Going to Sa Dec is like giving a peck on the cheek to an old lady who’s seen a lot. She’s watched them all pass through: colonials in crisp white uniforms with neatly groomed mustaches, Chinese traders, nuns in winged cornets, the heavy Mekong barges, ceremonious Caodaists… and even Marguerite Duras, dragging her dreams through the damp heat of the quays. She doesn’t show off. She just tells her story, through her wrinkles and her weathered facades.
Here, nothing is on display. Everything remains.
You sit with her by the river, flipping through her scrapbook of memories until the sun drops behind the old market hall.
“Stay the night,” she says. “Everyone just passes through. You’d think I’m nothing more than ‘the daughter of…’”
You can’t say no. So in the evening, she lays out the table along the river, with the boatmen as your quiet neighbours.
And at dawn, she answers with a string of unruly markets, behind which old colonial houses drift into a slow morning. As if to prove she isn’t just a memory.
Can Tho plays.
Sa Dec works.
Can Tho stages the Delta.
Sa Dec keeps it going.
