1 day Mekong Delta Tour gives you a good overview

I have a romantic view of the Mekong Delta with muddy waterways, green fields and slow boats. Therefore, I’d have liked to so a Mekong tour to Cambodia. But first of all this trip would take 3 days and I didn’t have time anymore and second there only seems to be one tour available and that is a very commercial one. Believe me, I spent 2 hours in HCMC walking from travel agencies to bus agencies.

In the end, I had to decide that I would just do a 1 day Mekong Delta tour (first day of the 3-day tour) to get a small glimpse of the delta and skip the floating market and the slow boat in Cambodia. Instead, I would take the night bus to Cambodia. You can read more about that in my next post.

Tip: book all the tours directly through a bus company and not the hotel. In the end, I was on the same tour as the other guests at my hostel but only paid 180k VND (instead of 250k) and 270k for the night bus (instead of 320k).

Itinerary of the 1 day Mekong Delta tour

Pagoda
For the 1 day Mekong Delta tour we were picked up at the hostel at 8am. There first was about a 1.5 hour drive to then stop at a nice but very overpriced rest stop. 10 min later, we stopped at a pagoda. This was nice, because we hadn’t visited one in Vietnam and this was a very big one with statues and the monks were praying and chanting.

Boats and bees
Soon after that, our whole group boarded a long boat which brought us to the first island. The water really was yellowish-brown from the mud but yet there were more houses to be seen than green. We got off to drink some tea mixed with honey from the local bee farm, could look at the bees and taste some dried fruit. Of course, you had the opportunity to buy everything. This goes unsaid for every stop.

Fruits and rowing boat
Then, we drove to the second island, again were seated in a restaurant and could try several different fruits and listen to some traditional songs they sang. After that, we boarded a small rowing boat and were steered along a small channel amidst palm trees. This would have been nice, had there not been boat after boat after boat, like on a ride in Disneyland.

Lunch and animal maltreatment
Lunch was small but tasty. You could have bought a special fish but I just still don’t trust the cleanliness of seafood and water after the past experiences in Vietnam. We could ride free bicycles but there wasn’t much to see around there, so the best thing to do was relaxing in a hammock. There also was a crocodile pond and a cage with porcupines. They clearly didn’t have enough space and it was a rather sad sight. Same with the horse carriages that brought us to the coconut candy factory afterwards. The horses were so skinny and seemed much too small to pull such a big wagon. I didn’t know that this was included in the tour but I hope they will exchange this through motorcycle tuk tuks in the future and leave these poor horses in peace.

Coconut candy factory
Our last stop was the coconut candy factory. It was more a shack with some small machines and a family packing the candy into boxes. Of course we could try the candy which was like carambar with coconut flavor.
Then we were brought back to our mini van and had a 2 hour journey back to HCMC.
So, yes, it was very commercial but I really liked the pagoda we visited and it was nice to see the coconut factory and imagine how the boat trips would be more inland and without all the other tourists there.

For me, the main thing was to escape out of sticky HCMC. That city is again very chaotic and I contrary to others, did not find pleasing street food. On the other hand, you find all the western fast food chains you know and there even are about 3 shopping malls to hide from the heat.