The Lover House in Vietnam is Huỳnh Thủy Lê Ancient House at 255A Nguyễn Huệ Street in Sa Đéc, Đồng Tháp Province. The merchant Huỳnh Cẩm Thuận built it in 1895, and his son’s affair with the schoolgirl Marguerite Duras inspired the novel L’Amant (The Lover).
This is the real Huỳnh family home, not the house used on screen for the family’s home in Jean-Jacques Annaud’s 1992 film. The film’s stand-in is the Dương family house in Bình Thủy, Cần Thơ. Keeping those two buildings apart makes the story easier to follow.
What is the Lover House in Vietnam?
The Lover House is Huỳnh Thủy Lê Ancient House, an 1895 merchant home on Nguyễn Huệ Street in Sa Đéc. It belonged to the family of the man who inspired the lover in Marguerite Duras’s novel. Vietnamese guides call it Nhà cổ Huỳnh Thủy Lê; English-language pages often call it the Lover House.
Sa Đéc was a rice-trading hub on the Tiền River, and merchant families of Chinese origin built houses along its streets. In 2009 Vietnam’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism ranked the house a national monument. It has welcomed visitors since 2007 and reopened in December 2023 after restoration work.
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Huỳnh Thủy Lê Ancient House (Nhà cổ Huỳnh Thủy Lê) |
| Address | 255A Nguyễn Huệ Street, Sa Đéc, formerly Ward 2. Published map pins differ by about 900 ft (275 m), so search the Vietnamese name in a map app. |
| Built | 1895; rebuilt in 1917 in French villa style |
| Size | About 2,780 sq ft (258 m²), with three bays |
| Status | National monument since 2009; open to visitors since 2007; reopened in December 2023 |
| Age | 131 years in 2026 |
| Setting | About 164 ft (50 m) from the Sa Giang River and a short walk from Sa Đéc market |
Who Were Huỳnh Thủy Lê and Marguerite Duras?
Huỳnh Thủy Lê, the youngest son of a Fujian-born merchant, met the 15-year-old French schoolgirl Marguerite Duras on a Mekong ferry in 1929. Their affair lasted from 1929 until about 1931. Lê was born in 1906 into a family that traded rice and let property; he came to the ferry as the heir to a house already thirty-four years old.
Duras was born on April 4, 1914, in French Cochinchina, and spent her formative school years as a boarder in Saigon. Her mother headed the girls’ school in Sa Đéc, which is why a French schoolgirl crossed the Tiền River at all. The two lives met on the water between the town of the school and the town of the merchant.
In 1984 Duras published L’Amant, which won the Prix Goncourt. In 1992 Annaud’s film carried the story to cinemas. The novel is semi-autobiographical, so this page treats the book as literature and keeps its characters’ ages separate from the historical record.
| Point | Figures in circulation | Figure used here |
|---|---|---|
| Lê’s age at the meeting | 27 in the novel; about 23 from his 1906 birth year | About 23 in 1929 |
| Duras’s age | 15; 15½ in the novel; 16 in one source | 15, from her 1914 birth year |
| Where they met | The Mỹ Thuận ferry; the Vĩnh Long–Sa Đéc ferry | A ferry across the Tiền River; both place names are reported |
| Length of the affair | 18 months; 1929 to about 1931 | 1929 to about 1931 |
The novel fixes the lover at 27 and the girl at 15½, while birth years give different historical ages. Where sources disagree, this page names the figure it uses rather than blending the figures together.
Is This the House in the Film?
Not for the lover’s family home. Annaud filmed that home at the Dương family house in Bình Thủy, Cần Thơ, because the Sa Đéc house served as a government office at the time. The Dương house played the Huỳnh house on screen.
| Place | Role | What happened there |
|---|---|---|
| The Sa Đéc house | The real family home | It was a government office during the film period and stayed out of the main shoot |
| The Dương house, Bình Thủy | The screen setting for the family home | Founded about 1870 by the Dương family and renovated in French colonial style in the early 20th century |
| Other locations | The remaining scenes | Saigon, Vĩnh Long, Sa Đéc, Cần Thơ, and studio interiors |
Annaud’s film stars Jane March and Tony Leung Ka-fai. The Sa Đéc house and the Bình Thủy house are both worth seeing, but for different reasons: one is the historical family home, while the other is the building the camera used.
