Azerai Can Tho Opens on an Island in the Mekong Delta
Adrian Zecha's second Azerai opened in 2018 with 60 villas on a private islet in the Hau River, reached by boat from Can Tho and close to the Cai Rang floating market.
Azerai Can Tho opened in 2018 on Au islet, a 21-hectare island in the Hau River facing the city of Can Tho, the capital of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. It has 60 villas and is the second resort of Azerai, the brand that Adrian Zecha created after leaving Aman, following a first hotel in Luang Prabang.
The idea of Azerai
Zecha founded Aman in 1988 and defined the small luxury resort for a generation. With Azerai, launched when he was past eighty, he set out to offer the same qualities of design, setting and quiet service at a much lower price. The name combines his initials with caravanserai. Can Tho was the first Azerai built from the ground up.
The island
Guests arrive by the resort’s boat from a pier in the city, a crossing of ten minutes. The islet is flat and green, with banyan trees, mangrove along the shore and a lake at its centre. The architect, Pascal Trahan, placed the buildings along the water in a formal, symmetrical plan.
The villas are single-storey pavilions with high pitched roofs and deep verandas on all sides, facing the river, the lake or the gardens. Interiors are plain and light, with bamboo and rattan furniture, timber floors and sliding screens. A group of larger pool villas with several bedrooms was added later on the river side.
There is a 30-metre pool, a spa, a yoga pavilion, tennis courts and bicycles for the island’s paths. The restaurant serves the cooking of the delta: river fish and prawns, herbs, coconut and turmeric, along with pho and Western dishes.
The delta
The reason to come is the river. Can Tho is the site of Cai Rang, the largest floating market in the delta, where wholesalers sell fruit and vegetables from boat to boat at dawn, each advertising its goods by hanging a sample from a pole. The resort takes guests there by boat before sunrise, with breakfast of noodle soup from a floating kitchen. Other excursions follow the narrow canals through orchards, rice-paper workshops and old merchants’ houses.
The Mekong Delta had long been a day trip from Ho Chi Minh City. The resort made it a place to stay for two or three nights.
Getting there
Can Tho is about three and a half hours by road from Ho Chi Minh City, and has an airport with domestic flights. The dry season, from December to April, is the most comfortable.
Zecha went on to found Azumi, a Japanese ryokan brand, with Azumi Setoda in 2021 and a farm retreat in Iwate in 2026.