3 Best Sights in Ha Tien, Mekong Delta

Sometimes referred to as the hill of tombs, this site is a garden cemetery containing the remains of Chinese-born General Mac Cuu (1655--1735) and his family. Mac Cuu is credited with establishing Ha Tien in 1670, when the region was part of Cambodia. The family mausoleum, with its traditional Chinese tombs decorated with dragons, phoenixes, tigers, and lions, was built in 1809. A small temple dedicated to the family sits at the base of the complex.

With its pebble-strewn brown sand, Mui Nai, 6 km (4 miles) west of Ha Tien, pales in comparison to Phu Quoc's beaches, but the sea is calm and shallow so it's a pleasant enough place to take a dip. It's extremely popular on the weekends when people from all over the delta come to escape the heat and enjoy fresh seafood from one of the seafood shacks. There's sometimes an entrance/parking fee on busy days.

On the road to the Cambodian border, 4 km (2.5 miles) northwest of Ha Tien, this cave pagoda is in an echoey cavern in a limestone karst, with various chambers holding funerary tablets. The cave is home to a colony of bats (so keep your mouth closed when you look up), and the views from some of the openings across to Cambodia are pretty. At the base of the mountain is a small monument shaped like a clenched fist that commemorates the murder of 130 local civilians by the Khmer Rouge in 1978.