Vũng Tàu
— the cape where the city goes to breathe.
Not only on a wall.
“The cape jutting south from the delta into the East Sea, ninety-five kilometres from Ho Chi Minh City. The French called it Cap Saint-Jacques; the Vietnamese call it the bay of boats. Two hills, Small Mountain and Large Mountain, frame a long arc of beach. A thirty-two-metre statue of Christ stands on the southern hill, arms open to the sea, completed in 1993.
Vũng Tàu, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Vũng Tàu is a coastal city of roughly 530,000 people on a small peninsula in Bà Rịa–Vũng Tàu Province, about ninety-five kilometres southeast of Ho Chi Minh City. The peninsula juts south into the East Sea between the mouths of the Saigon River and the Mekong delta, with two prominent hills, Núi Lớn (Large Mountain) and Núi Nhỏ (Small Mountain), framing the main beaches of Bãi Trước and Bãi Sau. The Hải Đăng Vũng Tàu lighthouse on Núi Nhỏ, built by the French in 1862, still operates.
The Christ of Vũng Tàu stands on the southern slope of Núi Nhỏ at thirty-two metres tall on a four-metre pedestal, with arms spread eighteen-and-a-half metres across, one of the tallest statues of Christ in the world. Construction began in 1974, paused through the war years, and resumed in 1992; the statue was dedicated in 1993. Visitors climb 811 stone steps from the road to the base and 133 further internal steps up through the body to viewing balconies in the arms.
The town reaches by road from Ho Chi Minh City in about two hours via the Long Thành–Dầu Giây Expressway; the historic hydrofoil ferry from the Bạch Đằng quay ran from the 1990s until 2014, and a coastal ferry service has since been restored on a smaller scale. Bãi Sau (Back Beach) on the eastern side is the long sand stretch favoured by Saigon weekenders; Bãi Trước (Front Beach) on the western side holds the colonial promenade, the seafood markets, and the lighthouse trail.