The Mekong Delta Beyond Can Tho: Vinh Long, Sa Dec, Tram Chim and Chau Doc

Almost every Mekong Delta trip sold from Ho Chi Minh City follows one line: My Tho or Ben Tre for a day, Can Tho and the Cai Rang floating market for a night. That line is the delta's front porch. West and south of it there is a second line of towns, each with one thing worth a day, that ends at the Cambodian border. This is the delta that people who liked the first trip go back for, and it can be done the first time if you give it the days.

The second line, in order

The towns beyond the standard circuit run roughly west from Vinh Long: Vinh Long itself and its river islands for a homestay, Sa Dec for a colonial house and flower gardens, Cao Lanh and the Tram Chim wetland for birds, and Chau Doc on the border for a hill temple, floating fish farms, a Cham village and the boat to Cambodia. Tra Vinh, south of Vinh Long, adds the Khmer pagodas.

End to end it is five or six days; any one piece is a day.

The road network reaches all of them and the buses run, but English thins quickly west of Can Tho and the buses are slower and rougher than the coach to Can Tho. A car with a driver for the stretch, or a small-group tour that runs this route, turns a patient trip into a comfortable one.

How it connects to the standard trip

Vinh Long is on the way to Can Tho, so the second line starts before the first one ends. A common shape is a night on an island near Vinh Long, then Can Tho for the market, then the road west to Chau Doc. The Can Tho night stays; the second line wraps around it.

Vinh Long: the homestay night

Vinh Long is the delta's homestay town, where the river islands opposite the city have family-run houses in orchards that take guests for the night. You cross by ferry, cycle the lanes between fruit trees and canals, eat with the household, and in the morning a boat takes you to the Cai Be floating market before the activity thins.

It is quieter and more domestic than Can Tho, and for most visitors it is the single best night in the delta.

The homestays range from a mattress in the family room to private bungalows with bathrooms. Ask what you are booking. The orchards are at their best in the fruit months of early summer.

Sa Dec

Sa Dec, a short drive on, is a river town with a nursery-garden district that supplies flowers to the whole south and a Chinese merchant's house that readers of Marguerite Duras will recognise as the setting of her Mekong love story. It is a half day on the way to Cao Lanh, not a destination in itself, and it is at its best in the weeks before Tet when the gardens are in full production.

Tram Chim: the birds

Tram Chim national park, north of Cao Lanh, is a wetland of flooded grassland and cajuput forest that holds some of the delta's last large bird populations, including, in season, the sarus crane. You see it from a boat along the dykes and from a watchtower, and the birds are active early; by late morning the heat has flattened the day. It needs a dawn start from Cao Lanh or Sa Dec and a guide who knows the water levels.

Tram Chim is the piece most worth skipping if birds mean nothing to you and the piece most worth the detour if they do. The cranes are seasonal and not guaranteed. The egrets, storks and the landscape are there all year.

Health note for the wetlands

The CDC describes malaria in the Mekong delta as rare and rural, with no transmission in the cities, which is why standard delta trips do not involve tablets; a dawn in a wetland is still a dawn among mosquitoes, so repellent and sleeves are the sensible precaution. Dengue is the mosquito illness that actually circulates in the south, and the same precaution covers it.

Chau Doc: the border town

Chau Doc sits on the Bassac river at the Cambodian border and is the most interesting town on the line. Sam Mountain rises behind it with a cluster of temples and a view across the flat border country into Cambodia. On the water there are floating houses with fish farms beneath them, and across the river a Cham Muslim village with a mosque, a reminder that the delta is not only Vietnamese.

The Tra Su cajuput forest, a short drive out, is a flooded forest seen by rowboat from under the trees.

Chau Doc is also where the second line can leave Vietnam, by fast boat up the river to Phnom Penh, which turns a transfer into a day of the trip.

The crossing has a visa catch

The river crossing does not accept a Cambodian e-visa. Crossing into Cambodia on a Cambodian e-visa works only at Bavet, the road crossing on the Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh bus route; at the river post you need a Cambodian visa obtained by another route, and your Vietnamese e-visa must name the river crossing as its exit. Check both before you book the boat, because neither can be fixed at the post.

Tra Vinh: the Khmer delta

Tra Vinh, south of Vinh Long, is the town for the delta's Khmer population, with dozens of Theravada pagodas in the Cambodian style set among tall trees, a Khmer cultural museum and a pond that is a local pilgrimage site. It is flat and quiet and best done by bicycle in a day, and it is almost never on a tour. It fits as a day out of Can Tho or as a stop between Vinh Long and the coast.

Putting the days together

Three days: Vinh Long homestay, Can Tho market, Chau Doc. Four: add Tram Chim between Can Tho and Chau Doc with a Sa Dec stop. Five or six: add Tra Vinh and leave Vietnam by river. Any version is a different trip from the coach day out of the city, and whether that longer version is worth its days against the rest of your route is one of the trade-offs Vietnam, End to End works through.

Book a multi-day Mekong Delta tour that names these towns, or arrange a driver from Can Tho and build it yourself.