Vi Thuy Forest Eco Park

The Lung Ngọc Hoàng Nature Reserve has a freshwater crocodile 40 years old and three and a half meters long. The reserve lies in the area once called Phụng Hiệp district. It covers 2,805 hectares, and it was set up in 2002 by a decision of the Prime Minister as a national-level reserve.

The Vị Thủy Tràm Forest Eco Park is another place, and many visitors mix the two up. It lies in the area once called Vị Thủy district. It is a private tourist park run as a business, much smaller than the reserve, and it centers on a bird garden and restful stays.

Both places have tràm forest and wetland. They differ completely in size, in purpose and in the level of conservation.

The Vị Thủy park lies in Vĩnh Tường commune, in what was Hậu Giang Province. After the merger on July 1, 2025, it belongs to the new Vĩnh Tường commune in the new Cần Thơ City.

Before 2007, this land was the Cờ Đỏ State Farm, a state-owned farm of the subsidy era that harvested tràm and fish. When the economy moved to the market system, the land was handed to the Việt-Úc Company Limited, which invested in developing ecotourism. It is a tourism business. It has nothing to do with the Việt Úc seafood group that specializes in shrimp fry.

The biggest attraction of the park is a bird garden of ten hectares. Water birds of southern Vietnam gather here: cò trâu, cò ngà, le le, cormorants, wild ducks and vạc. They come because the tràm forest is quiet and food is plentiful. Flocks rush in with a rustle of wings after a day of feeding out in the fields.

The tràm tree is the soul of this ecosystem. It has papery bark, white flowers and a crooked trunk. It gives honey and essential oil, it safeguards the wetland, and it shelters hundreds of species. Tràm forest is a symbol of the wetlands of southern Vietnam. It is kin to the forests of U Minh Thượng and U Minh Hạ. Tràm Chim in Đồng Tháp belongs to the same family. So does the Lung Ngọc Hoàng reserve.

Yet the Vị Thủy park has one thing that few places can offer. Visitors can stay right in the middle of the water forest. Cruise boats drift along the canals, and the bedrooms sit on the water. At night comes the cry of the vạc, and at dawn the sound of fish snapping at their prey. There are also wooden stilt houses in the traditional style of the western Mekong Delta.

In the afternoon, the sun lights the tràm canopy gold, and flocks of white cò wheel back to their nests. The beat of their wings blends into the wind over the canal. That moment belongs to the Mekong Delta alone, and the Vị Thủy tràm forest holds on to it to this day.