Getting There & Boat Trips in the Mekong Delta
A visual guide from the Mekong Delta travel guide — see all posters in Visual Guides.
The delta starts barely 70 kilometres from Ho Chi Minh City, and getting in is the easy part: expressway buses and limousine vans leave the city constantly for My Tho, Ben Tre, Vinh Long and Can Tho. The real decision is time. A day trip buys you a river boat, an island and a sampan creek; an overnight in Can Tho buys you the dawn floating market — the thing the delta does best.
Day Trip or Overnight?
Classic day tours run to My Tho and Ben Tre — roughly two hours each way — with a river cruise, coconut-candy stop and sampan ride folded in: easy, cheap and a little scripted. Better, stay a night in Can Tho, three to four hours out, so you can be on the water at Cai Rang by sunrise. With two or three days you can add Vinh Long homestays or the Tra Su flooded forest near Chau Doc.
Boats, Cruises & Onward Travel
In Can Tho, small private boats charter from the Ninh Kieu pier area before dawn — agree the route and price beforehand — while group boats are cheaper and fixed. Multi-day river cruises drift between Cai Be and Can Tho on converted wooden rice barges. Heading on, buses continue west to Chau Doc for Tra Su and, when services are running, boat connections toward Phnom Penh.