Where Else Did the Film Shoot Its Vietnam Scenes?
The crew filmed the bachelor flat’s exterior at 7 Phú Định in Saigon’s District 5, the Saigon lycée at the former Lycée Pétrus Ký, and most interiors in studios. A lycée is a French state secondary school.
| Scene | Location | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| The lover’s family home | The Dương house, Bình Thủy, Cần Thơ | Confirmed as the stand-in house |
| The ferry and the Sa Đéc school | Mekong Delta sites in and around Sa Đéc and Vĩnh Long | Exact sites are not named in the survey |
| The bachelor’s flat exterior | 7 Phú Định, District 5 | Confirmed |
| The Saigon lycée | Former Lycée Pétrus Ký, now the Lê Hồng Phong school, District 5 | Confirmed |
What Does the House Look Like?
From the street, the house reads as a French villa. Inside, it follows the plan of a Chinese merchant house on a Southern Vietnamese three-bay layout, and both plans share one roof. Brick walls 12–16 in (30–40 cm) thick wrap a timber frame under a roof of yin-yang tiles: curved tiles laid in alternating concave and convex rows.
The 1917 rebuild brought bricks, glass, and floor tiles from France. One house guide also attributes the timber to Cambodia. The façade uses fragments of ceramic and porcelain and patterned encaustic tiles. Boat-shaped gable ends close the roofline.
The house stands about 164 ft (50 m) from the Sa Giang River and faces the road along the bank. One local account describes the siting as a merchant’s rule: place the house where road, market, and river meet.
Inside, three bays share one roof, with carved timber doors and French floor tiles. Southern Vietnamese practice shapes the plan, Chinese practice shapes the ritual space, and French design shapes the street face. Three architectural vocabularies meet in one home.
Which Details Should You Look for Inside?
A short visit is enough to notice the main hall and the details that tie the house to both merchant life and the Duras story.
| Detail | Where | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Guan Gong altar | Main hall | The deity many Chinese merchants worship |
| Tablet “Trung Tây Cộng Hưởng” | Over the archway | The family’s motto of blended worlds |
| Lower floor | Main hall | A feng shui reading in which money flows to the lowest point |
| French floor tiles and ceiling lights | Floor and ceiling | Imports associated with the 1917 rebuild |
| Photographs and film stills | Walls | The Huỳnh family, Duras, and the actors |
The house also displays period furniture and a French clock. A guide serves hot tea and ginger jam in the ancestral room.
What Should You Expect From a Visit?
Allow 30 to 45 minutes inside the house. Current Vietnamese guides give hours of 8:30 am to 5:30 pm and a ticket of VND 20,000–30,000 with a guide, tea, and ginger jam, but read the board at the gate before relying on either figure.
| Item | What sources say | Planning guidance |
|---|---|---|
| Hours | 8:30 am to 5:30 pm daily; other pages give 7:00 am to 5:00 pm, 7:00 am to 6:00 pm, or 8:00 am to 5:00 pm | Treat 8:30 am to 5:30 pm as provisional and check the gate |
| Admission | VND 20,000–30,000 per person with a guide; one listing gives about VND 40,000 with guide, tea, and ginger jam | Confirm the current price on arrival |
| Time needed | A planning estimate of 30 to 45 minutes | Allow 30 to 45 minutes |
| Guide and language | Vietnamese, English, and French are reported | Ask at the gate for your preferred language |
| Busy hours | Not confirmed; the house drew 18,000 visitors in 2011 and about 5,000 foreign visitors in one peak month of 2025 | Expect tour groups on busy days |
| Signage | Visitor reports describe few labels | Read the story and building sections before you go |
| Overnight stay | A reported offer in two original bedrooms | Confirm availability and price directly with the house |
The house holds period furniture, family photographs, and film stills. It is a preserved setting, not a staged film set.
How Do You Reach the House, and What Sits Nearby?
