The white domes
With green and gold touches.
Around Chau Doc, near the Cambodian border, lives the largest community of Cham Muslims in the Mekong Delta, and the Jamiul Azhar Mosque is one of their largest and finest mosques, in the village of Chau Giang on the far bank of the Hau River. A wooden mosque called Masjid Yahya stood here from about 1700; it took its present name in 1959 and was rebuilt between 2012 and 2014 in the form it has today. The mosque is brilliant white with touches of jade green and gold lettering, with onion domes, a minaret topped by a crescent, wide arches and floral decoration, and inside are stone columns and chandeliers. In front of the entrance lies a cemetery, its headstones set in straight rows. A few steps away in the same village stands the Mubarak Mosque, blue and white, whose origins go back to 1750 and which was listed as a national monument in 1989. A small ferry crosses from Chau Doc to Chau Giang in minutes. The village is a Cham Muslim village of wooden houses on stilts, known for its weaving, and halal food is sold by families and stalls. Visitors are welcome outside prayer times in modest dress, with a headscarf for women and shoes off; the five daily prayers are led by the imam.
With green and gold touches.
Steps away, from 1750.
Stilt houses and weaving.
Chau Giang village, Chau Phong, across the river from Chau Doc
In the Cham village of Chau Giang across the river, home to the Jamiul Azhar and Mubarak mosques, reached by a small ferry from Chau Doc; halal food is sold by village families and stalls. Al Ehsan Mosque is in Da Phuoc, north of the confluence.
