The Mekong Delta – Messing about in boats

The Mekong Delta

“Believe me my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” (Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows) Ratty and Mole were, of course, talking about the Thames, but the quote is undoubtedly even more valid when applied to the altogether more exotic location of The Mekong Delta.

When we first started organising group tours to Vietnam, every Delta town had its own floating market, bridges were few and far between and river crossings invariably involved putting the minivan on a ferry. Today, spectacular suspension bridges traverse many of the rivers and a vastly improved road network means fewer vendors need to take to the water to sell their produce. However, the myriad picturesque waterways; rivers, nipa palm-lined channels, winding streams, mangroves and ancient canals still cover the vast inland archipelago from Saigon to the Ca Mau Peninsula and from the shores of the South China Sea west to the Cambodian border and beyond.

A tour of the Mekong Delta, then, is all about boats. Rowing boats, motorboats, ferries, kayaks and canoes for the more energetic, large and small boats, private and public. (Our Vietnam and Cambodia Overland tour involves a journey up the Mekong to Phnom Penh by the public, passenger boat service.)

Our Delta tour begins with an early morning departure by minivan, south from Saigon to Ben Tre District in Vinh Long Province. (Ben Tre Province was recently incorporated into Vinh Long.) Ben Tre is still overwhelmingly rural with farms, villages, orchards and paddy-fields covering a large section of the estuary between the main channel of the Mekong to the north and the Co Chien River to the south.

A mix of activities courtesy of a local community-based tourism scheme involves a rowing boat tour through nipa palm tunnels, a motorboat tour with stops to discover a couple of the area’s cottage industries, a leisurely bicycle tour along some country lanes and a visit to a tiny village market. After lunch, we continue south to riverside Can Tho Town for our night’s accommodation.

The following morning, it’s back on a boat as we head upstream to the famous Cai Rang floating market. Although today, much reduced in size, the market still provides a glimpse of traditional Delta life in former times.

Heading west, our next boat trip highlights another aspect of the recent history of the Mekong Delta with a tour of the secret Vietcong base at Xe (Xeo) Quit. Basically dug out of the middle of a swamp, this base served as a hideout for local, pro-Communist, Vietcong fighters during the Vietnam War and includes a series of tunnels, dug-outs and shelters reached today by tiny rowing boats along narrow channels completely hidden by foliage. The complex was surrounded by mines and booby traps to prevent US helicopters from landing, and the base remained – astonishingly – undiscovered for the entire duration of the war.

From here, the Mekong Delta tour splits into two, with those on our Hanoi to Saigon itinerary returning to Saigon and our Vietnam and Cambodia tour venturing further west to Chau Doc Town on the Cambodian border. The latter section includes a visit the following morning to Tra Su Bird Sanctuary – again by rowing boat and motorboat – followed on the subsequent day by a morning cruise on the aforementioned passenger boat up the Mekong to Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh.

As we said…a lot of messing around in boats!