Sa Đéc lies on the Tiền River upstream of the Mỹ Thuận Bridge. You can reach the house by road from Saigon or Cần Thơ, by river on a cruise, or on foot from the market.
| From | Route and time | Planning note |
|---|---|---|
| Saigon | By road | Confirm the current travel time and distance for the day of travel |
| Cần Thơ | By road; about 1 to 2 hours by car according to one guidebook | Allow for traffic and river crossings |
| The river | By cruise vessel | The Calypso Mekong route is described below |
| Sa Đéc town | On foot from Kiến An Cung and the market | A short walk; confirm the exact route locally |
Kiến An Cung, the Hokkien Assembly Hall, is about 100 years old, and the Huỳnh family paid for part of it. Sa Đéc market and its rice-flour kilns are a short walk away. Rice-flour making entered Vietnam’s national intangible heritage list on February 21, 2024, and about 160 households work in the craft. The kilns light at around 4 am.
Tân Quy Đông flower farms sit a short drive away. Growers place their pots on raised racks above the flood, another small example of how life in the delta follows the water.
How Can You Visit the Lover House From a Mekong River Cruise?
The Calypso Mekong program calls at Sa Đéc on day 2 of outbound sailings. The Aquila 44 power catamaran has three cabins and accommodates up to six guests. It anchors midstream on the Tiền River, and guests who choose the old-quarter walk visit the house with a local guide.
| Stop | Where it falls | What guests do |
|---|---|---|
| Mỹ Thuận Bridge | Morning of day 2, after Cái Bè | Pass beneath the bridge that replaced the ferry crossing, opened on May 21, 2000. Sources place the lovers’ meeting on a Mỹ Thuận or Vĩnh Long–Sa Đéc ferry. |
| Sa Đéc old quarter | Afternoon of day 2, with a call window of about 2:45 to 4:45 | Go ashore by tender, walk the Indochinese shophouse row, and visit the house with its own guide. A vessel guide can translate if needed. |
| Bình Thủy House, Cần Thơ | Day 5, optional on the 15-night program | Drive about 10 minutes from the Cồn Sơn landing, then allow about 45 minutes at the house used in the film. |
The Sa Đéc house ticket and any overnight stay are outside the cruise call. The Sa Đéc visit may move to the following morning if the tide delays the tender. See the Mekong River Cruise Guide for routes, seasons, costs, and vessel choices.
Questions About the Lover House
Can you stay overnight in the Lover House?
A reported offer provides two original bedrooms for up to four guests, at about VND 550,000–1,000,000 per room per night with breakfast and one other meal. Confirm that the offer and rate still run directly with the house. Check-in is reported after the day’s tours, around 5:30 to 6:00 pm. The Calypso Mekong program does not include this stay.
Huỳnh Thủy Lê House or Bình Thủy House: which should you see?
See the Sa Đéc house for the real family home and the Bình Thủy house for the building used on screen. The Sa Đéc house dates from 1895 on Nguyễn Huệ Street; the Bình Thủy house dates from about 1870 on Bùi Hữu Nghĩa Street. On the Calypso Mekong 15-night route, they fall on day 2 and day 5.
What is L’Amant?
L’Amant (The Lover) is Marguerite Duras’s semi-autobiographical novel of 1984. It won the Prix Goncourt and was filmed by Jean-Jacques Annaud in 1992. It tells of a French schoolgirl and a wealthy Chinese-Vietnamese man who meet on a Mekong ferry in French Indochina around 1930.
Which other places in Sa Đéc fit the same visit?
Combine the house with Kiến An Cung Hokkien Assembly Hall, Sa Đéc market and its rice-flour kilns, and the Tân Quy Đông flower farms. The hall and market are within a short walk; the farms require a short drive.
What does the Lover House keep from the story, and what does it leave out?
The house keeps the setting of the story: a Fujian merchant’s home, its altar, its tablet, and its family photographs. It leaves out most of the romance itself, which the novel places in Saigon and on the river. Read the house and the book against each other, and let each one explain what the other cannot.
What Makes the House Worth Seeing?
The Lover House is not simply a film location. It is a merchant home shaped by Chinese ritual, French materials, Southern Vietnamese planning, rice trading, and the river beside its front door. The novel made the story famous; the house gives the story a physical place in Sa Đéc.