Cầu Hôn — Kiss Bridge

The bridge that never meets

There is a bridge on Phú Quốc that you could walk forever without reaching the other side. It has two arms that reach out to sea from opposite sides, towards each other, then stop about thirty centimetres apart. Someone built an entire bridge over the sea, weighing thousands of tonnes, only to leave exactly that gap empty on purpose.

The bridge opened on 22 December 2023 in Sunset Town (Thị trấn Hoàng Hôn), on the west shore of the island's southern waters, opposite the Venice Clock Tower. The name Cầu Hôn, the bridge of the kiss, comes from its shape: the two ends face each other as if sharing a kiss.

From breakwater to message

The original idea was simply a breakwater for the beach. Italian architect Marco Casamonti turned it into something else. Work began on 13 May 2021 and took more than two years, through bad weather and the Covid-19 pandemic, to finish.

The bridge was inspired by Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam, in which two fingers reach towards each other without touching. In the East there is the tale of Ông Ngâu and Bà Ngâu: a pair kept apart on opposite banks of the Silver River, who meet only once a year on a bridge built by magpies. The two arms are called the North Wing and the South Wing, and the gap between them is where the whole structure gathers its meaning.

What thirty centimetres says

The bridge's message is called "Chạm – The Touch". The thirty-centimetre gap stands for the distance between people in the age of technology, and only people can close it: with a kiss, a hug or a handshake. In other words, the bridge is not finished when the builders are done. The missing part belongs to those who come.

Perhaps that is why so many people bring big moments here. Many couples have proposed right on the bridge, and many choose it as the backdrop for their wedding photos.

Details few people notice

The inner face of the railings is engraved with 394 proverbs, poems and love songs in 22 languages, including some in rare African scripts. Walking the length of the bridge, you pass them one by one. At the head of the bridge stands a stone stele telling the story of "Chạm", along with the names of the engineers and construction companies.

The bridge looks slender but weighs about 6,000 tonnes and rises to 25 metres, with slanted piers tilted at 65 degrees to withstand waves up to 8 metres high. The tip of the bridge is clad in glass with 96% transparency, and at night LED lights run along both sides of the railings.

Sunset, and the day the sun drops through the gap

The bridge faces west. Sunset here passes through four colours: gold, orange, pink and purple. Every 1 January, the sun sets right into the gap between the two arms, something the architects calculated from the very start.

The bridge in public memory

The bridge was the setting for the music video I Do (Em Đồng Ý) by Đức Phúc and the group 911 on 9 February 2023, and for the Fashion Voyage #5 runway on 8 April 2023. After it opened, CNN and Italy's TG1 reported on it, and Travel + Leisure magazine called it "a picture-perfect bridge".