islet

Some mornings in the Mekong Delta, the sound of oars comes before the sun is up.

The boat leaves the tourist wharf at Mỹ Tho and heads out onto the Tiền River. The river here is wide and unhurried. Along both banks, house follows house on the low strip of land. Ahead, in the early mist, islets rise from the water, each one covered in green.

A little farther out, four large islets sit on this stretch of the river. People here name them after the four sacred creatures of Vietnamese folk culture: the dragon, the unicorn, the turtle and the phoenix. The boat is bound for the unicorn islet, Lân Islet. Its official name is Thới Sơn Islet. It covers about 1,200 hectares. It is only about 20 minutes from Mỹ Tho by boat.

That sounds simple enough. But a whole world waits there.

When the boat docks at Thới Sơn, visitors change to another kind of craft, the xuồng ba lá. It is small and narrow, with short oars, and it glides quietly between two rows of nipa palms. People in the Mekong Delta have traveled the small canals this way for a very long time. No engine. No motor noise. Only the oars, the water, the rustle of leaves and the familiar damp smell of river silt.

The palm canal is darker than the big river, because the fronds close in on both sides. Light slips through and shimmers in streaks on the water. A hand trailed in the current feels the cool of the silty water.

After the canal, the group goes ashore and explores Thới Sơn by horse cart or on foot. The village lanes are not smooth asphalt. In places they are bare earth, in others grass, with hedges or fruit orchards on either side. Mangoes, longans, rambutans, jackfruit and durians grow there, each in its season. Thới Sơn is orchard country. People live from their fruit trees, from keeping bees, from making sweets and from looking after guests.

Thới Sơn is a model of community tourism. Residents row the boats, tend the orchards, sing, make local specialties and keep the orchard way of life alive. In other words, this is not an amusement park with staff playing farmers. Visitors meet people doing their own real work.

The next stop is a bee farm and a table set with honey tea. One honey stop is in Thới Thạnh hamlet. Guests drink hot tea sweetened with honey and hear about beekeeping. They may see the hives and how the honey is taken. That cup of tea also tells how the people of the islet moved from fishing to keeping bees, making cakes and candy, and opening their doors to visitors.

After the honey tea, visitors often stop at a family workshop to watch, or try, the making of coconut candy and candied fruit. The ingredients are fresh coconut, sugar and ginger. The candy is pulled by hand on a wooden table. It hardens in a few minutes. Many households on the islet earn extra income this way. Visitors get to see it not because anyone is putting on a show, but because it is how they really make a living.

At the end of the visit, everyone sits down with a plate of seasonal fruit and listens to đờn ca tài tử.

This music is no sideshow. 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. In 2013, UNESCO inscribed it on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The players and singers wear no stage costumes. They sit around a table and play and sing as the mood takes them, following the rhythm of the afternoon and the air around them. The moon lute, the two-string fiddle, the zither and the monochord blend with long, held notes of the voice. A song may be sad or happy, but it always carries the free, easygoing spirit of the south.

In the orchard house there is music and fruit. Chickens scratch in the grass of the yard, and farther off stands a row of coconut palms. Here it is easy to see why people say, "Come to the Mekong Delta, and you must slow down."

The stretch of the Tiền River around Thới Sơn is also linked to a great battle. In 1785, Nguyễn Huệ led the army of the Tây Sơn against a Siamese army. The Tây Sơn were three brothers who led an uprising from 1771 and for a time ruled Vietnam. Their army laid an ambush and routed the Siamese on the river between Rạch Gầm and Xoài Mút. Thới Sơn Islet held a key place in that ambush. The Tây Sơn hid their war boats here to wait for the Siamese. It is a layer of history under this same land, facing this same river, though the scene around it is far more peaceful now.

Thới Sơn Islet has no great waterfall, no cave, no mountain peak. It has only the river, the canals, the orchards, the people and the music of late afternoon. Sometimes those are the things people remember longest.