Can Tho feels like the smallest big city on my trip so far. There’s a strong downtown with everything you need, and more. Good shopping opportunities, both in small market streets and in shopping malls. Tons of restaurants, though far fewer with international cuisine. Nice city parks and a riverside promenade, from which you can get out onto the rivers. But it’s concentrated. Outside downtown it’s a mix of housing, main roads, and roadside shops. You can still get everything you need, just in an everyday format.

In the evening, downtown lights up with amazing, colorful light decorations. Unlike the other cities I’ve visited, the decorations aren’t trying to sell you anything. They’re festive, artistic, and unrelated to any shop. It comes across as disarming to me. I can park a lot of the ulterior motives and just enjoy it.

I’m in Can Tho from Thursday to Tuesday. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday the night market is open. The riverside promenade is fully lit up. There are stalls side by side, entertainment from a range of different stages, and a sea of people. There are very few internationals in the crowd, and the market feels local. Many of the stalls don’t have English on their signs, and the entertainment is exclusively in Vietnamese.

Along the promenade there are stages with different entertainment. My favorite stage is an open stage where the audience participates. A theme is set, in the form of dance, poetry, or song. The audience takes turns jumping in and performing. One evening there was a dance-off. A big circle of young people stand ready. A countdown sounds, and 4-5 run into the middle, where they bust out some choreographed dance moves. The music plays for 20 seconds before it stops, and the dance floor is cleared. A new countdown sounds, bringing in a new group who run in and get ready to perform. I never quite figured out if it was a competition. Participants had to know the music and perform the correct choreography. A physical music quiz. But the level was high, and people stood cheering each other on. The music was fairly energetic Asian pop. I heard Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese, and combined with the choreography, I’m guessing k-pop.

Another stage that also draws a good crowd, I call the folk stage. Here I’ve seen traditional classical Vietnamese music on traditional instruments. Sometimes there’s a singer, male or female, who improvises and pulls laughs out of the audience and instructs how the chorus should be sung along in unison. Without understanding a word, it was incredibly enjoyable to stand and watch. People had fun, sang along, and clapped.

Between all the stages I walk around and take it all in. It’s one of the few times on my trip where I’m somewhere that doesn’t feel like it’s put on for my sake. That makes me much more relaxed. Can Tho still has a focus on tourism, but for the population rather than internationals. The difference is noticeable. Can Tho is generally a bit boring if I look at sightseeing options. There’s the Mekong river and the floating market. But beyond that there are few museums, few nature hotspots, few open temples. Can Tho feels like a city made for its residents, who work day to day and need to come down to the harbor and party on the weekend. Like a city that could exist without me.

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