Mekong Delta Ben Tre Homestay

Commence the journey with a pickup at the hotel for 2 hours private vehicle drives south of Saigon to Ben Tre. The province is famous for its coconut trees as it looks like plantations. Since the coconut trunks, shells, and leaves had been used to make fibers, handicraft products, and coconut mats, family businesses also grew up. Arrive in Ben Tre around 10:00 a, and then you take a boat trip along the lively river bank before crossing the Cai to visit the village, and stop at a coconut processing workshop. You can see locals making plenty of valuable products and experiencing daily life. Next, you will have a short tour through the village by Italian 3-wheel vintage Lambro. This three wheels passenger vehicle will remind you and locals about Saigon City from 1960 to 1975. However, the War ended, and the Italian 3 wheels cars still using until late 1990. The vintage Lambro continues driving you to another family workshop producing coconut mats. After the visit, take a walk to lush orchards and taste some tropical fruit before enjoying a leisurely small sampan rowed on a natural creek through green water palms. Lastly, you get back on the boat and continue cruising. You will have a special lunch at your local home before the boat journey continues to a homestay, where we stay a night. Enjoy your time walking through villages, waving to kids at leisure. Join the family to prepare Vietnamese dishes for your dinner.

Get up early for Vietnamese coffee and walk around the village to experience local’s early morning activities; parents take kids to schools, prepare breakfast for family members, carry fruits to local markets and so on. Back to the homestay for breakfast and ready to check out at 9:00 am, take a boat ride back to Ben Tre. Load your luggage/suitcase in a private car and continue the trip as planned. Travel by car to Mr Sau Khanh, his hobby is collecting antiques, Altar vases made of bronze and ceramic, antique clocks, lights, and sculptures made from different countries. His home now looks like a gallery/ showroom to display what he collected from 1980. Another charming site to be visited is Vinh Trang Pagoda in My Tho. It was built-in 1850 during colonial control, so the pagoda’s facade comprises Asian and European architecture, including details from the Renaissance period and Romanesque style. However, the interior displayed Vietnamese furniture decoration with wood carving. You will have lunch in one of My Tho City’s famous restaurants before relaxing on a scenic road back to Ho Chi Minh. Tour End!

Can Tho City is known as the Capital City of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta and is famous for its Cai Rang floating market. It’s one of the most top tourist attractions in the Delta region. Why’s it is? Simply because it’s a real one.

After breakfast, enjoy a motorized boat trip to the bustling floating market and enjoy watching the waterway’s local morning activities. Your boat will get through and around the market slowly. There are many wooden boats of different sizes. Bigger boats are wholesalers and anchored, while smaller boats move around and look for trading partners. The other tiny sampans sell light breakfasts; noodle soups, broken rice with porks, coffee, and soft drinks. The floating market opens all day, but it is busiest from sunrise to about 9 am. The primary items for trading are farm products and other commodities. The items for sales are hung up on a pole of bigger boats as for advertising.

Following the market, you will get off the boat and explore another busy land market before the beautiful ride to Chau Doc. It’s a long way from Can Tho to Chau Doc, so our adventure day will divide today’s ride into 2 sections.

The morning is 30 km on shady paths, sharing space with local mopeds and pushbikes, passing numerous villages, and explore backwaters of rural Dists. The routes in My Khanh, and Binh Thuy are the dirt lances, concrete paths through lush orchards, lush farms of many kinds of fruits, and enjoy visiting Chinese pagoda, experiencing the daily life of locals along the river banks. Visit one of the most beautiful mandarin landlords’ houses in the 19th-century in the Mekong Delta. This house had recognized as an official national relic by the Ministry of Culture. Built-in 1870, the house structure is a blend of Asian and European culture and characteristics. The exterior was French style, and the interior was a traditional Vietnamese house—lunch en route before 2. hours transfer to Chau Phu.

From Chau Phu, we 20 km cycle through vast rice paddy fields, tiny hamlets, and colourful Vietnamese pagodas with a giant buddha statue,  continue pedalling along man-made canals, pass thatched shelters, palm trees, and raised farms. It’s good timing to enjoy cycling and viewing the verdant countryside and views the Sam mountain scenery. The afternoon’s ride ends at Sam Mountain and transfers on a winding road to Victoria Sam Lodge. Enjoy the sunset by swimming pool and looking over the Cambodia border.

Enjoy the sunrise, taste tea, coffee, look over the endless rice paddies, and Cambodian borderline from Sam Mountain. After a hearty breakfast, you will transfer to Chau Doc town, and it takes about 15 minutes to drive. Take a short boat trip to a floating village, experience the local life whose tiny houses are on the river,  and see how wealthy people raise catfish. The floating fish farms were built with good quality waterproof and durable materials as big houses while floating homes are tiny on top of sampans.

After the boat, you cycle through the Muslim villages, past Muslim wooden stilts houses, stop at a busy village market, follow the small path to the verdant farmland, and have a ferry crossing Bassac River. Break for a coffee stop at a lively market and continue to explore a lowland in Dong Thap. The areas have yearly flooded in the wet season. Houses on stilts had been used in this land for a long time. Most are not solid stilt houses because locals built with local materials and proof usually change after 2 to 3 years.

We will have lunch in Cho Moi, following lunch with 30 minutes transfer to My Luong township, to continue your adventure to Cao Lanh. The weather is much more relaxed and your leisurely ride more enjoyable. Take some photos of the Monastery complex before the ride takes you through peaceful, seemingly undiscovered Gieng island and its rustic villages. Take today’s last ferry to a rural town, keep on cycling to Cao Lanh.

You ride narrow lances from the hotel to get out of the town, past many brick factories along rivers, cross water channels on the little wooden bridges, and ride on a dirt track along the Mekong River. Stop to visit a small workshop weaving dried water hyacinths to make hats, handbags, bins and indoor sandals and so on. This is a chance you can buy some directly from the locals instead of paying high prices in Ho Chi Minh.

Enjoy watching green vegetation fields, passing mudfish farm, and mango orchard along the way. Break for a coffee in small towns, then carry on biking on country back roads, through the town takes concrete paths across the farmland and agricultural canals to Xeo Quyt forest. Enjoy lunch at a nice restaurant in the forest. Following lunch, to explore Viet Cong base and  Xeo Quyt forest.

The forest is a vast swamp and full of tall cajeput trees. The tree has a white spongy bark that easily flakes off the trunk, and locals love to use these for fires. Viet Cong built its base inside the forest in 1960 with bunkers, meeting rooms, command headquarter, etc. Xeo Quyt is an ecological site and offers rowed sampan to visit historical relics, admire the scenery, and learn about the touch life in Vietnam War. Enjoy a sampan boat row by Viet Cong, stop at some Viet Cong bunkers, walking to communist leaders’, learn about the Vietnam War and wildlife of the forest. Finally, you will transfer to Saigon in the late afternoon. Tour Ends!