Christmas in Vietnam – Mekong delta and one big disappointment

Hey travellers! 

I’m here with another article from Vietnam! After visiting the island of Phu Quoc, we headed to the Mekong Delta. But we didn’t fly to Saigon, where most of Mekong tours start because we wanted to avoid the “mainstream”, so we chose a longer and more exhausting way. 

From Phu Quoc we boarded a ferry, got off at Rach Gia port after about 3 hours and then we transferred to a bus which runs directly to Can Tho. This whole thing took us half a day. In Can Tho, our hostel had arranged a cruise to the morning floating market for us, which was really disappointing. I thought we were going to see a real market where local people sell everything they can, bargain, shop and shout at each other. In the end the entire floating market was a tourist attraction that has nothing to do with the locals because there were no locals. The second stop was at the land market, which was much busier.

We got on the boat before sunrise and the cruise took about two hours.

We didn’t want to leave disappointed, so we tried to find someone who would give us a ride to the narrow shoulders of the river where we could see a little bit of nature. We managed and for $15 we set off for a private boat trip. When I was trying to explain that we didn’t want to see any kind of a market, the lady was super-surprised and didn’t really understand why we wanted to see the mangroves. Finally, we set off for a five-hour cruise that finally met our expectations.

As I wrote in the previous article, if I planned the trip to Vietnam today, I would skip the Mekong delta and spend more time in the north instead. The dirt and the trash didn’t really get me. However it was still an amazing experience and I’m glad I’ve seen this place:) 

E.

All pictures were taken with Nikon Z6 + Nikkor 35 mm f1.4 or 24-75 f4.0