Huynh Thuy Le Ancient House

Huynh Thuy Le was the son of a wealthy Chinese-Vietnamese family in Sa Dec, and in 1929 he began a relationship with Marguerite Duras, then a fifteen-year-old French schoolgirl living in the colony, which she wrote about more than fifty years later in L'Amant - a book that won the Goncourt and was filmed here. The family house, built in 1895 and remodelled in a mixed French and Chinese manner, survives on the Sa Dec waterfront with its tiled floors, carved screens and altar, and is open as a museum with rooms let for overnight stays. The affair as Duras described it involved a child, which is worth saying plainly.

What you actually see

• The Huynh family house of 1895 - French and Chinese detail combined.
• The subject of L'Amant - Duras's Goncourt-winning novel.
• Tiled floors and carved screens - the interior largely intact.
• Rooms let overnight - the house works partly as a guesthouse.

When to go

Year round. An hour.

Honest expectations

The house is small and the visit is short. The relationship the book describes was between an adult man and a girl of fifteen, and the site's romantic framing sits uneasily with that. Sa Dec is a working town, pleasant and unremarkable.

Nearby

Sa Dec flower village is on the edge of town; Cao Lanh is north.