Paddle a round boat through a nipa palm forest
Go early or it is a nightclub
Bay Mau coconut forest, Cam Thanh, about 5 km east of the old town where the Thu Bon meets the sea.
Why it's unique
The thung chai is a round woven basket boat waterproofed with tree resin, and it is worked through brackish channels under nipa palm, a water coconut planted here about two hundred years ago by migrants from the Mekong Delta.
The forest is not scenery. Its density made it a hiding place during the war against the Americans, and Cam Thanh's part in that is locally commemorated.
A note on a story you will be told: boatmen say the round shape exists because the French taxed boats and a basket is arguably not a boat. It is repeated everywhere and I could not source it anywhere checkable, so treat it as a local story rather than as history.
Before you go
Go early in the morning or late in the afternoon. In the middle of the day this has become a loud, spinning, music-blaring circuit with dozens of boats at once, and almost every disappointed review is somebody who turned up at 11am.
Ask for a boatman who will paddle rather than spin. The spinning is a show added for tour groups and you can simply decline it.
The channels are narrow and shaded, which is the actual appeal, and you only notice that when it is quiet.